I know there’s often chat on here about injuries, where to fit cleats, silly money paid for a professional bike fit etc.

This book (together with a plum line and special protractor – sounds well geeky!) has shown me how my setup was wrong and has helped put it right. I ended up moving cleats, lowering the saddle height and moving saddle forward too. My bike instantly feels and rides better.

Not bad for the sum of about £25. Highly recommend it if you’ve been thinking you want to get your bike/s fitted properly but haven’t wanted to spend hundreds of pounds on a bike fitting session.

Intrigued!

I’m a bit of a geek about position, but am also chasing a pain in my right foot that three different brands of shoe and numerous shims and insoles still haven’t sorted.

Had a Retul fit recently but wasn’t too impressed, it identified the correct size of frame for me, but the fitter just dismissed shims, insoles and cleat adjustments as ‘moving the problem elsewhere’.

Buuuut… I’m guessing doing a fit yourself, from a book, doesn’t really take into account all the wee changes that occur when you’re actually pedalling? i.e. it’s just a static fit and won’t take into account differing flexibilities and abnormalities in leg lengths etc?

Gave in an ‘bought’ a copy on Google Play. £11, but no protractor!

Already paid for itself. I couldn’t shift a pain in my right foot which started early in rides and would last the whole ride. Had tried an aaaaawful lot of fixes including wider shoes, looser straps, shims/insoles etc.

Turns out my foot was ‘waterfalling’ i.e. the cleat was too far to the inside of the shoe and the outside of my foot was taking extra pressure where it stuck out of the edge of the pedal. Shimming the pedal out the way and moving the cleat back to the centre of the shoe the corresponding amount *seems* to have solved it.

Annoyingly I had always suspected this but had figured that modern stiff shoes wouldn’t suffer for their position over the pedal. I’d even experimented with moving the cleat etc. but obviously hadn’t moved it enough. Buying the book at least confirmed I was on the right track.

I find Steven Hogg’s website excellent as well, had convinced me to fiddle with shims to adjust for differing leg lengths, intial results seem promising (I realised I was pedalling with my left heel down, but right toe down, I also noticed when pedalling I was never looking straight down onto the wheel, basically never riding with the bike perfectly upright!).