datlas 

I have really noticed a lot of fellow cyclists, some who have been "fitted professionally" have their saddles a good 2 cm lower than would be suggested by this rule.

Am I out of step on this?

531phile 

It's a rule yo : Rules are meant to be broken. Go ahead now, be a BAAAADDDD BOY or Girl. Sounds like you always colored drawings within the lines in Kindergarten. Sounds like no fun to me.

Val23708

Uh I dont see the point of not going with what your fitter suggests. If the fit they give you isn't proper, then why are you paying them?

StanSeven

It's a good rule for starters. I don't think many people should just calculate it and leave it there without making fine adjustments to see what works for them.

datlas 

Lookit, I personally know of at least a two (not a lot, I know but more than one) cyclists who have been "professionally fit" and their resultant fit is clearly effed up.

Just because some guy at a LBS took a course to be a "XYZ certified fitter" doesn't mean he/she really knows what he/she is doing.

And I know fitting guidelines are not hard and fast and need to be tweaked for individual needs. I am wondering if there is a trend towards saddle height lower than the old 0.883 rule (or lock knee with heel on pedal at downstroke, which yields about the same saddle height) suggests.

mazdaspeed

Makes me wonder if people that get fitted and claim to have amazing results, just had exceptionally poor fits to begin with.

San Rensho 

Best "fitters" out there are guys who have been riding and/racing for a while. Befriend them and then ask them to critique your fit as you ride next to them. Believe me, they will love the opportunity to pontificate and give you their opinion. Get several opinions and make changes slowly.

Fitting is an art that depends a great deal on your style of pedaling. Take two, perfectly acceptable examples. One, a flat footed rider who spins and the other a pointed toe rider that mashes. Assume these two riders have exactly the same physical measurements, they are going to need radically different saddle heights to be able to maximise their style. An experienced racer/rider will immediatley be able to look at how you actually ride, assess your style and give you pointers on how to dial in the fit.

I'm not going to trust some guy at a shop who may or may not ride to plug use some "magic" numbers (wow! .883 has three significant figures, thats really accurate, it must be right!) into some fitting program and proclaim he has the perfect fit.

azshtr

I was fit and have slowly evolved what I prefer over the last 2 years since I was fit. Small tweaks at a time as my body tells me, or as my body changes. But the fit had me close.

AngryScientist 

the "rules" are a good starting point, that's it. fit is an individual thing in my experience, and what works for some or most does not work for all. you have to start somewhere, and listen to what your body tells you, and adjust from there. when it comes to bike fit, there are certainly no absolutes, that's for sure.

kleinboogie

Rules are for bike shops to get you and your new bike out the door. A knowledgable fitter should also know quite a bit about physiology and is an avid cyclist themselves. My fitter looked at everything from the bike to my goals to my body mechanics and issues and fixed them. He just happened to have won the first Ironman on the Big Island and once broke the land speed record on a bike. Yeah, I think that qualifies him. GL

BikeNube

Looigi

Only works if the floor is level. Better to measure the seat height from the floor and the bar height from the floor and subtract.

Another rule: Pedal backward with your heels on the pedals and you legs should just reach when straight without rocking your hips. Again, just a good starting point...

roadpig2001

Sorry only been riding 5000 to 6000 miles a year for the past ten years , WTF is a 0.883 rule?

furballi

Stand straight. Measure your inseam (in cm) from the inside of your foot to the bone @ your crotch. Multiply this by 1.09. Subtract the crank length (usually 17 or 17.5cm). This is the approximate saddle height from the center of the crank to the top of the saddle, +/-0.8cm. I prefer to set mine about 0.5cm below the calculated value. Course the ideal height is also dependent on the shoes and type of saddle.

roadpig2001

Ok sorry I asked, I just go by the heel on the pedal rule. Or what feels right rule

AngelGendy

Yeah been riding for 20 years never heard of the rule either....

StephenH

New mathmatical research has proven that it should properly be the e/pi rule, with a value of approximately 0.865255979. If your body doesn't fit this rule, your body is wrong.

halfspeed

It's part of the fit formulas popularized by Greg Lemond.

akansaskid

0.883 rule and heel-brushing-pedal both give me 76.5 cm. Competitive Cyclist's fit calculator, my LBS's fitter's use of Fit Kit, and his using the protractor on the knee bend ALL gave me 78.5. So, to answer OP's original question, I'd say, no, 0.883 doesn't always yield too high a seat setting. I'd ridden thousands of miles at 76.5, but tried 78.5 since all these reputable sources suggested it. I hated it at the beginning and still hated it after 1000 miles. Put it back to 76.5 and put 35,000 miles on it. It ain't going back up.

captnfantastic

My last fitting ( a couple years ago) dropped my saddle by about an inch. Lance mentioned in one of his books about lowering his saddle almost an inch AFTER his second tour win... Doesn't make sense to me but I don't question a professional fitter.

lwrncc

This worked well for me: Inseam (centimeters) x 1.11 = c-c from bottom of pedal stroke to top of saddle. Good neutral position to start tweaking from.

Looigi

Something to consider is how you hold your foot when you pedal, or if you "ankle" when pedaling. This can easily change the optimum seat height by a cm to two.

JimJimex

I never knew about this equation until this day, and I plug my measurements in, out comes the EXACT BB-to-saddle-top number that I spent 4 months to dial in!

The Owl of Mine

I've been cycling my whole adult life 34yo and do some serious K's in the mountains here in France. Had never had a bike fit, but recently got one thrown in with a bike bought from a fancy French bike shop (Dvélos) - they ****ed it up massively. The guy just assumed I was clueless - and put my saddle at least 2 cm too low. when I said that it wasn't right on the turbo, he scratched his head and started to **** about with my cleats and moved them forward as far as possible - I let him do his thing to see what the result would be and, despite repeatedly telling him it's not quite right, he just insisted that too many people ride with their saddles too high and that I need to drop my heels more - dumb as ****!

Went for a 40k ride like that just to see if it would magically start to feel OK - never did. I got a bit of knee ache, that's all!
Today, I put my saddle back up and cleats back where they were before and boom! the power was back on, no hip movement. Did the 0.883 thing just to see and it's about spot on.

Bike fits are for absolute beginners only!

cthenn

Love this zombie 8 year old thread.