Any experiences with AI-based bike fitting?

Just post the vid here and we’ll rip the piss  advise you 😀

They are pretty good if you have a friend that is a bike fitter to analyse the video and make recommendations. If you don’t know your body or what is causing the issue then it will just throw data at you that becomes annoying. The apps are pretty impressive though.

IMO best way is just join a cycling club or semi serious spin class and if the instructor is half decent they will be able to help you without the £300 bill if you turn up 10 mins early.

Or just post photos here, sure everyone will chime in.

70% chance you will end up with: saddle too high / do yoga.

How many bikes (with different fit / geometry etc) do you ride regularly? Do you get the same pain on all of them?
How's general flexibility and stretching habits, much time sat down each day?

Had experience of something similar here in recent 2 years, one side hip/groin/lower back tension. Of course it could be very different cause but for me it was from long rides and desk work combined with zero stretching or similar care, the the usual adaptive shortening in the hip connections. It's taken best part of a year of regular simple stretching and adjusting my saddle position (was on the low side, raised it as I regained flexibility, about 12mm higher now) to reduce it. As the discomfort reduces it seems that a few things were linked, causing issues and compounding, it wasn't one cause+effect. All fwiw as these things are complex individual cases.

About AI bike fit, maybe if it's a simple fit niggle. I'm sceptical but only because there's not always the quick fix we hope for - or the change reduces the symptoms for a while but doesn't address the cause. I've been told quite clearly that adaptations that take a long time to happen and cause problems also take a long time to resolve. You just have to try avenues and stick at it when something seems to help.

I would just point out that this isn't "AI" and the misuse of the term to sell stuff is quite annoying 🙂

Aaaannnyway....

You can have the very best and most accurate measurement tools on the planet (that app looks no where near either), but the real skill is in interpreting information combined with what you feel as a rider and how your body is/ how it works. A person who can do that well is worth any money IMO.

The app looks ok for rough ball park stuff that you could get by videoing yourself and having a bit of a guess, or by using some simple body measurements and ancient rules of thumb found online.

It sounds like you need more help than ballpark though. Getting a happy body on a bike is complicated and always changing so I would always have a preference for finding the best person, with a wealth of experience to draw on, and lots of recommendations over anything else.

I've seen excellent feedback from the facebook TT position group from people posting vids of them riding outside - you do get your eye tuned in quite quickly to the relevant dimensions, like if someone is too low at the back, or too forward, it becomes obvious. That is extreme TT positions, but the principle is the same. There must be a general bike position page - you'd get good feedback if you can arrange a vid of yourself I think.

Pics are close to useless. Can't draw any conclusions from a still shot outside of dramatically wrong set-ups.

Vid on the trainer is OK - this is afterall what a fitter will use in person, but there are big differences between inside and outside riding.

I saw a few videos and articles on MyVeloFit and thought I'd give it a go, mainly out of curiosity. With the 25% discount code I found it doesn't work out much for the multiple bikes I'm going to try it on (and you get a year of access).

So far, I've done my gravel bike and hardtail. It has a degree of the "Shockwiz effect" to it, in that if you are in the ballpark any suggestions are going to be minor, but I think the cumulative suggestions made sense. Will see how it goes once I've done a few miles on them.

The app looks ok for rough ball park stuff that you could get by videoing yourself and having a bit of a guess, or by using some simple body measurements and ancient rules of thumb found online.

I think part of the appeal is that it automates this process so you can get through multiple feedback iterations more quickly. There are, however, obvious limitations when it comes to things like not taking into account bar and stance widths.

I see the appeal but there are many many limitations...

Accuracy of 2D phone video finding joints on variable clothing
Camera position relative to rider likely causes greater error than the margin you are trying to "measure"
Feet? (often an obvious compensator for lots of other things)
No head (neck/ shoulder pain)
Single segment torso
When did we stop having a pelvis?
No hands (wrist pain)
Side view only
Massive ranges of "acceptable" results
Only as accurate as the training data (person clicking points on video- it's damned boring!)
How have acceptable ranges been determined for an entire population?
I could go on 🙂

My worry is it is both an inaccurate measurement tool used in a very inaccurate (at best vague) way

OP here.  Thanks for all the input - seems like the main takeaways are that fitting is complicated and personal, and that the so-called AI offering might help with ballpark stuff. Might take a punt on it or find a relevant FB group as a cheap starter to make sure my fit isn't miles off.

To answer Jameso, the bike is a Pinnacle Arksose R2 (hooray!), is my only bike, and is combined with a desk-based job and no stretching. Suspect I might need to try a few things, starting with some stretching...

I would just point out that this isn’t “AI” and the misuse of the term to sell stuff is quite annoying

The joint/pose detection in the app must still use some kind of model/classifier learned from a load of training data which I think is still "AI".