Originally Posted by
Steve B.
Don’t make that assumption, I watched a bunch of YT’s to find out how and where to use it, I found it fascinating to learn folks would lower the seat thru turns to lower center of gravity, aiding tire grip. That made sense so I gave that multiple tries. Our local trails tend to have a ton of twisty and tight single track, so it seems that would be a good place to try this. What I discovered was the seat was going up and down, up and down as I was finding I wanted the seat back up at height to be able to more efficiently pedal coming out of turns, then I needed to drop again for more twisty, then up again and after a few try’s at this found the whole thing annoying. It wasn’t improving my handling at all as I was just distracted trying to get the seat lowered and then back up again. And as stated prior, we have short and few hills, so no need to use on downhills,
Off it came.
After a while it becomes second nature, just like shifting gears. When I first started using a dropper post we were still in the 3x drivetrain era, so the lever position was a bit awkward next to the left hand shifter. With a modern 1x drivetrain, it’s much easier to set up with the dropper lever on the left and gear shifters on the right.
FWIW my technique for tight, twisty singletrack segments is to lower the saddle about 2” where I can still pedal pretty well. I only fully drop it for steep or long descents and fully extend for climbing or non-technical flats.