FatLad1980 wrote:Current seat post doesn't have enough setback.......
FatLad1980 wrote:............A friend has suggested I may need to increase the height of my seat post a little after seeing me on the bike. I'll give that a go first before considering finding something else. Doing it by eye he says the bottom of my knee looks like it's pretty much over the pedal axle so it's more likely that I just need a bit more height........
Hmmmmm........Pushing the saddle back will move it further away from the pedals, just as surely as raising the saddle, but other than that, saddle setback and height are best regarded as separate adjustments, in my view.
Saddle setback is entirely about your balance on the bike; that is how much weight you have on your hands when freewheeling. If you have too much weight on your hands, your saddle needs to go back.
Saddle height is about pedalling efficiency; it needs to be low enough so that you can pedal smoothly at a cadence of 100 on your worst day when you are tired and your legs are stiff, because any higher than that risks hyper-extending your knee at every pedal stroke. The modern thing is to concentrate on having your saddle at a height where you get maximum power from your muscle work, and that happens when your knee is (almost) straight .....so for the few per cent of the time when you are looking for maximum power, you can just slide back in the saddle to get more knee extension. The rest of the time, give your knees an easy life, and you could still be cycling into your eighties.
The current fashion for steep seat tube angles helps normally-(in)flexible people to achieve a racing crouch, but sitting right over the pedals instead of further behind them means its impossible (for many folk) to pedal other than with their toes down and heels up....... so they then raise the saddle yet again in order to get knee extension. This takes you to a position where you can't reach the pedal at the bottom without being on tiptoe.....and this is just one step away from hyper-extending your knees.