Do You Know The Correct Height For Your Bike Saddle?
A lot more of you have been getting out on your bikes, now the weather has cheered up a bit. But do you know if your bike is set up correctly?
Adjusting the height of the saddle has been shown to be important for both performance and injury prevention. The recommended height of the saddle should allow your knee to be between 25 – 35 degrees, as this has been shown to help prevent those overuse injuries.
The methods for determining optimal saddle height are varied and are based on relationships between saddle height and lower limb length.
Methods include: the heel method, the Le Mond, the Hamley and Thomas, the 109% method etc..
A study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research examined saddle height and its effects on performance. They concluded that a 25 degree knee angle provided optimal performance.The majority of evidence suggests that a 5% change in saddle height can affect knee kinematics by as much as 35% and knee moments by 5%.
Increasing saddle height has been shown to cause a shortnening of the quadriceps muscles, but no change to hamstring length. Just this little bit of information highlights how important it is to have the correct bike set up and stretching is a must.
Below is a video clip from the Livestrong website on how to measure your bicycle seat height.
Bini, R et al. (2001). Effects of bicycle saddle height on knee injury risk and cycling performance. Sports Med 41 (6): 463-476
Peveler, W.W. and Green, J.M. (2011). Effects of saddle height on economy and anaerobic power in well-trained cyclists. J Strength Cond Res 25(3): 629-633
