Anyone use a suspension seat post on their road bike?
 

I'm 6' 1", 270 pounds. I ride 100-150 miles a week. The biggest limiter for me on long rides is a sore back side/undercarriage. I've tried lots of different saddles and am currently the most comfortable on the Selle Anatomica H1. However, I'd like to be even more comfortable now that I'm getting into 50+ mile rides.

I was looking at the kinect 2.1 xl2 to help smooth out my rides a little bit. Does anyone use one of these or something similar? Any feedback? The roads I ride are fairly smooth with some small bumps in them. I'm not doing any gravel or riding on really bumpy roads (on a 30 mile ride there might be 3 or 4 spots where I'll stand out of the saddle to avoid a hard bump). Will something like this give me much benefit or increase my comfort on long rides?

Thanks!

I have a Redshift seatpost on one of my bikes. It works fairly well.

https://redshiftsports.com/shockstop...nsion-seatpost

Having said that, the best bang for the buck is supple wide tires. Get the widest you can cram into your frame:

https://www.renehersecycles.com/prod...ts/tires/700c/

I've already looked into that. Sadly the biggest tire that will fit on my bike is a 25c.

I had a suspension post on my old Trek 7300. I eventually grew to hate it as it kept bottoming out. I changed it out to a Thomson post and eventually migrated to a carbon post. The Carbon post really helped eliminate the road hum.

No suspension seat post on my bikes, I do have a couple of bikes with carbon seatposts

+1 on carbon post. Preferably a setback. Best post I have is a FSA K-Force SB25 followed very closely by a Cannondale Save post.

Have a read. I consider both of these articles to be must read.

https://www.cyclingabout.com/seatpos...cling-comfort/
https://www.velonews.com/gear/from-t...rom-your-post/

Also, for some alternatives that go beyond rigid

https://road.cc/content/buyers-guide...atposts-256942

Combining a braided carbon rail saddle with the seatpost really made the ride even better for me. Finally, please do not overlook that your posture - how you are sitting on the bike - may also effect your back. Have you considered getting a bike fit? It could be just that your reach is too long or ???

I have a Cane Creek Thudbuster but I'm @ 220 #, so under their suggested max of 250..
my 'road bike' is a touring Bike Friday (or the Brompton)

supermatt9 modern seats rely on your sit bones and perineum area to provide the support for whatever body weight that is not on your arms/hands. Be especially careful about the perineum area. It is an easy area to damage and can cause prostatitus which is a painful swelling of your prostate area causing blood in your urine, lots of pain, and hard urination. If you tip the seat forward to reduce the pressure on the perineum then you increase the pressure on your sit bones and high pressure points on your skin where the sit bones and seat meet. This issue tends to follow bicyclists all their lives. Some people are fortunate to find good comfortable solutions. The rest of us are on a never ending search for bicycle seat happiness. Recumbent bicycles generally have much better seats than upright bicycles and really don't hurt at all. I ride noseless bicycle seats like the Hobson EasySeat II on my upright bikes and it is generally pretty good. But because you only have sit bones holding your weight it is easy to get skin sores under the high pressure points of your sit bones. When I tire of my upright bicycles seats I get on my Ryan Vanguard recumbent and pedal happily pain free down the road. Unless the roads you ride are unusually rough a suspension seatpost wont really help with high pressure point areas. You are still sitting on the seat all the time whether it is suspended or not. Try different saddle angles, forward and back. Try different saddles. Try moving your handle bars up, down, further away and closer to you. Be patient and honestly evaluate each change you make. Woofy advises a bicycle fit and that may help a lot. Good luck

Everyone is of course different, but for my own experience, as the ride distance got longer I found a few things worked together to make things substantially better.

First, high quality bike shorts. As the ride got longer anything cheaper just didn’t cut it. Stepping up quality levels made a huge difference. Then adding chamois cream to the equation on anything over ~20km multiplied the benefit. Finally, and almost counter intuitively, a padding reduction of the saddle worked wonders for longer rides. Once upon a time when I was riding metric centuries, the most comfortable saddle that I had was a Selle SMP Composit. Zero padding. For longer rides, that piece of shaped hardness was the most comfortable saddle that I had tried. But since those times my riding style has changed and the SMP saddles don’t suit the way I ride any more.

Cane Creek eeSilk is pricey, but my favorite of the (not huge) suspension posts

Before investing in a new suspension seat post I would experiment with different bibs, and saddle angle adjustments. Maybe try tipping the nose down a little more.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

Bar none, the single most comfortable seating position I've ever had was at a park in British Columbia, where the seat had been carved from an old growth stump. The shape of it was so utterly perfect, for me, it felt like sitting on a cloud. Sat there for hours, admiring the gardens and the view. I've never been more comfortable in a seat than on that day, before or since.

Certainly makes one think about what makes comfort on a seat. It isn't about the padding, outright. IME, it's mostly about the shape and contours, and how well those match one's backside, and whether there are seams/creases in the way to interfere with that comfort.

Yes. They're great. Read my review here:
https://www.bikeforums.net/general-c...lb-riders.html