Cycling UK Forum

I was recently convinced to finally give a Brooks a go. My old saddle is a Selle Italia Prolink: http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/category/ ... w-10-37548
While it worked pretty well, letting me do 300k audaxes, I was never completely happy, with a little chafing etc.

I plumped for a Brooks Swift, being similar dimensions to the Prolink and from various internet gossip one to use if your bars are slightly lower than your saddle.

While the Brooks is more comfortable to sit on and pleasantly low friction, I seem to inevitable get a pain down the outside of my thigh, through my knee and somewhere down my shin (all down the outside). I've done a bunch of adjustments on saddle height, fore/aft & angle but it still seems to cause this problem. When I switch back to another saddle (my old Italia or my friends Madison Prime) the pain disappears pretty quickly. The distances in which the trouble occurs isn't big, my commute is about 10 miles, taking 30 odd minutes and I can feel it after that.

Internet research seems to suggest the Iliotibial band, but nothing mentions it in relation to a specific saddle rather than some sort of chronic condition.

Before I throw my toys out the pram and sell the Brooks, I'd like to give it a chance (as it's nice to sit on), has anyone else experience this problem (not necessarily with a Brooks Swift) and / or did you manage to resolve it?

Cheers

Presumably you are sitting in a slightly different position on the Brooks, just enough to cause the ITB problem. Are you sitting slightly to one side on the Brooks? Have a look at Steve Hogg's bikefitting and scroll down to no.5.

Hi

My physio tells me that tight ITB is the glutes not pulling their weight (I've been in with a painful ITB and after 20mins glutes activation everythings much improved).

Dont brooks saddles have short rails...resulting in you being further forward...resulting in your glutes contributing less to your pedal stroke and your ITB having to kick in (according to my physio and my very anecdotal evidence!)...result overworked sore ITB.

Please take this with a big pinch of salt as I'm no expert.

Hope you sort it out....I havent yet...


regards
martin

Thank you for those two.

Comparing to the Madison Prime, the Brooks is a tad higher and further forward. I find the soreness is always in my right leg (should have mentioned that in the original post), which would concur with Steve Hogg's, though the opposite side from "normal".

I felt on my ride in this morning that I was protecting my perineum and hanging it down the left side a little, which would make sense extending the opposite side. I put the saddle forward a touch on the way home and didn't feel this was going on because I sitting higher up on the back of the "banana" with my vital parts hanging in the spoon. It did feel however that my sit bones were almost on the rivets, perhaps even digging into my sciatic nerve and causing pains down the side of my leg!

As part of my experimentation I had put the saddle slowly lower to the point where it was about 1.5" below what I started. I can't remember if this caused pain in the side of the legs because they hurt so much from it being too low. I then slowly raised it back to pretty much where it started. However, I think from the responses, I can try lower to avoid the asymmetry and further back to test the glutes while preserving the distance to the pedals. I'm not sure I've tried that combination scientifically.

JohnBug wrote:Comparing to the Madison Prime, the Brooks is a tad higher and further forward. I find the soreness is always in my right leg (should have mentioned that in the original post), which would concur with Steve Hogg's, though the opposite side from "normal".

You needed to lower your saddle pillar so that the top of the seat is at the same height before and after the change. The Swift has more fore and aft adjustment than a B17 for example, but do not push the saddle as far back as you can get it. You do not want the edge of the saddle pillar clamp to be just where the saddle frame wires start to converge. Set it back a mm or two because otherwise you could be setting up a stress raiser and your saddle frame could break after a time.

It did feel however that my sit bones were almost on the rivets, perhaps even digging into my sciatic nerve and causing pains down the side of my leg!

Do not sit so far back. Right now is not the time to play with position because you are sitting in a way to minimise you discomfort/injury. Put the old saddle back on and use it until you have recovered and then refit the Swift paying perhaps more attention to saddle height.

As part of my experimentation I had put the saddle slowly lower to the point where it was about 1.5" below what I started.

In terms of saddle position a change like that is enormous. You should be adjusting a couple of mm (maybe 1/8 inch) at a time.

You might want to adjust handlebar height as well. I find Swifts get saggy after only 1000 miles or so, and hence I have only one left which is on a seldom used machine. When I recently did some maintenance on that one I raised the bars a little (less than 1/4") and it is now much more comfortable although I take care not to sit so far back that my weight is on the cantle plate (what you've described as the banana).

this is interesting.....after at least 30 years riding B17 narrow saddles, I'm suddenly uncomfortable.
Just working through tatanabs post, as its recent and relevant....I don't mean to be critical....
I wouldn't worry about pushing the saddle as far back as you can. My rails break behind the seatpost clamp, because that's where my weight is. I have read people on here radiusing the rear of the seatpost clamp to remove a stress-raiser, and radiusing the front to get the saddle further back.....a long layback seatpost is the final solution to that one.
I am unable to control how far back I sit......and its changing.. Having got to the end of (sensible) saddle layback, and still found myself sitting on the cantle plate, I tried 20mm longer stems in an attempt to drag myself forward.....the result was my hands moved back on the bars, and my bum stayed resolutely on the cantle plate.
I'm pretty sure the major nerves are too deep for your saddle to exert direct pressure on them.
I don't like the idea of moving a saddle an inch! If its anywhere near "right" then 1/4" will be enough to feel a difference....1/8" I would call fine tuning. I'm much less sensitive to bar position.

JohnBug wrote: I felt on my ride in this morning that I was protecting my perineum and hanging it down the left side a little, which would make sense extending the opposite side....

Leather saddles can be very comfortable indeed, but if they have a weakness (comfort-wise), some would say that it is that they do not easily (certainly immediately, perhaps at all...) allow those who suffer with perineal discomfort to get comfortable. (It is debatable whether 'breaking in' refers more to the saddle or the posterior in some cases...) Hence Brooks have (at various times) offered a model with a central cutout, and some folk have modifed their own saddles to give this feature. By contrast there are many modern saddles which are shaped to avoid pressure in this region.

Once you are in discomfort, all kinds of pains can mysteriously appear; just holding yourself in a very slightly odd position can cause otherwise little-used muscles to go into spasm and then you are on a slippery slope.

Regarding setting up; if your old saddle was well back already, it is quite likely that you won't be able to get a Brooks saddle back far enough; you will sit on it in a different place, and the rails are a different length vs this point. I'd go as far as to say that (a generous layback seat post aside) I'd want a different frameset in many cases if I wanted to run a Brooks saddle.

If you ditch the Brooks as a bad job, you won't be the first and you won't be the last; there are many cyclists who have never had to buy one new, because there are so many hardly-used cast-offs available.

cheers

531colin wrote: My rails break behind the seatpost clamp, because that's where my weight is. I have read people on here radiusing the rear of the seatpost clamp to remove a stress-raiser, and radiusing the front to get the saddle further back.....a long layback seatpost is the final solution to that one.

Whereas the rails on my titanium B17 snapped in front of the clamp, which at least meant I could still ride by sitting well back on the cantle.

I use old style 2 bolt Campag saddle pillars because they have a radius on the inner part of the clamp (did not stop the B17 breaking though), they also have a lay back to them, and above all ------------- I like them, especially that with a 2 bolt clamp you can set a saddle at just about any angle you like.

Yes, I spent far too long bodging about with junk before I bought myself a V.O. Grand Cru seatpost.........

When I made the large adjustments, I think I was guilty of tweaking things while in pain. Now I am back very close to what I had with the previous saddle, so I think much more likely to be correct. A contributing factor to my fiddling was that adjustments to my old saddle didn't seem to make much difference. I had it slide from maximum forward to maximum rear over a ride and didn't notice! So I couldn't honestly say it was in some sort of “perfect” position. Also throwing other saddles on the bike without adjusting my carefully honed “Brooks position” seems fine, even though they change the layback and height. I had decided to try a non-slit type of Brooks because my second bike is an old MTB converted to tourer which has a totally un-perineal -friendly-shaped saddle and it’s fine.

As per tatanab’s suggestion, I stuck the old saddle back on for a couple of days to make sure things were “fresh”. Keeping all the responses in mind, I've found that I naturally end up on or near the cantle plate because going much further forward gives me an unpleasant pain in the perineum. There does seem to be a “sweet spot” ahead of the cantle plate (where I get something akin to recumbent bum), but before I get perineal discomfort, it’s just very hard to keep on it as I shift around between hoods, drops, TT bars and being bounced around by the bumps (despite 28mm tyres!). The Madison especially seems much more forgiving in this regard, though the perfect position isn't as comfortable.
The layback I currently have isn't close to being as far back as it’ll go, so I have more latitude there. I've done about 700 miles on the saddle, so it should be getting towards broken in.

I think my plan is as follows:
1) Buy a Madison Prime, because it’s only £20 and if it works over a 10hr+ ride, then it’ll always be a good backup, if it doesn't I can probably use it on something else
2) Adjust the brooks by tiny fractions backwards & tilted forwards (would that work?) to get me off the cantle plate and more naturally into a good position so I don’t waste energy finding it
3) Go to Windy Milla (sic?) for a fitting as it's just down the road. Expensive, but maybe worth it to avoid 6 more months of faffing!

If your gravitating towards the cantle plate, something's not right - either not enough layback, or not a long enough stem, or the saddle's too low. If you have got the saddle as high as possible without over extending the legs, it's probably a layback issue. But you also describe moving about the saddle a lot, which does suggest maybe the saddle is too low.

I can stay near the sweet spot on mine, even when it's polished. Once the sweet spot is obtained, you should naturally gravitate towards it when riding.

I use a Swift and I find it does have a sweet spot, but it is quite hard to find. Nose angle is as important as layback or height, easily adressed with a proper micro adjust seatpost, not one of those rough ratchet jobs that pass for micro adjust.

This is an interesting thread, as I have recently sorted out my seat height and suddenly my brooks b17 is quite uncomfortable, due to perineum pressure I think. If it doesn't sort itself I may change.

Thanks for everyone's help, I thought it would be worth an update.

As a control, I have put the Madison Prime saddle on the bike for a couple of weeks. I get a slight twinge down the outside of my right leg, so it's clearly a weakness.

However with the Prime, this only happens while I'm going like the clappers and it goes away if I'm not and there's no lingering pain.

Now that I have the Prime where I want it, I'm going to take careful measurements and put the Brooks on so my posterior is in the same place. Watch this space...

I think shorts can have a significant effect on the comfort of Brooks saddles. I don't mean their ability to make the saddle seem soft, but the shorts ability to make the saddle actually more uncomfortable than it really is. I've found this to be true of the Swift and the Pro.

I bought some Tenn Viper shorts a month ago, with a great big thick pad, which you would think might make a fickle saddle comforatble. Nope. Apart from the sizing being woeful (I'm a medium, but I had to re-order twice - large then XL!), these shorts have the ability to make both Swift and Pro feel really orrible. I've been struggling to get comfy on the Pro and I think I've finally broken it in. But wearing these shorts was near to agony. Wearing thinner padded shorts actually seemed to help. I think padding can be badly over-done.

I know this doesn't relate directly to your particular issue, but I thought it worth a mention.

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I've just looked at this Madison Prime saddle and to my eyes it's a lot flatter looking at the rear than the Swift. If you want a Brooks closer to The Prime in shape, I think the Swallow might be your best bet.

Johnbug

Be aware that the length of saddles is not always the same. So measuring from a fixed point (e.g. stem cap) to nose of saddle, may not place the saddle in the correct position. The shape of the saddle may also be different and further complicate things. Another complication is trying to find your sit bone position on a softer, spongy saddle, compounded by the fact that we don't sit in exactly the same place all the time.

I measure from stem top cap to middle of the 'dents' in my Brooks, then set up a new saddle to approximate this, fine tuning over several rides.