The Myth of K.O.P.S.
The Myth of K.O.P.S. An Alternative Method of Bike Fit
by
Keith Bontrager
originally edited by Doug Roosa
HTML and additional editing by
Sheldon Brown
Minor edits and a few comments by
John Allen
Editor's notes at the time it was published:
Exploding myths is tough work. People don't want to believe that their ideas about how things work or how things should be are wrong. Keith Bontrager tackles one of our primary beliefs about bike fit: that aligning the rider's knee over the pedal spindle is critical for proper positioning. He shows that there is no physiological basis for it. His dismissal of that rule, and his alternative method of bike fit, is based on quite a bit of anatomical study and a lot of practical experience in fitting riders to his custom-built framesets. Some of the ideas in this article may be initially hard to grasp, but if you bear with it, you will derive an understanding of an approach to bike fit that considers the needs of the rider in all riding positions, not just the seated one.
-Doug Roosa.