Hey roadies,

I’ve been riding for about 15 years and have ridden 25+ saddles over that time looking for one that doesn’t cause frontal numbness. I FINALLY found the BiSaddle SRT2.0 where I can set the front full width and finally get the width and depth I need for my nerves… first time ever. However, this saddle is the hardest thing I have ever ridden. It feels like nails in my sit bones after 5 miles and doesn’t let up.

I have about 8 rides for 150 miles or so on it now, all spaced 4-5 days apart, without noticeable improvement and I was wondering if sit bones really do adjust to a saddle eventually or if people just get used to the pain? The saddle itself is not likely to break in at all due to its materiality and durability. So I think it’s up to me to adjust.. but does that really happen?

For context I have a perfectly fitted Roubaix in a not very aggressive comfort/performance fit. I wear Endura Pro SL bibs designed for centuries.
I have ridden comfortably (except for numbness) many Spec Romins, Power Mirror, Romin Mirror, Fizik Antares, SQLab Ergowave, ISM PN4.1 (which I loved but the gap up front was too narrow). None of these ever had any sit bone pain after 2-3 rides.

I want so badly for this to be the solution to 15 years of numbness… but wow if it isn’t the hardest saddle ever. Thoughts?

There once was a comfortable saddle... That story is so old it is considered a myth by Elves...

The search goes on...

I don't think a rider actually "breaks-in" the sit bones. Although the Kung-fu masters would actually "pound sand" with their fists.

SMP saddles with standard padding for me. I use the Stratos, that's in the narrowest group.
that
​​​​https://www.sellesmp.com/en/saddles/stratos.html

This link has a width chart that assumes waist size relates to sit bone width.

https://gearmashers.com/selle-smp-cy...s-review-2018/

I have the BiSaddle on my three bikes. In the last couple of weeks I bought the Velo Senso TT+ saddle to try on my primary bike, Cervelo Caledonia. The BiSaddle ShapeShifter EXT Stealth (Used for 12,589 miles) is comfortable for most of my rides less than 40 miles. I have found there is a symbiotic relationship between my sit bones, shorts pad, tire pressure, and road surface. I have 174 miles on the Velo Senso TT+ (158mm wide) and it feels as comfortable as the BiSaddle. I assume you used the included cardboard to measure your sit bone distance. I have mine set at 158mm wide at the rear with the front of the saddle tips almost touching. On my primary bike I wore out the seat pads and replaced them. I think there is a break in period for any foam saddle which can vary depending on the weight you put on it. At some point the foam breaks down which can be difficult to determine.
Have you tried using the other base inserts? I also found that shorts with a thinner pad rides better than ones with thicker padding. I use Primal Black Label shorts with a thinner pad and Primal Prisma shorts with a thicker pad. Tire pressure is at 80 psi and the roads are asphalt and concrete with some surface roughness.
I think cyclists' search for the perfect saddle is our version of the Holy Grail. I probably have rode on about 50 different ones. My Gold Standard was the Avocet spandex covered saddle from the 1980's. I bought several of them as the spandex wore out exposing the foam. Sadly Avocet went out of business.
My design thoughts: 158mm wide, gel padding with cutouts below the sit bone cutouts.

Have you tried tipping the nose of the saddle down slightly?

Numbness is not something you should just "get use to". So you need to figure out why. Saddle tilt, height, type of cutout and even a bibb or short that has too much padding in the chamois and or too much padding in the saddle. The reach to the bars might just be wrong for you too putting your butt in the wrong place on the saddle or your pelvis at the wrong angle.

Pain though might go away after several weeks of riding. However with up to 5 days between rides, you just don't ride often. So it might take a little longer.

25 seats? My thought is that perhaps you don't have the tilt dialed in quite right. For me, that is a very exact place. So much so that trying to get there using the common single bolt seatposts is a real challenge. So I have two bolt posts on all but one bike.

Now, two bolt seatposts take longer to set up. An issue if you have to do 25 seats. But it allows dialing in the saddle tilt on the road accurately and repeatably without needing any tools (for measuring); just the Allen wrench. (Want a little more nose down? Loosen the rear bolt, tighten the front say an exact 1/4 turn - easy to judge - and re-tighten the rear. Too much? Repeat only backing off the front an 1/8 turn.)

Other thoughts: rotating your hips forward so your lower back is straighter. If you are leaning forward you are taking pressure off your sitbones. Yes, a balancing act with your soft parts. Leaning more forward overall has the same effect and also places weight on your hands and takes it off your seat. (You will see endless threads on the evils of weight on your hands. Again, yes, you have to look at how those hands land on your handlebars and brake levers but I've been doing it for more than a half century. I figured out a long time ago that my life on a bike was simply better if I was lower and more aero with my long, skinny and puny body, especially if I had to go upwind.

And - the pressure points. I've got a bony, skinny body. Sharp "corners", al of which have hit hard objects many times. The pressure on those corners keeps me awake at night. Big problem since I am a side sleeper. My solution - pieces of 1" foam with a hole ripped out for that pressure point. Now, just thinking and typing simultaneously (so use caution!) perhaps the solution is to remove some material from the seat at those pressure point. I assume this seat is a leather or plastic cover over a firm molded plastic shell with foam in between. If so, perhaps you can cut out a neat circle of foam at your sitbones. (Yes, pulling the cover away from the shell at the sides to do this surgery, then pulling tight and re-gluing won't be easy.) Or perhaps you could scrape or sand off some of the shell at your sitbones from the underside so that area is more flexible.

All of this will kill any and all warranties on the seat. You will have to answer which is worth more, the seat and the $$s it represents or you comfort. (And that it might take 2 or three seats to get this right.)

My bikes have been my spiritual link since my heard injury in 1977. The Selle Italia/Avocet III seats worked really well for me all through my racing days and beyond - until I hit my late 30s. My body changed. They stopped working. My riding fell off and the riding I did no longer had a spiritual benefit. Those were the years my life fell apart. 2000 I got into recovery, Had hernia surgery at the same time. And I realized I had to get back on the bike and just as important, I had to find a seat that works. Well the new grooved and "holed" seats were out. Bought last year's fully grooved Specialized cheapo for $35. Threw it on my good bike. Put it on the trainer. And gently rode myself and my hernia repair into shape. It worked! Since then I have found a seat I like better and have it on most of my bikes. Costs far more!

I told you this story not because I think what worked for me will help you. I wrote it to share I get how important this is for you. There is a seat that will work for you. Might take modifying an existing seat, having one custom made or buying an all-leather seat like a Brookes and breaking it in to fit you. Don't give up! (You might even get surprised by some $35 el-cheapo.)

Edit: I went to the Bisaddle website. Looks to me like adjusting the width might help. Perhaps keeping it wide up front but narrowing it in back might help. (Yes, their site says too narrow = soft tissue issues but too wide has been long known to cause sitbone issues. The balancing act. I'd try going for rides with the wrenches for seat clamp tilt, the saddle width and the seatpin so you can dial in the seat height. (Narrowing the seat will change how high you sit.) Use pieces of tape to document all the settings before you set out so if this doesn't help, you can go back to where you started.

Or the opposite, but with the saddles the OP used to use. Tipping the nose slightly up can use gravity to get the weight toward the rear (where it belongs) and off of the front bits. Everybody has different results, but it's worth a shot. Worked for me, and I didn't even have to buy yet another saddle.

Thanks so much everyone for the advice.

To be clear, this is definitely not a fit issue or tilt issue.. the numbness is resolved. Sitbones are hitting the exact ‘sweet spots’ on the saddle.. the saddle is just hard. The other BiSaddle surfaces don’t work for me because they are too shallow and my nerves bottom out on the frame, this is the only one deep enough to provide clearance.

However some good thoughts, in summary from what I’ve read here:
- taking a more aggressive back angle might relieve sitbones pressure if I can balance that with hand pressure
- maybe different bibs with a firmer pad.. my century pad is a thick, not too dense foam.
- ride more frequently, I’ve been taking 4-5 days in between to allow healing to maybe adjust but possibly that is to my detriment.

FWIW, to the holy grail comments.. the Specialized Mirror saddles, especially the Power are like a miracle. I could ride them for hundreds of miles with no sit bone soreness, truly incredible. They just don’t offer a large enough cutout for me in terms of numb.. but anyone looking for the grail should really give them a try.

Thanks everyone, I’ll try these tips.

More frequent but shorter rides might do the trick. I don't know about others, but I never got a saddle sore from a 1 hour ride even if it was day after day.

It almost sounds like you've got some other issue causing the numbness if no other saddle can provide enough space. It just seems odd that especially with a non-aggressive setup that you'd need so much width and depth of space.

Maybe look into how you are situating yourself in your bibs. If you're tucking things down vs. up and in front, then you can be creating the pressure and numbness by forcing things where there's no room for them to be. It's hard to tell from your description but from what you are describing it sounds like that could be the case and only the fully widened BiSaddle will let you get away with doing that.

Have you considered a professional bike fit? That could help determine whether the saddles themselves are the problem or if it's their/your position that's causing the excess pressure. Hopefully they could get your setup somewhere that won't cause you numbness, or at least the right starting point to test out saddles for comfort.

Breaking in the sit bones involves getting the tissues over the sit bones used to some oxygen deprivation, hence standing every 10'-15' is a big help, let the oxygen back in. However IME with a really hard saddle it feels like one is getting a bruise, not just low oxygen. I've also ridden saddles when I had a very well broken in butt, which saddles never stopped hurting where the bones are. I need a very exact amount of padding. I have to just be able to compress the padding with my thumb, and by a very certain amount. I've also given away boxes of saddles in the search. I've now stuck with the same saddle for several years. Took a while. There's the width, the shape, the padding, the slot size . . .lots of combinations of these factors and only one worked for me. No great surprise there..

The first few rides of the season can be rough, but one gets used to riding pretty quickly. I have several bikes, each with a little different saddle. One has a carbon fiber saddle that is hard as a rock to ride. It can be a bit awkward to switch bikes/saddles. I do tend to like the more modern saddles with flatter tops as opposed to the vintage saddles that were round like barrels.

I do tend to stand up regularly while riding, and will also sometimes more or less intentionally sit a little crooked on the saddle.

How have your previous saddles been tilted? Level, nose up or nose down. Try lowering the nose a bit as that often works to alleviate the problem.

No numbness, but my boys hang on the left side of the Brooks, while using the sit bones, which can become uncomfortable. Perhaps I am not symmetrical...LOL!!

Seriously, these things aren't always symmetrical.

Yes, I’ve had a pro bike fit with several adjustment sessions and a second fit later on to make sure. They agreed it was a ‘larger cutout’ issue, which has definitely solved the numbness. It’s just the sitbones now, which have never been a problem before. So I’m going to try several of the suggestions from this thread over the next few weeks. Ride frequency and duration, back angle, saddle angle, to see if they help.

A thought: Maybe this saddle locks the rider into a single position, which puts stress on the sit bones for long periods.

Moving around might help. And of course, standing occasionally. My saddle has a built-in feature that reminds me to stand. I call it the “your butt hurts, stand up dummy” feature.

If you were previously sitting on more than your sit bones, the transition to having all your weight on your sit bones takes getting used to. Kind of like the first time you wore ski boots. Sit bones are just bone, muscle and skin, so the muscles do get use to getting used in a new way. Usually after a week or less.

However, a saddle can be too firm and you never get comfortable on your sit bones because of it. Or you can have something like tendonitis that prevents it from ever being comfortable.

I have been through a bazillion saddles. The one thing I have learned from all those saddles is to not give up on a saddle too soon. Try it in different positions and sometimes the right position is what it takes to make it comfortable. Each Spring, cyclists always complain about their saddles. It takes a while to get your body used to riding on any saddle outdoors. I currently am riding on a Fizik Vento Argo Adaptive saddle. I had terrible luck with the Specialized Power Mirror. I hate to say this cliche "Get a bike fit".

Well I figured it out… and it’s dumb.
I realized that I set the seat width in a more upright hood position, which the the bulk of my riding. But when I get more aero and the sit bones change width and move about they were sliding onto steep sloped edge of the saddle pad, essentially riding off the side and getting side pressure on the bone. This was hard to diagnose with my thick century bib pads but I tried some thinner shorts and figured it out immediately.
Widened the BiSaddle a few cm in the rear and the pain went away. 🤦🏼‍♂️

I use these:

Surprised the SQLabs one didn't alleviate your perineum problems.

The SQLab 612 was really great, I could do long distance 50+ miles with no numbness.. but couldn’t get 5 mins in the drops without issues. Perfect hood riding saddle, no good in the drops. Then if I tilted it down slightly I would get pressure on the hands.