The position you ride in plays an important part in you being comfortable on your bike seat. Learn how your riding position can support comfort.
Supporting you and your family to SMILE when you ride.
Bike Seat Comfort
Gaining comfort on a bike seat can be a challenging and often quite a complex task. Comfort is very individual… some people seem not to suffer from any discomfort and others find achieving comfort very difficult.
Wherever you sit on this spectrum, know that improving your comfort is possible. One of the most vital components to achieving bike seat comfort… is your riding position and your ability to maintain this position throughout the duration of the ride.
Contact with the Bike SeatÂ
Take a moment to look at your bike and your bike seat. It shouldn’t really surprise us that comfort on a seat is challenging. When you sit on a seat, your weight will be transferred through all the tissues and structures that make contact with the seat. What this tells me is to create a level of comfort you need to do ‘comfort on your bike seat’ really well.
There are a number of solutions to help support comfort… see What are the options? One of the most important solutions to finding comfort is how you ride. This starts with you riding in a good/efficient/strong riding position. An ‘A’ riding position.
Your A Riding PositionÂ
We talk about the correct riding position as your ‘A’ Riding Position. It is defined relative to an ‘A’Â to help you gain some understanding of what shape you are trying to achieve, and to make it easier to think about and adjust when you are riding.
Learn about the position and then start to give it a go when you ride. Do not expect instant success. You need good flexibility in your spine, your hips, as well as good core strength and endurance to achieve this position. The main thing is you start… you start to be aware of the position when you ride and you start working to maintain this position over time when you ride.
As you achieve this position you will start to improve and gain the strength and flexibility you need to maintain it over time.Â
How does your ‘A’ position support bike seat comfort
If you can train your body to ride in the ‘A” riding position
- you will encourage the correct parts of your body to bear the sustained weight of your body when sitting on your bike seat – structures and tissues that are designed to be better at taking this weight. This leads to comfort on the seat.
- your spine with be long and strong by using good core control and your lower spine will not collapse (slightly forward or backwards) causing increased load and compression on tissues and structures on the bike seat that are not designed to take this load. This is likely to result in discomfort.
How you ride
Once you have some understanding of your ‘A’ riding position you will also need to address your pedalling technique and how you manage an increase in your biking time/distance and frequency.
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