Benefits of Bike Fit

After pedalling for a long time on a bicycle, have you ever felt backpain or neck pain, or pain in your knees or hips, or noticed that your hands and feet are numb, or simply that you are more tired than usual and feel generally uncomfortable moving?

There are several causes for these aches. The most relevant of them is the improper fitting or adjustment of the bicycle. In order to avoid any uncomfortableness, it is recommended for you to adapt the bike to your needs and to the terrain you will be riding the bike on. 

Everyone has different body proportions and levels of flexibility, mobility and physical activity; these variables, along with each individual’s personal goals and the type of bicycle that is used on each terrain, will influence the adjustment of our bicycle, whether for achieving an enhanced performance or preventing injuries. 

Properly fitting your bicycle has thousands of benefits, depending on the discipline you will be practicing, either on the road, the street, or the mountain. Among them, we can distinguish 5 relevant elements:

Power peak: Correctly adjusting your bicycle will allow you to achieve the best possible performance as to the speed and power of your pedalling – power being understood as the energy we generate for the bicycle to move. 

Comfort: A properly fitted bicycle will enable you to ride it comfortably for longer periods of time, preventing pains and aches, in order to make your sports practice more enjoyable. 

Efficacy: The correct adjustment of your bicycle helps minimize energy spending, allowing you to travel longer distances. 

Injury prevention: A perfect fitting for each discipline decreases the risk of suffering injuries resulting from overuse or incorrect postures. 

Handling: If you properly adjust your bicycle, you will be able to improve manoeuvrability and control of the same during critical scenarios, such as curves or while descending steep hillsides. 

The best way to adjust a bicycle is by using dynamic observation. What does this mean? An assessment, by a person specializing in bike fitting, of the person who is riding the bicycle. This method is time-consuming and there’s a high cost associated to the service. 

Aictive is currently developing an Artificial Intelligence platform that will evaluate bicycle fitting or adjustment from the comfort of your home or from wherever you practice your sport of choice, in an easy, autonomous and accurate manner, using relevant information, so that you are able to perfectly fit or adjust your bike. 

To sum up, adjusting or fitting your bicycle is essential for the discipline that you practice, because it helps you enhance your performance, avoid injuries, improve the manoeuvrability of your bicycle, and prevent accidents.

If you are interested in participating in our Bike Fit pilot project, contact us at  bikefit@aictive.co and we will send you detailed information so that you can be one of the lucky first to get to know and test our new product.