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Old 11-28-17 | 12:17 PM
  #15  
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SethAZ
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Bikes: 2018 Lynskey R260, 2005 Diamondback 29er, 2003 Trek 2300

Originally Posted by woodardhsd
Where would you recommend reading up on ideal saddle position? I see where some people like the KOPS and some don't. I didn't really think about saddle fore/aft being that important, I was just worried about the saddle height.
I can make no recommendation, because I'm not an expert by anyone's stretch of the imagination on proper bike fit. I've read quite a few things in various articles on the web, videos on Youtube, etc., and I think that my own fit is pretty good. I've tweaked my own fit quite a bit, just based on what I'd read over the years. I clipped in on my bike, positioned the pedals horizontally, put one hand in my usual riding position on the hoods, while leaning over slightly to support myself against my car, and held a plumb bob I'd made with dental floss with a large steel nut tied to it from the front of my leg just at the top of my lower leg bone, to see where it was with respect to the pedal spindle. I adjusted my saddle until I had a pretty darn close KOPS position, then went out for some test rides. So far that position has been the most comfortable for me, and also seems to be quite efficient in terms of my leg power and pedaling stroke.

I have read articles that say that KOPS isn't a hard and fast rule, and they go into why, etc. In my case, however, when I arrived at as good of a KOPS position as I could achieve in my garage, with the saddle height adjusted until I nearly but didn't quite fully extend the leg with the pedal in the 6 o'clock position, I was the happiest with the saddle positioning, and stopped tweaking it. I predict that if I paid for a professional bike fitting on my bike any tweaks at this point to saddle position would be modest at best.

Even articles I've read that were critical of treating KOPS as the standard in bike fitting conceded that on an otherwise appropriate frame size for a given rider it was likely to be pretty close to the ideal setting. Not personally being a guru on fit, I've chosen to stop messing with that aspect of my fit any further. If I decide, in time, and as my weight loss leads to greater freedom of positioning of my upper body with respect to the handlebars, any issues I identify with fit will be dealt with through stem and stack height changes. So far, however, I'm actually quite comfortable with the fit.

My point, in my original post in this thread, was just that the OP seems to have used his saddle position in an attempt to correct what he thought was insufficient reach, without regard to what it did to the relationship between the saddle and the cranks. That's just bass ackwards according to everything I've read. I could be wrong here, and no doubt if I am someone will chime in to correct me, but I'd say his best fit will be obtained by tweaking the saddle height and fore/aft positioning to get his ideal saddle/crank relationship for the length of his legs and the angles at which they engage the pedals throughout his pedal stroke, and then worry about reach and stack height by adjusting the stem length, stem spacers, choice and orientation of handlebar, etc.
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