Originally Posted by
Netdewt
How do you measure your sitbones?
I found three simple methods when I was investigating why I could never get comfortable on a Brooks Professional Saddle, even after 1000+ miles.
1) Sit on some corrugated cardboard on a hard flat surface. When you get up, your sit bones will have left dents in the cardboard that you can measure for width.
2) Sit on a stack of flattened paper towels, the top few of which have been slightly dampened with water. Your sit bones will cause the top layer of moisture to penetrate the furthest down into the stack, leaving damp circles in the lower layers that show how far apart your sit bones are.
3) Go to a bike store that sells Bontrager Inform saddles. They have a a simple gel filled measuring device that you also sit in order to leave sit bone impressions.
I'm 6' 2" and found my sit bones were separated by about 120-123 mm (center to center), by all three methods. However, each sit bone impression is actually about the size of a quarter, and the separation from outer edge to outer edge is larger, more like 155 mm. Although that sounds narrower than the width of a Brooks Professional saddle (160 mm), when I stretched a tape measure across the width of the saddle, it was immediately obvious that my 155 mm width can't fit on Brooks Professional without having the edges of the sit bones being located directly over the metal frame of the saddle, rather than being suspended by the leather of the saddle. No amount of riding/softening/breaking in can solve that basic problem. Many of the other Brooks models are even narrower than the 160 mm wide Brooks Professional (Swallow, Swift, and B17 narrow have listed widths of 153, 152 and 150 mm). In contrast, the B17 has a width of 170 mm, which is just wide enough that my 155 mm sit bone edges are still located entirely on the leather inside the metal frame, rather than located right atop the metal frame. I have found both the B17 saddles to be extremely comfortable, but have to rule out many of the other Brooks models because of the mismatch between the width of my sit bones, and the position of the frame in the narrower saddles.