Cycling UK Forum

Why has no one ever made a saddle where the left and right halves are split down the middle and it has something like a dial on the underneath you can wind left or right to increase or decrease the distance to make the saddle a perfect fit for your sit bones?

This could also do away with needing mens and womens saddles, at least for that saddle. It could have little depressions for your sit bones (on the non-padded version) and if designed well, the dial to adjust it could even have the distance im mm on it, although maybe that's asking too much!

There'd be a gap in the center, but there can be. It's possible to have a saddle with nothing there at all, if they could make it strong enough to be split in half and still function.

I tried to measure my sit bones and they seem to be coming out to about 100mm which is narrow, but then I measured the depressions in my Selle SMP Composit and those are 95mm apart. How does Selle know to make them that distance?

The average sit bone distance is around 120mm apparently, I cannot imagine the fidgeting I'd be doing on that saddle if my sit bones were 10mm out on each side from matching up with the depressions on the saddle.

There's more to this, there has to be!

Rather than try and retype this from memory, this is an article by Steve Hogg on Selle SMP and why your sit bones may not be the point of contact.

https://www.stevehoggbikefitting.com/bi ... bout-smps/

Similar to the Hobson one mentioned in this thread ?
viewtopic.php?t=144460 Three different types on their site
https://hobsonseats.com/

Manc33 wrote: ↑2 Nov 2023, 6:19am Why has no one ever made a saddle where the left and right halves are split down the middle and it has something like a dial on the underneath you can wind left or right to increase or decrease the distance to make the saddle a perfect fit for your sit bones?

As per the link above, it's been done. However, as with adjustable stems, it's usually a one-time adjustment - set it to where you like it / it's comfortable and then leave it alone which means you're carrying around a lot of extra weight of adjustable gubbins that are only ever needed once in a blue moon or that can wear and slip.

It's cheaper and easier for a manufacturer to make (eg) 3 saddles of varying width and then provide shops with a sit-bone measuring device (Specialized had a shaped memory foam thing that you sat on and then measured the indents, Selle Italia had something similar for their dealers) or take the measurements from a bike fit for example.

The main issue to overcome was that a lot of cyclists, male and female, did not want to go into a bike shop and start discussing their "nether regions" and of course it's not easy to trial a saddle - what can feel comfortable for 2 minutes in a shop can be agony after 50 miles or (as with Brooks for example), what feels stiff and unyielding in the shop will break in perfectly over the next 200 miles.

This is a good starting point:
https://www.philburtinnovation.co.uk/sa ... ssessment/

It solves the issue at source rather than relying on getting one aspect (the width) right according to the rider feel but not addressing any of the other possible causes of discomfort.

Cheers folks. Those that already exist are quite padded, I was thinking more of the hard saddles where it has to be set at the right amount, but such saddles are "racing" saddles and with the extra weight as mentioned above, they would probably never make one.

Every generation produces at least one “adjustable saddle”
I suggest you ride behind someone to see why it won’t work.

In the last couple of days I was reading a book with just such a saddle illustrated. Dated from the 19th c I think. Sort of a two piece Brooks complete with springs. As I read a few books of a similar type this week I can't remember which one.

Manc33 wrote: ↑2 Nov 2023, 9:26am Those that already exist are quite padded, I was thinking more of the hard saddles where it has to be set at the right amount, but such saddles are "racing" saddles and with the extra weight as mentioned above, they would probably never make one.

These look less padded, with versions for road, triathlon etc. but a bit “spendy”……

https://bisaddle.com/collections

The display of different saddles scrolls faster than I can do a screen grab, but here are two of them:

Rido saddles just designed to suit a range of sitbones?