Originally Posted by
Jeff Neese
I don't understand this thing about "balance" when discussing fore-aft position. Are we talking about being able to hold yourself upright, without your hands on the bars, maybe even riding no-hands? I'm 100% sure I could do that on any bike, regardless of the fore-aft position of the saddle.
The thing that would make that hard is if the saddle were TILTED too far forward, thus tilting your weight forward and forcing weight onto your hands. The balance test might be a good tool for getting saddle tilt just right, but I don't see what it has to do with fore-aft position.
The idea as I first read it in one of Zinn's books, is to find a position like that of a downhill ski racer in a tuck. The body CG needs to be centered over the feet, otherwise the body will tend to fall forward or backward. The correlation to cycling is for the body center of gravity to be above the BB axis, or close enough you can keep yourself in place without excessive hand pressure or without feeling like you are flling back off the saddle. That's the idea of "balance" as I see it for my own fitting.