Originally Posted by
MikeyBoyAz
I suppose it is possible to get a saddle with the same padding as the shorts... but that is almost all saddles anyway. I look at it this way: the material on the inside of the shorts/bibs is soft and pillow like, which you can also treat with chamois cream and such; the outside of the shorts/bibs are made of super slick material that generates very little heat when it rubs against something (like the seat)... well or your other leg for runners or something like that (never was a big runner). With that in mind... you can have the heat (if any) from the Lycra material directly against your skin, or you can have a layer of soft padding between your soft thigh skin and the heat... giving it time to dissipate.
I am most definitely NOT an expert here, but that seems to be the best justification I can think of.
OK ... that's an explanation I've never heard before ... and quite frankly, I don't think it is correct.
1) The material inside the shorts I use is not "soft and pillow-like" ... I doubt I would like shorts with soft and pillow-like padding. My shorts have quite thin padding, more like a piece of felt than a pillow.
2) If your bicycle is set up correctly, and you've got a good saddle (for example, a leather Brooks), you should not need pillow-like padding and you should not need "chamois cream and such". For one season, I tried all sorts of different creams and came to the conclusion that they were not necessary after all. There are a few exceptions to that, of course (riding in the rain being one), but if you're having trouble and are resorting to creams, you might want to look for the cause of the problem rather than treating the symptoms.
3) Given that I can wear a bathing suit and a pair of beach shorts and go for an 80 km ride in 30+C heat on my Brooks saddle, I can tell you that there is no issue with heat dissipation or the lack thereof without padding. In fact, for temperatures over 40C, I actually prefer to wear something like beach shorts or basketball shorts rather than typical cycling shorts because the beach or basketball shorts allow the skin on my legs to "breathe" and reduces my chances of heat rash.
The tight-fitting spandex/polyester/lycra shorts can reduce chafing and friction because they don't bunch very much. However, if they had pillow-like padding, I think they would bunch quite uncomfortably in all the wrong places.
The padding does provide a little bit of a protective layer over the sitbones, but it also helps to wick away moisture (sweat), and apparently some of the newer paddings are antibacterial, which, I think, is supposed to help prevent saddle sores and similar.