Saddle to bar drop: Is 6 inches too much?

[yzfrr11]

I am very comfortable on my bike and I have had some good results already this season. But I have rescently noticed that my bar drop is greater than most other cyclist I see. Is 6 inches (15cm) too much?

[William]

I run just over 13 cm's of drop. I'm very comfortable with my position, have done very well competitively with it set up this way. I wouldn't sweat it too much if you're comfortable with that amount of drop and get good power output.

Were you fitted at some point or did you come to this position on your own?


William

[Ray]

I am very comfortable on my bike and I have had some good results already this season. But I have rescently noticed that my bar drop is greater than most other cyclist I see. Is 6 inches (15cm) too much?
For me, its waaaay too much. For you, it sounds like it probably isn't. You racer types seem to like more drop that we old tourist types. I've seen plenty of people with that much drop. It makes my neck hurt just looking at them, but whatever works for you...

-Ray

[Dave]

That's impossible to answer. It would be too much for most riders, but if you're tall with long arms, it might be fine.

Every notice the big differences in the pro peloton? Some of the taller riders have pretty extreme drops that produce a torso angle that's probably not over 30 degrees when they're on the hoods and the upper back angles below horizontal in the drops.

A too extreme torso angle would either produce discomfort or even knee to chest interference when riding in the drops. If you can't ride comfortably in the drops, then the bars are too low.

The relationship between bar/stem height and stem length is complicated. It's best figured out graphically, by measuring your hip to shoulder length, arm length from shoulder to the crook of your thumb and the hip to brake hood contact point length. I did this for my own dimensions of 53cm, 62cm and 83cm, to figure out the approximate angle of my torso when on the brake hoods. Mine came out to be about 38 degrees.

What some folks don't keep in mind is that raising or lower the stem with spacers or quill adjustments also moves the bars closer or further away, by about 1/3 of the amount of the spacer change (actually the sine of the HTA). You often read discussions of stem length or "reach" dimensions that fail to consider the stem/bar height. When a rider has a very low bar height is not only reduces the angle of the back, it increases the reach to the bars (hip to brake hood contact point).

[Too Tall]

Nice Dave :) Do you agree than with Bill Boston's methods?

[yzfrr11]

I run just over 13 cm's of drop. I'm very comfortable with my position, have done very well competitively with it set up this way. I wouldn't sweat it too much if you're comfortable with that amount of drop and get good power output.

Were you fitted at some point or did you come to this position on your own?


William
I've come to this position on my own. I have very long arms and long legs with short torso.

[Dave]

I checked out his website and he certainly appears to have a well thought out product, but unless you have access to the software, it's hard to know what his fit recommendations would be.

The problem I see with any fit system is that it can be used to duplicate a particularly torso angle, and arm to torso relationship, but it doesn't guarantee the rider will be comfortable. A new rider almost always needs a conservative position to start with.

There are so many opinions about saddle fore/aft position, saddle height and front/rear weight balance, that trying to interpret it all and sort out the contradicitoins can be overwhelming. I just know what works for me. I pedal with my foot relatively horizontal, so my saddle height might be a bit lower than folks who pedal heels-up. I like to be able to drop my heel 1-2cm below horizontal with my leg locked at the bottom of the stroke. For me, this produces about a 15 degree bend in the leg at the bottom of the stroke during normal pedaling. Folks get too wrapped up in KOP too. I've found that I can apply more torque with my saddle further back and since a lot of my riding is climbing mountains, I place the saddle about 2cm further back than I used to when I rode flatter terrain.

I did my graphical analysis of stem length and height after reading someone claim that adding 1cm of steering tube spacer required a 2cm longer stem to maintain the same torso angle. My analysis proved that wrong. For me at least, it's more like a 1.3cm longer stem and since few stems come in finer increments than 1cm, you might as well say it's a 1:1 relationship. The extra .3cm just comes from the fact the the stem can't be raised vertically. The poster of this advice also failed to realize that increasing both stem length and height creates a more extreme and stressful toso to arm angle, even though the torso angle relative the ground is relatively unchanged. For comfort, the angle of the torso relative to the ground and the arm to torso angle have to be considered.