Numbness and seat advice

boogi11

Hi all, recently as I have increased my mileage, I have started to feel numbness around my meat and two veg .having looked on the web this seems like a common problem, I'm going to stay off the bike for a week, but I want some advice on what to do with the seat, currently it's horizontal so I am going to try dropping the nose, but the web does not really say how much by.
The seat is a San Marco Ponza power. Does anybody know anything about this seat, is it particularly tough seat. Any suggestions on a better seat

Grill

I had serious numbness issues until I switched to a saddle with a cutout. Went with a Spec Evo and swapped with Toupe after a month which has been brilliant. 12hr TT with much of it riding on the tip and no numbness or loss of sensation.

rc856

Same for me. Used to have a Fizik Arione which was comfy but I got numb.
Tried a Spesh Toupe which was a bit too hard so dropped down a saddle to the Alias and it's great.
Any Specialized dealer will let you borrow a saddle for a few test rides.

ianbar

i have onlyridden once on ym new saddle but i got a selle italia gel flow near enough £100 but i felt if it worked its money worth spending. i was out for about 2 hours saturday and i could tell the difference already, i guess it takes time to propely bed in butsaddles make a big difference.

tiredofwhiners

viewtopic.php?f=40013&t=12880025

Other thread already asking the same basic question and getting the same basic answers

greentea

Seats and seat position, unfortunately, always comes down to trial and error. One seat that works for you wont work for me etc, also different sit-bone width plays a part and rider weight.

For example, i had the same problem with a stock saddle on my Cube, so replaced it with a Selle italia gel flow. it got good reviews, everyone said its comfy, so i went with it. But pretty much at every ride at 20miles it starts to kill. Now im a big guy, rugby player frame 6ft 2in, weigh about 280lbs but my sit-bones are actually quite narrow. I didnt find this out until recently, and it turns out that as good as the Gel Flow is, its shape is not good for my sit-bones width due to the fact it slopes down either side. So i need a pretty flat saddle for this reason.

From experience ive found its not even down to padding on the seat, a lot of the time its seat shape. Also, the angle of the seat seems to be more important than most of us probably realise. You are saying about angling the seat nose down a bit, but ive tried that only to find the seat being used is designed to be level with the floor and only works in that design. So thats another thing to check out.

So i would check the following:

Seat shape
Seat padding
Seat angle
Seat height.

It doesnt mean that just because a certain seat gets 5 stars out of 5 that its going to be good for you, most of the reviews might be guys that have skinny legs, large legs, small frame, big frame, short legs, long legs, narrow backside, wide backside etc etc so i would try and work out first what your sit-bone width is. You can find ways to do this on the web but an easy way is to sit on a memory foam pillow or a piece of tinfoil on a cushined seat, raise your feet on a box then gently stand up, where the two deepest dips are take the central point from each and measure across, this will give you a rough idea for seat width.