I moved my seat back this winter to take weight off my hands, and it worked just enough that it feels like just a bit more would be good. On the other hand, I just finished my first 100k of the year, and my quads are entirely shot but other muscles seem fine. Should I move the seat forward to spread the load more evenly to my glutes and hamstrings, and then get a longer stem? I'm 5'9", with fairly normal proportions. Old (early 70s) ~52cm frame, with a pretty laid-back (slack?) seat tube angle, and 70mm stem.

Most of the problem is just fitness, but I'm tentatively targeting both a 200 mile ride and the gravel national championships this year, at least the latter on this bike. Fit seems like some obvious low hanging fruit to work on.

Is your saddle at the right height? Corrections only have value if there is a reasonable starting point.

I think so. It might have been too high, and I lowered it when I moved the seat back. It's not too high, too low is a possibility.

For me, weight on my hands is a fact of life for fit that allows the best compromise between power, comfort and bike speed. I learned that many years ago. I purchased a bike that two of my coworkers at the bike shop I worked in thought should work well for me. (Last year's Fuji Pro in the basement.) Radically steeper head and seat tubes than anything I'd ever ridden before. I set it up with most of the adjustments roughly in the middle. Stem height, seat fore and aft ... Much more weight on my hands than former bikes. First ride, taking the precaution of riding easy to not pull any surprises on my knees; the cranks were 5mm longer, I equaled my best time ever on the loop I'd been doing. Three days later two minutes came off that.

Rode 5000 miles on that bike that summer with two 175 mile rides and a few 160 milers. Absolutely loved the bike and that position. Got talked out of the position when I got my custom and I told the builder I would never race (and haven't). Struggled with comfort on all my bikes over the next 15 years. One day I pulled out some drafting paper and drew up that old racing bike and super-imposed on it my custom and my fix gear commuter. Very eye opening! To get those bikes to match that bike I loved so much, the custom needed the longest stock stem ever made and the commuter a radical custom.

It took me a few years to find that super long stock stem. But in the meantime I had a local framebuilder make me a 180 custom stem. When it arrived, the first thing I did was go for a 75 mile hilly fix gear ride. Came home beat. It was hard! But my entire upper body was telling me "yeah!". It was obvious that with a torso that wasn't being compressed, my body was getting much more oxygen every inhale and distribution of that oxygen rich blood throughout my torso was far better.

Biggest issues now are folk gawking at my stems and often trying to tell me I'm wrong. Now I still have weight on my hands. Often quite a bit. And I'm aging. I have to address my hand positions with more thought than I used to. Exact location of the brake levers, handlebar shape, placement (stem height and length) and handlebar rotation matter far more now than they used to. My "new bike" approach is now to leave the handlebars un-taped the first few rides. Just some electrical tape to keep the cable in place. Those first rides I bring the stem, seat and brake lever wrenches and stop whenever I feel something could be tweaked to better. When I like that, I tape the bars with cloth tape from the bottom. So it's easy to unwrap to the levers, move them and re-tape. Only after I've worn out that first roll of cloth do I tape the bars with something nice.

Oh, I was 6'1/2" fresh from the factory with long arms and legs. Lean. 45 lb racing weight and about 155 now. Upwind has always been a challenge. My legs make it very clear that a near horizontal back makes their life a lot better. Upwind at my current 72 years old isn't any more fun than it was when I was a 25 yo racer. (I'm NOT advocating that anyone else should be riding the stems I love. But I am saying that the current mantra of "seat back, weight off the hands" isn't the solution for everyone. That there are those, even those who do not race, who are better served by looking at how to best support their entire body for the best result. (When I( see a cat doing "the feline stretch" of making its back about 1 and 1/2 times longer, I think "yeah! When I do that on the bike, my body always says "thank you!" (And no, I've never gotten real cat elongation.)

Further back you go, the more power you'll have to demand from your quads to get the same speed in the same conditions. Also, your quads might feel like hamburger because you just try to pedal in too hard a gear and are straining them. You should generally ride in a ridiculously easy gear ratio. And if you need speed, then a high cadence.

I'm not sold on the balancing in your saddle thing. I still have weight on my hands when I ride. However exercise to keep my lower back and glutes strong along with upper arm and shoulder girdle exercises help me stay comfortable on 3 or 4 hour rides and minimize the weight on my hands and arms without having to move my saddle back.

Depending on one's build, it's probably not possible to get one's hands really light on the bars. For the quad thing, try pulling back more at the bottom and mostly unweight the backstroke pedal so the downstroke leg doesn't have to lift it. A good way to get the hang of that is to pedal very fast in a very low gear. One should be able to pedal at least 120 rpm without bouncing in the saddle. Back when I was really training, I used to try to do that for up to 45', once a week. The idea is to correct one's pedal stroke so that one is only applying force tangent to the pedaling circle, i.e. normal to the cranks. Using more of one's leg muscles increases endurance.

I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical on the spinning thing: intuitively, high cadence is unnecessary aerobic effort, and low cadence is unnecessary anaerobic effort. Both will tire you out, in different ways. The calculus for where that balance is obviously varies from one person to another. The more mass you've got in your legs (muscle or fat), the more the ideal will swing toward a slower cadence. I know you're correct about using more muscles, but I feel like it should be possible to make it more natural to do that by adjusting position. When I'm worn out it's hard to think about technique.

This has nothing to do with cadence, other than practicing at a very high cadence (which one would never use) teaches which muscles to fire when. The fact that it was quads which wore out means that only half (or less) of the leg muscles were being used. The same technique is to be used at all cadences, from 35 to 130. Adjusting position has nothing to do with it, though it will slightly change the balance of effort from some muscles to others, but the technique remains the same. Further back recruits more hams, forward more quads. The object of the game is efficiency; only tangential force applied to the pedals.

Ah. I understand what you mean now. Thanks!

It has been my experience that moving the seat back increases hamstring and glute recruitment and moving the seat forward increases quad recruitment.

Then again a seat that's too low will also use the quads disproportionately.

Weight on hands is a tricky issue, but in my experience there's a pretty good solutions.

1) Seat position. When there's "equal" recruitment of leg muscles during the pedal stroke, the upper body tends to remain the most stable.

2) Reach and drop. Like 79pmooney mentioned, there shouldn't be compression of the torso, but in my opinion there also shouldn't be any stretch that affects the posterior muscle chain (calves, hamstrings, quads, back muscles etc). Stretch means going over the limit of mobility and that'll cause issues further down the line. If you stretch a muscle tens of thousands of times during a ride, it can break stuff or at least cause pain. So getting the bars to a nice comfortable reach and drop where you're not feeling torso compression or stretch at the back chain is important. If you feel you need more flexibility or mobility, train those off the bike.

3) Weight training, specifically deadlifts. For whatever reason there's a myth going that in order to prevent weight on hands you need to have a strong core. That leads to cyclists training planks and whatever else useless that targets the anterior muscle chain. It's actually the posterior muscle chain that's keeping your torso upright. Deadlift being the king of weight exercises strengthens all of the muscles a cyclist needs to keep the upper body unweighted when riding

And here's the old Numb Hands post. Try to look more like those riders.

I find saddle tilt MUCH more determinant of weight on the hands than the fore-aft adjustment. I haven't seen saddle tilt even mentioned in passing yet. Or did I miss that post? Saddle should never be nose down for any reason, for anyone! I know, I know, just kidding ... kind of. Saddle dead level is but a starting point. Try nose up a skoosh and see what happens. I personally do not find for-aft adjustment has any effect on my quad effort. I use it to dial in knee comfort. Quad comfort is determined by gearing. O.p. wants to wear the hair shirt and mash gears that the CAT 3 20 year olds train in. Who am I? Nobody, but I know that they should revisit their thinking on the sweet spot re: anaerobic vs aerobic effort. I am replacing the 11-28 on my roadie with an 11-34. Leaving the 50/39 on for now but when I am the o.p.'s age it's going to a 48/??. FWIW.

My saddle's about 1/8" down in front. Need that to prevent saddle sores. You're right, does weight the hands a little more, but the saddle's.all the way back on a 30mm setback post. I go by the "should be able to take hands off bars briefly w/o sliding forward on the saddle" thing. I ride my rollers a lot, so I'm one of those pedal circles cranks. My quads don't tire any more than my hams.

My triple is 53-39-26 and the cassette is 11-30. I hope to ride that until I'm done. When the bike was new in '05, it was 52-42-30 and 12-25. Bars are a few cm. below saddle, same as always. On my 6th week post-op, back on the rollers, not outdoors yet.

Re: saddle angle: I've found a very fine line between sliding forward off the saddle, and too much pressure in front. On the trainer the pressure results in numbness, on the road I end up arching my back to avoid it, and screwing up my lower back. I could be wrong, obviously, but at this point I'm convinced that I have the saddle angle dialed in pretty well.

If you are sliding forward on the saddle. Then you may have your saddle too far back. Assuming you don't have your saddle tilted very much. Generally saddles should be almost level. But a little down in the front to help with numbness in your genitals/perineal area or saddle sores is okay.

Though I have no idea what your fit on your bike actually looks like and whether other stuff is wrong. You might try moving your saddle forward and your bars forward. Your butt tells you where it wants to be when it's putting power into the cranks. You need to adjust the other stuff to give you a comfortable position where your butt wants to be.

To add to my earlier post, sliding forward on the saddle AND having weight on hands suggests too much reach, too high a saddle, or both.

Too much reach means you're too stretched and are pulling yourself forward (not consciously) in order to compensate. Having too much reach can also lead to effectively having too much saddle height, because the excessive forward lean is causing the posterior muscle chain to stretch, which decreases mobility for pedaling, which makes the saddle too high.

On the other hand too much saddle height makes you reach down for the pedal which can cause two types of sliding issues. First is you move forward on the saddle to compensate. Second is that instead of supporting yourself on the pedals through the whole pedal stroke you end up "hanging" by the pedals at the bottom which'll pull you forward on the saddle until you're supported again.
If your saddle height is correct you should be pushing yourself back when pedaling.

Too much saddle height can also lead you to tilt your pelvis backwards in order to alleviate the excessive stretch at the posterior chain muscles. When you tilt your pelvis back, your effective back length shortens. If you're dancing at the edge of too much reach already, tilting the pelvis back will not help.

Saddle height directly correlates to the feeling of having too much reach or having weight on hands. If you're not supported by the legs, you'll be supported by the pelvis. That means that instead of having a support position in front of your center of gravity (ie. legs), you'll have one behind it (pelvis). When that happens there's just no way to support your upper body properly which leads to your weight resting on your hands and butt with the legs spinning on air.

Ok that's an extreme example, but it does outline the issue. It can be major or slight, but in every case it should be corrected.

Have you had a proper bike position fit? If not I suggest you do.
It seems you are just making wag's based on what hurts...you relieve one pain or discomfort only to trigger a different one.
In general the saddle angle should be flat but a 'slight' downward angle may be ok. Generally the angled down saddle is used by Tri people, etc. to achieve a desired position but for 'cyclists' this position is no good.
If your saddle is too far back your body is going to find it's desired spot and you may wind up sitting on the neck or closer to the tip...called the 'rivet'...which can be uncomfortable to many. Proper saddle position is not only more efficient and comfortable but it also allows the rider to use more of the saddle depending on the road...climbing generally more towards the back, etc.
At least watch a few youtube videos on fit and try to use their lessons to help you achieve a good overall position...otherwise you will likely never be efficient or comfortable.
But in the end...you do you

Saddle tilt - IMO the single most critical adjustment on the bike after seat height (and closely related; altering one can affect the other). I insist on seatposts with 2-bolt clamps like h the Thompson, the old SunTours and a number of the Nittos. Any bike I set up gets a few rides with all the seatpost wrenches and stops whenever I feel I can improve on what I've got. (The huge advantage of the two bolt posts is that you can adjust the tilt mid-ride with no measuring tools (tape measure or level), try it and return exactly to what you were riding before if you don't like it. Or exactly half way between. I'm a rider who uses the entire length of the saddle. The nose or "on-the-rivet when I feel like going hard. All the way back climbing a-la-Bernard Thevenet (Tour de France circa 1980) or pulled forward because climbing can be simply hard. I never had "one spot" for flat ground. I'll ride "here" then move say a half inch for a change. And if I am on a seat that works for me and I've got the tilt (and other stuff; reach drop, cleats ...) dialed in, I do all this and maybe realize after I get home I didn't think of my seat once the entire ride.

I am also a fan of seatposts with much more than the needed setback. To me, a good fitting seatpost puts the clamp in the center of the flat section of the seat rails so I can play with fore and aft all I want and never hit the rail limit (and not break another expensive ti seat clamping on the beginning of the rail curve. If you are even close to that curve, see to it the post clamp has a nice curve to the end of the clamping area. Add that curvature with a round file if it isn't there. Ti railed seats are expensive and the breakage will happen mid-ride. BTDT.

Not cheap but - a decent framebuilder or machinist can fabricate a seatpost of any setback. He can also purchase the excellent Thompson clamp. Ti Cycles has built me two 60mm setback posts with those clamps. Joys to use. (I'm a long legged rider who fits on the classic 25mm setback post set in a 72.5 degree seat tube. But I also need the rear wheel close to the bottom bracket if I want a bike that corners securely on rough downhill turns. (All the good handling bikes I have ridden have chainstays less that 40cm, 16".) If I want big bike tires, maybe fenders and no rub on the seat tube, that seat tube's gotta be pretty steep. Or curved. Sadly, I didn't think of curved when I had my last two customs made. So instead I had those two 60mm setback posts made. They work really, really well and the clamps are near centered on both. (The seat tube of my avatar photo fix gear is 75 degrees! But I ride fix gears with my whole position rotated forward. Yes, more weight on my hands. But fixed, the wind is a lot less forgiving!

I have not yet. I intend to get one, but it's made more difficult by the fact that I'm in a rural area, and as far as I can tell there's nobody who does them within about a 2 hour drive. You're absolutely right about what I'm doing: my hope is that I can get reasonably close before I spend a full day and hundreds of dollars on a professional fit.

For a road fit, you can get awfully close to a pro fit by following these instructions:
Bike Forums - View Single Post - How can I fitting my bike

There are so Many thoughts/Options/opinions on bike 'Fitting' out there, especially the internet, you'll surely be able to have a good choice on what to use.
I've given advise here before, and honestly, it's very difficult to give this kind of advise online, without personal contact with the rider... So, I learned to not try, beyond basic concepts...
SO, use any of the methods noted in this thread or any you feel/assess as being a good method.
But things to consider
Have you been riding for some extended time or is this a 1st real 'fitting' or after a very long hiatus?
If you've been riding fairly regularly and now think you need adjustment, consider what changes you need to address.
Then, Make only one small adjustment at a time, ride/try for a while, repeat.
Hand numbness - If you primarily ride with your contact point at the bars has the center channel of the hands near the wrist; that will accentuate hand numbness - find better hand positions.
Locked elbows posture will accentuate shocks into the hands, up the arms to the shoulders, neck and upper back. Bend your elbows when riding. This is a problem I see with more than 90% of those I see riding bikes... If you're on a laid back cruiser style bike, very much less of an issue. But with a road type bike (or similar) bending the elbows is key to preventing pain and injury.
There was a thread on BF about numbness and padded gloves - one suggestion was 'Sting Pad Pro' on amazon. I tried it, it works ! I have a pair. My wife uses a pair, she loves them.
Fried Glutes
You say '1st 100K ride', in how long? If all your rides have been well below that length and ride time - then what would you expect?
A more forward position will engage the Quads more... (depending on where you were before).
SLowing cadence as you tire in a ride, will have you putting more force into each pedal stroke, if you try to maintain the same pace.
Add miles in a reasonable increase level... If you commonly ride 20 mi (or whatever) then ride 30 mi for while. If you do 40 mil rides frequently, a 60 would not be a reach... Age counts here, Fitness counts for any age.
I ride almost every day, and my average ride is now 30 mi. But I mostly do 35 ish mi. and at least 1 day at 45ish mi. Then some shorter 23-24 ish miles on recovery days, which brings the avg down to 30.
I would find riding 60mi here, solo, to be a long day, cause I would also prolly need to do 4000 ft min.-5000 ft gain to get that, where I live. I can relatively easily do 60 mi. riding in a group...

'Fitting', as far as my opinion, is about fine tuning - unless you're currently position and posture is Way Off. A Fitter can help. But they do not have real experience and understanding of you, so it often is a multi-session effort. They are not like a 'coach' who have good fitting experience.
Honestly evaluate yourself and your riding position and habits. If you're not able to do that, try something else, like a 'fitter'.

Ride On
Yuri