Getting the right fit on your bike is crucial for efficient power transfer to the ground, but…more importantly…it insures that you prevent riding related damage to your body and prevent pain on the road or trail. Many riders are looking for a cost effective way to get the right fit on their road or mountain bikes, so The Bike Fitting Kit from CycleTime is an at home solution for those riders not looking to spend major money on a professional fit.
From BikeFittingKit.com:
The Bike Fitting Kit comes with an instructional DVD that teaches correct positioning and shows how to achieve it. You will learn how your body will benefit from correct positioning, and the consequences of not having it. The first part of the fitting is the stationary fit. This will get you close to your ideal position. This is where most bike fittings stop. At Cycle Time LLC, we take it one step further. You will get an additional tool that will allow you to fine tune your bike, based on your body’s feedback. That tool is a Fine Tuning guide. It is a list of the top 16 pain related problems caused by an incorrectly adjusted bike, and then it tells you the recommended adjustments to make to eliminate the discomfort. This will allow you to fine tune your bike with confidence, and start riding pain free, at your full potential.
Included in the Bike Fitting Kit:
- Instructional DVD
- Fine Tuning guide
- Cue sheet
- Tips to make you a better cyclists
- 12 in. Goniometer
- Plumb bob
- Tape measure
- Level
- 4,5, and 6mm hex keys
Review: The Bike Fitting Kit
As you can probably imagine, bike fitting is something that is done very often around the Bike198 garage. Finding your correct saddle height, positioning and other fit items is a crucial element in making sure the bike rides correctly and to prevent injury while we swap between different bikes during the week. With the Tarmac Pro from Specialized coming in for review and a huge mountain ride ready for the weekend, I took this opportunity to use the Bike Fitting Kit to get the Tarmac ready for some of the most brutal riding in North Georgia.
As with most products, the first thing I did was open the box to see what I was dealing with. The Bike Fitting Kit includes everything you need for dialing in the proper fit on your bike all the way down to the most popular hex head wrenches. I sat down at the computer, popped in the DVD and watched the instructional video. While they are using an older bike in the video, Steve from CycleTime walks you through all of the necessary steps to dial in your perfect fit on any bike. He illustrates how you use the tools and what to look for as you go step by step to get fitted on your bike at home.
Going through the video, Steve is dead on with all aspects of bike fitting on road bikes, but he did have one thing that I did not agree with on the mountain biking fitting portion of the program. He suggested that wider bars are more stable (which they are), but that they are used for roads and more smoother surfaces while narrower bars are for technical terrain. It is actually the other way around and that is why you see the widest bars on downhill mountain bikes that see the worst terrain you can ride.
After watching the video, I used the provided cue sheet and tools provided in the kit to nail down the fit on the new Tarmac.
Once I hit the road, it was obvious that The Bike Fitting Kit got me incredibly close to my ideal fit on the bike. The Bike Fitting Kit provides you with a great, neutral fit that you can then fine tune to your preference. To be honest, about the only thing I really changed was handlebar height after I was done with the fit process and everything felt incredible on the bike while I hit over 5,300 fit of climbing over 47 miles hitting speeds from 3 mph all the way to 50 mph. Everything felt dialed in, stable and I had zero fit related pain on the bike.
Overall: The Bike Fitting Kit
The Bike Fitting Kit is perfect for riders that are not sure where to start on the fitting process but do not want to pay the big dollars sometimes required for a professional fit at a shop or fitting boutique. The supplied video and tools will get you to a safe, comfortable and efficient fit on your bike that you can use on friends and family as well.
Personally, I would update the video with a more current road bike as an example and fix the one minor error on the mountain bike side of things, but…that aside…this product is perfect for riders that want to get their bike fitted correctly and do it themselves. I will be using it on future review and personal bikes in the Bike198 garage to insure everything is fitted correctly before I hit the road or trail.
Positive: The Bike Fitting Kit
- All tools for proper fit included
- Instructional video illustrates how to correctly fit yourself to a bike and why
- Cue sheet included for fitting after watching video
- Easy step by step process that can be completed by any rider
- Extremely affordable and accurate
Negative: The Bike Fitting Kit
- Video needs a little bit of updating (newer bike and slight MTB error)
If you need to get your perfect fit on your road or mountain bike, I recommend picking up your own Bike Fitting Kit by clicking this link.