Help - I Hate My Saddle!

At one point or another most cyclists encounter a less-than-optimal saddle situation – for some it’s a minor inconvenience; for others, it may be the reason they leave the sport. Here I’ll attempt to condense my saddle knowledge from 17 years of coaching and 12 years of bike fitting into one place so you can start looking for viable solutions.

There are four key points where I see athletes experience saddle discomfort:

1. Directly on and around the ischial tuberosities (sits bones) – typically a feeling of muscular fatigue, usually a dull ache or pressure

2. Edges of the saddle pressing against the inner thigh or groin – typically a feeling of chafing or of nerve pain/compression

3. Skin/soft tissue over the pelvic bone supporting weight on front of saddle – this is usually a sharp pain or feeling of intense chafing

4. Soft tissue between the pelvic bones – similar to #3 but typically more intense and less sustainable

On a properly fit bike, all four points of discomfort are due to excess pressure on a specific area, whether due to saddle shape, sub-optimal padding, or positioning that doesn’t match the saddle profile (i.e. a road saddle on a triathlon bike)

Why address saddle discomfort at all? Why not just suck it up?

If you’ve had saddle pain previously there’s a solid chance at least one fellow cyclist told you to just “suck it up” and it will eventually get better/become tolerable. However, when we experience excessive pressure from the saddle, our natural (and frequently unconscious) responses include:

• Displacing pressure to hands and feet (causing numbness and pain) and simultaneously losing stability in the saddle because we cannot maintain bodyweight pressure due to pain

• “Hiding” from the front of the saddle (if there is soft tissue pressure) and creating a spinal curve instead of a hip hinge while trying to reach the bars (which reduces glute activation)

• Changing the kinetic chain of the pedal stroke by bowing knees out to reduce pressure on the outer edge of the saddle

All these responses create sub-optimal scenarios for efficient/sustainable power production, which means “just suck it up” isn’t the preferable solution, especially if the discomfort doesn’t resolve itself after a few rides.

Is saddle discomfort always due to the saddle?

NO.

It’s important to note that saddle discomfort is frequently a result of other factors – common causes of pain due to positioning include:

• Incorrect saddle height* – a saddle that is positioned too high will frequently cause discomfort, which may easily be fixed by adjusting the saddle to the correct height.

• Incorrect saddle angle* – a saddle angled more than a couple of degrees from “level” can cause discomfort. In some cases, a more dramatic downward angle may be beneficial, but this needs to carefully examined by a fitter as it can create additional issues if the saddle style and rider position do not support it.

• New positioning – frequently a saddle that works well for a rider on one bike will not translate to another bike (or even on the same bike with a new fit) effectively because the new position means that the rider’s weight is no longer supported on the same part of the pelvis, requiring a saddle that better supports that new position. We commonly see this when a triathlete takes a saddle they love from their road bike, puts it on a tri bike, and suddenly hates it because it isn’t designed to support the front of the pelvis in the aero position.

• Bike chamois – most saddles on road, tri, gravel and mountain bikes are designed to be ridden with a chamois (pronounced “shammy”), which is what we call the padding inside of bike and tri shorts. Some athletes can “get away” with not using a bike or tri short, particularly on shorter distances, but most of us need the additional pressure relief. Chamois are not all created equal, so it’s worth trying a few different styles to find what works best for you. Additionally, many athletes benefit from using Body Glide or chamois cream applied directly to the chamois or skin.

*We strongly recommend that any adjustments to saddle position be made with a professional bike fitter whenever possible due to the added risk of overuse injury and/or damage to the bicycle if they are performed incorrectly.

Finding solutions

This is the pathway I recommend to my athletes who are trying to resolve saddle discomfort without a clear cause – navigate these questions and corresponding steps in the order written to avoid wasted time/money:

1. Are you riding without a chamois? If yes, try wearing cycling shorts, bibs or tri shorts.

2. Are you riding with a “dry” chamois? I.e. no balm or cream on the chamois or skin – if yes, try using Body Glide or Chamois Butt’r on your chamois and/or skin.

3. Is your saddle angled more than 2 degrees up or down from a “level” position? If yes, try adjusting the saddle to be closer to level.

4. If none of the above have fixed the problem, it is time for a bike fit, or new saddle, or both. The best-case scenario is always to schedule an in-person fit with a fitter who has a wide variety of saddles on hand that you can test during the fit prior to purchasing. You can save months of discomfort and lost time on the bike, as well as lots of money spent on saddles that don’t work for you, just by taking this one step.

Can’t make it to a bike fitter?

Here are some common pitfalls to avoid if you are purchasing and installing a new saddle on your own:

• Assuming more padding = more comfort – frequently additional padding on a race just means more widely spread pressure. Focus on finding a saddle that will remove pressure from problem areas, versus trying to hide it with padding.

• Installing without checking rail height on the new and old saddles – if the new saddle has a different rail height, installing it in the exact same position will change the effective saddle height and overall fit.

• Installing without checking the distance from the old saddle to the handlebar – similar to the point above, you want to make sure your new saddle is roughly the same distance from the handlebars as your previous saddle.

• Installing without properly torquing all bolts – every bolt on your bike is intended to be torqued to within a certain range – any more or less torque can damage the bike/components and even lead to failure of components while riding.*

*This is one of the main reasons we recommend working on a new saddle or position with a qualified fitter whenever possible, to ensure that your bike is 100% safe to ride post-adjustment.

If you live near a Playtri Store, reach out to learn more about their bike fitting services. We offer bike fit 7 days a week at Playtri Dallas, and always have a wide range of road, triathlon, gravel and mountain bike saddles in stock for you to test!

Learn more about Bike Fits at Playtri: Bike Fits

Meet Coach Morgan: www.playtri.com/morgan