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When a customer comes into my store – more often than not – they have a predetermined opinion on what type of bike they need, based on the manufacturer’s descriptions, as opposed to their physical characteristics. “I need an endurance bike because I just do long club rides”, or, “I want to race, so I need an aero bike.”

I would argue that – all to often – people are buying a bike based on its marketed use rather than its fit.

Cycling Weekly’s Undercover Mechanic will be publishing his thoughts on the state of the industry once a month. He’s been working with bikes for over two decades, offering servicing on models from some of cycling’s best (and worst) marques. You’ll find him at all major trade shows and events, just don’t expect him to make himself known.

To offer a whistlestop explainer, bike geometry exists on a spectrum. We can place aero bikes – with their low headtubes and longer reach, allowing riders to get lower – on one end. At the other end, we have endurance bikes, which are in theory designed to be a little higher and shorter, to create a more upright position. There’s a wide range of ‘somewhere in between’ bikes fitting into a range of categories.

Firstly, increasing research in this field has led to changes in how we position people on bicycles. But – just like most things in the cycling industry – there’s often an overcorrection before things level out. In recent years everybody’s got very excited about aerodynamics, but there hasn’t been a correlated increase in excitement about pilates, so there are increasingly fewer riders we see who can actually achieve the positions some of these bikes were built for.

Manufacturing models also play a part, with moulded carbon fibre the most prevalent approach. When a brand is designing its latest range of road bikes, the cost of the moulds runs into the millions, so they don’t get changed regularly and are expected to last several years. Often an updated frame will maintain the same geometry but change some of the aesthetic by simply modifying one of the existing moulds. Therefore, manufacturers are pretty slow to react to feedback about their geometry. That combined with the desire to use the least amount of expensive moulds possible to provide a range of sizes leads to this situation where sometimes a rider can’t find a bike that fits them perfectly in a model range.

Seek out a bike sizing session, from a decent local provider – or even someone within your local club – before you buy a bike. If you don’t want to leave the house or interact with other humans, there are several websites available where you can enter your bike fit dimensions and do a search for bikes that suit you. Doing this groundwork first will not only ensure you have the right frame size, stem length bar width and seatpost to look for it also allows you to buy with confidence by asking the store to swap out the parts pre purchase, which will often be cheaper or cost neutral, than having it done after the fact.

Thankfully, the backlash on geometry has been going on long enough now that some manufacturers are starting to steer the ship back on course; it’s starting to become possible to buy frames that could easily be used for everything from racing to touring, and I’m hopeful that within a couple of years, we will have lots of nice bikes, that fit human beings again. Now, where did I leave that Flux Capacitor?

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Undercover Mechanic: Cyclists have become very excited about aerodynamics without a correlated excitement for pilates – the result is a lot of spacers

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