Can your Local Bike Shop perform an expert bike fit?
Basic fit? Maybe. Expert bike fit or managing any injuries? Probably not.
Most shops have no education or particular expertise in bike fitting.
They may have attended a weekend course in bike fit. The bike fit schools are good for understanding the
basic premise of fitting the human body to the bike: they can get your seat height set pretty close, make sure
your cleats are on straight, make sure your knees fall over the pedal, etc. But they are not the in depth enough
to make difficult or answer the fuzzy questions.
Will they be able to test your trunk strength to determine how much differential (saddle to handlebar) you
should have?
Is having the knee over the pedal even necessary?
Can they tell you when you may need your hips further behind or further forward relative to the bottom
bracket to alleviate a muscle imbalance?
Will they know when a drifting knee is remedied by a forefoot shim and when that won't correct it?
Will they know how to adequately address chronic injuries or surgeries?
What reasoning do they have for setting your reach on the bike? Is it just because it "looks good" or "looks
about right"? Or do they have a specific rationale?
So what is needed for an expert bike fit?
As I've stated before, a significant background in biomechanics and human anatomy is a must; as is daily use of
this knowledge; and finally they need to understand the mechanics of cycling and bicycles in general.
Learning about bikes is pretty easy -- there are only so many variables and they are all easily measured.
The human body is different. It is unreasonable to assume that your local bike shop owner or employee will be
able to address all the questions listed above. There is just too much going on in the human body and a change
one joint has a significant effect in another joint.
In some university towns, you may find a shop where one of the employees is "pre-med" or is "going to go to
PT school" and they put them in charge of fittings. (I am always reminded of Animal House -- "Don't worry
about it...I'm pre-Law" "I thought you were pre-Med" "What's the difference?") One thing I can tell you for
certain is that when you graduate from physical therapy school, you have a lot of knowledge. But only when
you get in the clinical setting do you realize how much you still have to learn about how the body works.
So can someone without the background "learn by doing"?
I think the answer to this is "yes", but there is a lot involved. There are certainly a handful of people out there
who have successfully taken this route. All have gone to exhaustive means to learn all they can about the
human body and how it works.
And then they have practiced, practiced, practiced. Oftentimes, hundreds or thousands of bike fits before they
considered themselves experts. Each bike fit they learn a little more, by trial and error, and they gain some
specific bike fit knowledge.
This is a slow and painstaking process, and few people invest the time to learn on their own, all that is
necessary to make informed and well reasoned decisions. More often, most rely on the same few modifications
they do on every bike fit -- the "cookie cutter" approach.
Don't trust your comfort, safety, and a few thousand dollar bike investment in the hands of under-qualified
individuals. Do your homework and find someone who will make sure you get the right bike and fit (and can
prove it to you!). You should be able to walk out of a fitting session and KNOW that you were taken care of
properly. If you don't know it then you need to keep looking for better help.
-- The Bicycle Studio