I flipped the stem of my Giant TCX to the normal downwards position to see whether my flexibility has improved enough to support this position - and was surprised by how different the bike now feels.

The bike is a Giant "medium", which is actually quite small for my 5'9" (176cm) height and 34.5" (870mm) inseam. I've had stems from 90-120mm on this bike in an effort to find the sweet spot and had settled on 100mm (flipped-up) for the last few months. This gave a 6cm saddle to bar drop.

I started to feel a little bit hunched up, and thought an easy experiment would be to flip the stem down (but still with all the spacers), which would give me about 8mm more reach and 23mm more drop. Saddle to bar drop is now roughly 8.5cm.

What struck me immediately is not the bigger drop that caused me to flatten my back, but the fact that it made the bike feel *much* smaller.

More interestingly (to me anyway!) is the fact that my whole body also feels lower to the ground as though the saddle had dropped a couple of cm, even though it has not moved from its 760mm height (BB to trough of saddle).

The bike now almost feels like a toy! The medium size felt a bit small for me to start with (because of my long inseam, which required a higher saddle), but it now feels tiny - even though my position is now probably quite a bit more aero.

I'm wondering whether the lower arm & torso position requires any adjustment to saddle height or angle?

Could the lower bars compromise power output? I feel quite sluggish, but this may just be me getting used to the new position, and I need more time to get results.

Has anyone else had the experience of feeling like you are riding a completely different bike after making a minor fit adjustment?