Ouch.

The problem, that is if you are intending anything other than short errands around Amsterdam...The problem is your core is doing nothing.

Your butt is sore in an hour or 90 minutes because it is taking an unfair portion of your weight.
Your wrists are sore because the bars are literally pushing you back. Your wrists, arms, neck & shoulders are doing the supporting that ought to be done by your core.
You may feel powerful in this position because your quads are doing all the work. It's easy to think you're powerful when your favored muscles are compensating for musce groups that are not being engaged. It seems like it makes sense. "I feel this muscle working, it fatigues, I must be stronger" People who are sedentary in lifestyle & spend a significant amount of time sitting tend to have undeveloped, disengaged gluteal muscles. (Ref: Old-man shuffle.)

The solution to all of this is engage your core to actually support your body by setting your saddle height & set back to a reasonably appropriate place. Then take the weight off your hands/wrists/shoulders/neck by moving the handle bars away from your torso. Either down, across, or both. If done right, your core/torso is holding everything together & your limbs are sharing a proportional amount of duty. Doing so by enables the engagement of all your lower muscle groups....Making you actually more powerful.

When I was in Amsterdam the Opafiets I bought off a guy on the street had a very similar fit to what you have, OP. It was ok for riding a couple of miles to restaurants/cafés, laundromats, etc...But the 40 miles to the beach & 60 miles to Gouda were really asking a lot out of a days travel. I ditched that bike with a bar tender in exchange for a good night of free drinkin' the night before I left. Good times.

My touring bike came with a similar fit as well. I couldn't get out of it fast enough. Though not "uncomfortable," the ease of getting saddle rawness/sores & being slow AF from all the disengaged muscle groups, sucked.

FWIW: I never took anything Moisture said to be "advice;" only to show what he had done & his logic for doing so.

I found the bike used on classifieds. It was in poor condition and I wanted to learn how to restore a bike. I developed a good connection with it. Ive had the bike for 3 months so far and have put about 1500km on it. I mainly bought it because it was already converted to flat bar meaning it had the brake levers I wanted.

The standover clearance is literally - my inseam 885mm, so maybe slightly on the large size, but not overly so. I believe that the top tube length and reach measurements are more or less in line with what I would require.

I tried using the frame fit calculator, but obviously my measurements must've been quite inaccurate. It says my top tube length should be around 55cm.. thats just not right..

the top tube on my Norco is around 58cm. I imagine around 59cm would be the correct size, but no more, considering that I've tried using a tall rise 60mm stem on this bike previously which was comfortable, but didn't work as well as I wanted. My current setup using a 40mm stem with the 58cm top tube is perfect for me.

Do you need all those muscle groups though? People have experimented with bikes that added arm cranks to the regular leg cranks but basically found that your legs are more than able to drain the tank of whatever actual power you have available. It may be that the big muscles at the tops of your legs are also able to do this on their own.

I agree that Moisture's sensation of a heavy upper body may be to do with weak "core" muscles in some way. Interesting that it's on one side as well.

Another weird feature of old Dutch bikes that I think Moisture might be trying to recreate by putting his seat as far back as possible is the super slack seat angle. This means you can't put your weight into the pedals. But you can pull back on the handlebar and push forwards almost as if riding a recumbent. This would actually use some arm muscles-- you could almost row the bicycle like a boat!

We talk about these bike designs like they're for popping down to the shops on. But back in the days before cars were affordable people used to ride enormous distances and this was the design they came up with. It's hard to compare because anything radically different from what you're used to feels weird.

That's an interesting data point. But was that a fit recommendation for a mountain/ flat bar bike, or a road/ drop bar bike?

• For a drop-bar bike, an ETT of 55cm would be way too short for someone of your height with any sort of conventional fit. At 5'9", my bike has a ETT close to that with a 90mm stem for a moderately aggressive fit. I have found that something around 54cm works for me and I can fine tune it with a stem in the 80–100mm range. if I need to go much longer or shorter than that, I think the frame is the wrong size for that application. I shared photos of that on a green bike with a 535mm ETT and a 90mm stem above.
• For a flat-bar bike, that's VERY short! That's something you'd design for someone who's under 5' tall.

What calculator did you use to get that?

Literally every single muscle in your body is, or at least supposed to be responsible for maintaining good stability. The body has lots of different small stabilizer muscles employed for this very purpose, but larger muscle groups are also working, such as your lats for example.

Your overall core strength as well as your lower back are both active in maintaining stability and work closely together . This is why people with lower back pain still deal with issues in that area even after training their spinal erectors. Training your abs will actually help tighten your backs posture more or less into a more suitable position where the rest of the various muscles in your back can now keep everything tight and in a more reasonable posture. This will certainly help contribute to power delivery.

There is no "option" here, whether you want to use specific muscle groups or not. If you're riding a bike, your whole body is responsible for both stabilizing and transferring power- period. Think of the energy transferring from your body to the bike as being one. You want good direct power and steering inputs to your bike without being overly stiff.

Being forced to stay overly mindful of your posture and which muscles are contributing to stabilization as you ride is obviously not a good thing. But id still rather do that than ride down the road like mr. Arched banana back x floppy noodles.

What you say is all good IMO except for the embolded section. One moves one's saddle to get correct balance, though even this assumes that one's upper body is somewhere near its final position. One takes their weight off their hands by moving their saddle, not their bars. One should be able to briefly take both hands off the bars, while pedaling normally, without sliding forward on the saddle. After one has that balance, one worries about reach. If one's position is way out of whack, there might be some back and forth adjusting to do, first one thing, then the other, then back to the first thing, etc.

Your points about what I call "helper muscles" is well taken. That's a good reason to move into any new exercise program gently so as not to get injured because the helper muscles aren't able to keep everything in alignment. Sometimes with a new exercise, the main movers are very strong, tempting one to work them hard, which can be a mistake. I was doing some intervals this week which made my obliques sore, case in point. One has to bring everything along evenly.

Before you control all your muscles you could try lowering your seat.

This is exactly what I'm basing my fit off of. I kept tinkering around until I didn't have to lean forward anymore when riding with no hands.

but I already have a bend in my knees at the 6 o clock position. Any lower, and I feel like my knees are put under a lot of pressure and I don't get quite as much power trasnfer. I could raise my seat maybe 4mm higher at the very most to achieve only a slight bend at the knee, which I would prefer not to do specifically for the reason you stated. Right now, my toes are just above the ground when sitting in the saddle.

I would try to lower the seat a little nonetheless, but the auto mexhanic who got my old seat post out shoved one slightly too large in diameter back in, so I'd need the auto body shop's help to get it back out again.

Well, that should be good for another couple of pages

Moving saddle back, bars away is effectively the same thing. Which is the appropriate fix would depend on how a rider is rotated, (being further forward or bolt upright) and the riders individual propertions. Your point is taken though, I could have been more clear.

Moisture, as mentioned above, you obviously did not take your measurements correctly and got a screwy result. One can't do that alone, one needs a helper to measure and one muse follow the directions precisely to get a correct result.

Be that as it may, there's a much more direct route to look at correct bike sizing and that's to measure with your body. I set saddle height by measuring with my leg, the "heel on pedal" method. I determine correct reach by measuring with my torso and arms. I was talking about your top tube seeming much too short just eyeballing it. We could take another look at that fairly simply:

1) Take a photo of yourself leaning forward with your elbows on your handlebars.
2) See if you can lean forward far enough that your back is almost level. You'll probably wind up resting your chest on your bars. Hang your upper arms so that those upper arms are at about a 90° angle to your torso. Then bend your elbows so that your forearms are horizontal. Take a photo of that position. It may take a few tries to get that position just so.
3) Post the photos.

Thanks.

Not really.

Quite frankly it's very difficult not to make fun of your fit when by inference, you're making fun of everyone else's.
I can safely assume that you're the only person in this thread who modifies and rides a 'racing bike' to become some kind of 'shopping' bike or town bike while I also make the assumption that everyone else on this thread including me has a position more akin to the person you're calling mr. arched banana back.
Yet you've said that you can only ride for an hour and half before you get a sore butt (not that that surprises me at all as you clearly have far too much weight on it) whereas I, and no doubt all those who adopt the same position as mr. arched banana back can ride 6, 7 or 8 hours in a day without any butt soreness at all.
I don't think we've got much chance of 'seeing' your set up in action but maybe you can publish some garmin stats or show us some strava screenshots and we can see the phenomenal power you're able to produce with this 'optimal' position....

no it isn't.

Just edited to add "individual proportions" to above post.

I have long monkey arms for example. At 6 foot tall and a 31.5 inseam, I am all torso & arms. All my bikes are 58's The proper saddle placement for balance for you, on your bike would obliterate my wrists & shoulders/neck in short order.

In isolation, moving the saddle back, or moving the bars away effect the same result: Less weight bourne on the hands/wrists/shoulders/neck muscles.

Here is my nearest equivalent fit to the OP that I owned & built before I donated it to a local bike co-op charity for auction. I used to ride it on the Lake Washington loop & do 30 mile trips to Ballard for craft beer inspection & testing. ;)
https://live.staticflickr.com/7807/4...88aa3714_o.jpg20190330_180742 by Richard Mozzarella, on Flickr
You'll notice how far the bars are away, in comparison to how much the OP's arms are holding up his torso in the photo he provides in post number 1. One of us will be way more comfortable on much longer rides.

Moisture, I just gotta say it.

That's an ugly bike, but it looks good when you use it...

You're half right.

Quite frankly, i don't give a sh*t what you think of my fit.

With the exception of cube wheels, I haven't made fun of one single persons fit on this forum. Even in his case, I was being very constructive and understanding that his choices are limited and he is making due based on what he has and his proportions, respectively.

From a postural perspective, an arched lower back is terrifyingly bad news. Unfortunately it would be wise to compromise your racy leaning forward position somewhat so you can keep your back in a more or less natural posture.

I am not here to argue whether such a leaning position is or isn't effective. I am certainly not here to judge other people's fit or criticize them directly because their opinion does not directly coincide with my own ideas. Shame on you for not doing the same.

When you ride your bike, assuming your stabilizer muscles are all engaged properly and keeping everything tight, you should feel like you are bang on centre. You should be able to easily weigh your front OR rear axle effortlessly, at any given moment of your ride, without ever feeling like there is too much weight positioned back or forth.

Bouncing can be alleviated with some mindful motor skills and keeping the weight of your butt off the saddle when you are sprinting.

According to the heel to pedal method of measuring leg extension, I am bang on perfect. (note, my inseam is about 34.8 inches and I ride with 175mm cranks) . I digress.

Try a frame your size.

Again, its not exactly the same thing. Moving your saddle back will bias more weight towards the rear of the bike. Moving the bars away from you will bias more weight toward the front of the bike.

Therefore, your body is not balanced or positioned identically in either circumstance;

Not the same thing .

Dude, my seat is at the correct height .