Originally Posted by
berner
Early in my cycling career, maybe 9 years ago, I had great difficulty finding saddle comfort. It was so bad I contemplated giving up the bike. At that time I remembered that as a boy, a few farmers in my rural town were still working their fields with horse drawn equipment. That type of machinery had an iron seat that was wider than the farmer so that weight was distributed over a wide area and a farmer could work all day, day after day on such a seat. So I theorized that a bike saddle most likely should be as wide as possible. This approach has worked for me with a modification for my personal geometry. Whether a wider saddle would also work for you no one can say in advance but be prepared to experiment.
Occasionally we see old farm implements as decoration on lawns. If you see such a machine on your rides, stop and see if the home owner would sell the iron seat, cheap.
No, for most cycling pursuits and bicycles a saddle that is wide enough to capture the sit bones and narrow enough to stay out of the way of the pedaling is correct. The racier bicycles need a narrow seat and the seat is not supporting but about 1/3 of the body weight. More upright types of bicycles, like an English 3-speed (aka English Racer) can benefit from a wider, shorter saddle because the derrière has to support 60% to 75% of the body weight. Yeah, I put a load scale on my bicycle some years ago and I do have a nice E3S and even with my set up aggressive I had nearly 60% of my body weight on the saddle average as opposed to about 40% on my racier road bikes with good saddle to bar drop.
Farmers do not pedal their tractors, modeling your bicycle seat after a farm implement might not work so well.