First Look: Liv's New Saddle Fitting System
When a saddle works, you forget it’s even there. But when a saddle doesn’t work, your whole bike feels wrong—and chances are you won’t keep making time for another ride. But without test-riding a library full of bike saddles, how do you diagnose the problem?
Liv introduced a new fitting tool at Outdoor Demo this week called the Dynamic Cycling Fit system. It's meant to determine the shape of a woman’s pelvis and calculate whether she would be more comfortable on the company’s Contact Forward or Contact Upright saddle. Didn’t realize your pelvis was such an integral part of the saddle comfort equation? While most of us probably cast blame on awkward sit bones for our discomfort, Liv says the shape and angle of a rider’s pelvis while in motion on the bike is a huge function of how we make contact with a saddle.
The Contact Forward saddle is designed for when the pelvic bone is rotating forward and pressure is building up toward the center of the saddle. The saddle handles this particular pelvic style with a long groove down the center from front to back. Fitting well on the Contact Upright saddle means pressure is focused more toward the rear of the saddle and spread into two primary areas of contact. This saddle has a shorter groove that only runs from the back to the middle of the saddle.
The “dynamic” part of Liv’s Dynamic Cycling Fit is what makes the fitting style unique, says Janette Sherman, Liv’s global communications manager. “That’s how we design all our gear,” she told me. “We want it to function best while sitting on a bike.”
A rider mounts a fit bike with a gel saddle and pedals for two minutes at 50-70 RPM to reveal her pelvic contact position. The pattern of revealed colors left by the rider’s impression on the saddle determines whether she needs the fully grooved Forward saddle or the half-grooved Upright saddle. It’s an easy-to-measure system that Liv will make available to bike retailers for 2016.
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I gave the system a test ride at Liv’s booth at Outdoor Demo and was revealed to be the proud owner of an anomalous ass—or in other words, a pelvic contact position that fell somewhere between Forward and Upright. One by one the other women at BICYCLING tried the Dynamic Cycling Fit as well but were easily ushered into their appropriate saddle category (most fell into the fully-grooved Forward position) without any question. My bizarre color pattern revealed a touch of the blue Forward Position but a fair amount of pink and white as well. I was eventually issued an Upright saddle based on all the pink—which features the same partial groove of my favorite saddle at home and fits me almost identically.
Both the Contact Forward and the Contact Upright saddles feature Particle Flow technology, meaning the foam padding conforms around your pressure points. The saddles feature a synthetic leather cover with lightweight fill, weigh in at 315g, and retail for $35. Both the Contact Forward and Contact Upright saddles are also available in SL and SLR versions. The SL, the next step up, is composed of composite base material and lightweight tubular metallic rails, and retails for $110. The SLR has a microfiber cover and lightweight fill and uses carbon composite base material and carbon fiber rails, and retails for $225.
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