The Correct Position on the Bicycle

If you want to get most of out of your cycling then finding your correct position on the bicycle is paramount. Cycling comfort and efficiency begin with a bicycle that fits. Getting your position correct means you are able to produce more power efficiently without working any muscles unnecessarily. Correct positioning of hands, feet and body are essential or success and avoiding injury. If you have back, neck, shoulder or knee pain, saddle sores or finger numbness, then your bicycle probably doesn’t fit you.

We are all very different, each of us with different sizes of arms, legs, torsos and other parts of the body. All these factors must be evaluated when you seek to find your correct position on the bicycle. The following are some basic recommendations to provide you with a nearly perfect set-up. With experience you can then slightly adjust this position to meet your own requirements.

To start in getting the right fixie bike parts, stand over the frame with you bare feet flat on the ground. A correctly sized road bicycle frame should give two and a half to five centimetres (one to two inches) of clearance between the top tube of the frame and your crotch. A more precise method to calculate the frame size is the formula: inseam length x 0.64.

The result of this formula is unequivocally correct but it is important to realize it pertains to traditional frame geometry. This is the conventional way of measuring the frame size ‘centre to centre’, which indicates the length of the seat tube from the centre of the bottom bracket to the centre of the seat lug (the point at which the centre line of the seat tube and the centre line of the top tube cross each other). Other ways to measure the size of a frame are:

Centre to top   

Centre to top indicates the length of the seat tube from the centre of the bottom bracket to the top side of the seat lug. As a rule, this door frame pull up bar size should equal the centre-to-centre size, plus 15 to 20 millimetres (about three quarters of an inch).

Many bicycle manufacturers specify the frame size of their sloping/compact frames according to the length of the seat tube, measured centre to centre as well as from centre to top. The frame size is then usually not specified as a numeric value but is simply expressed as ‘small, medium, or large’. The problem with this way of measuring is that it turns out to be complicated to precisely calculate an ideal frame size, unless the manufacturer also provides the traditional centre-to-centre measurement in addition to the compact specification.

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