How to Measure your Bicycle Seat Height

Video Transcript

"So, when we are fitting up our road bike to make sure that it's comfortable, and a fairly safe fit, a good baseline is: wear your cycling shorts, wear some cycling shoes, and then what you want to do is, you want to get on the bike, leaning up against something like a wall, and you want to set that seat height so that at the dead bottom of the pedal stroke you have this 25-degree or so angle in your leg. That's a good compromise between too high and too low, and it's a rough, sort of seat of the pants guess. Another thing you can do is you can put your foot down and walk it out and if it just barely grazes the top of the pedal that means that you're at a pretty good height as well. But we measure our seat height the same way we would on the mountain bike, which is from the center of the bottom bracket -- so we start measuring there -- then measure up this thing called the seat tube, to the top of the seat. And it's always good to keep track of that measurement in case you bring your bike into a shop, and they work on it, and they change the seat height or you're using a bike on vacation -- you can have a good baseline. The other thing to take into account is your set back, which is how far behind the bottom bracket the tip of your seat is. That's another one of those consistent things that you want to keep going from bike to bike. The farther forward you go, the easier it's going to feel to turn over the gears. The farther back you go, there's going to be a little bit more leverage that you're going to be able to create with your butt, your gluts, and your hamstrings. But that's a pretty good baseline."