Getting a proper bike fit is unquestionably the best way to feel comfortable, confident and fast on your bike. A professional bike fit can be pretty expensive, so here James and Dan run you through 6 positional tweaks you can make to perfect your riding position.

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Handlebar angle We’re going to start with handlebar rotation, certainly not the first thing most riders will think about. Rotating your handlebars forward or backwards can drastically change how your bike feels, as can the position of your hoods on the bars themselves. It’s definitely something worth looking at, particularly if you’re changing your bar tape.

Compact bars Further to the rotation of your bars, you can also look at the shape. Compact handlebars are a reasonably recent invention in cycling, only really coming into common usage on road bikes over the last 10 years or so. Road handlebars traditionally had a very deep drop, meaning when you moved from the hoods to the drops there was a significant position change.

Saddle layback, which is how far behind the bottom bracket your saddle is. At one end of the spectrum, we’ve got traditional road bikes, which tended to have quite a lot of layback, whereas at the opposite end there are modern time trial bikes that have almost none at all. Having the wrong layback for you can lead to a significant loss of power and a whole host of knee problems. There was an interesting study this year that found compression force on the knee was always higher with the saddle further backwards.

Do you have any bike fit hacks? Let us know in the comments.

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Bike Setup Tips For Smaller Riders http://gcn.eu/SmallFit

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