B1KE

I recently had my saddle angle a bit upward but it was causing me neck pain so I moved it down to almost level. Would the slight decrease in moving it from upward to a more neutral position allow me to move the saddle height up to compensate for angling it down?

Carbonfiberboy 

Your legs should tell you where they want the saddle.

B1KE

What do you mean by that exactly?

Carbonfiberboy 

Well then we can fall back on letting your legs get an approximate saddle height for you. While cycling slowly down the road, put the heel of one shoe on the pedal and pedal slowly that way. Your knee should lock out completely straight at the bottom of the pedal stroke while still touching the pedal without your pelvis tilting that way to help it along. Some people like up a 4mm gap under the heel. Try it with the other leg and see if it's the same.

What I meant is that you might know how your legs feel in extension when they are putting out maximum sustainable power for you. The fine adjustment is to make that happen for you - maximize your sustainable power during a long day's ride. Move the saddle up or down 2-3mm at a time and see what that did for you after an hour. Mess with it until it feels best. However you should never be far off that mark with the heel and locked out knee.

fietsbob

+1, a crude test : heel of your foot on the pedal axis , leg straight ,

then once your foot has the ball of your foot over that same pedal axis

you have a slight bend in the knee as You turn the pedal past Bottom Dead Center (BDC)

Once you are used to the proper height , if the seat post slips down ,you can feel the difference.


Add: The desire to have your saddle Tilting down May indicate you set your Bars too low and Your spine,

Lower lumbar, is not limber enough to turn your Hips up and bend above yout hips ..

sloping down saddles put more pressure on your hands which have to push your butt back up slope all the time.

ltxi

This is just too weird to be anything other than a troll question. Neck pain. Seriously.

Carbonfiberboy 

No it's not. Raising the nose of the saddle will cause one to rotate one's hips back. This rounds the back and causes neck pain by increasing the angle between the cervical vertebrae and the rest of the back. Leveling the saddle allows one to rotate one's hips forward and fix that neck problem. That's a critical part of a good road fit.

That said, many people who adopt an upright fit can sit a saddle that's raised in front and still manage a straight back. But the position must be quite upright, which on a long day, will not be as comfortable as the ordinary road position and back angle.

See:
https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycli...discovery.html

fietsbob

That is If you hang with a roadie crew and are not Touring and taking your time.

ltxi

Fair enough...and thank you. I've ridden saddle nose up to whatever angle needed to keep me butt firmly in place to the rear, for lack of a better descriptive, forever. I've never had an issue with different angles inducing or relieving neck pain and don't know fellow rider who has. So this problem came across as nonsensical to me. Never too old to learn and apologies to the OP.

andr0id

In practical terms, you are correct. You adjust your saddle to the point you don't slide forward. Not a degree more or less.

Hip angle useless if a rider is constantly fighting to maintain a correct saddle position.

Very few riders tilt a saddle too far back, far more tilt it too far forward and are often not even aware they slide forward as they subconsciously adjust position or push back on the handlebars.

B1KE

What adjustments would you have to make to solve the problem in your last sentence?

andr0id

Tilt the saddle nose up little by little until the rider quits sliding forward.

If the saddle is tilted too far back (visually) for your liking, try a different brand/model of saddle.

There are really three cases...

Nose to far down, riders slides forward.

Saddle is level, rider doesn't slide either way.

Nose too far up, rider slides backwards.

But level does NOT mean visually level. Level is when you don't slide. Since most saddle dip in the middle, the part where your weight rests has to be the part that is level.

Carbonfiberboy 

Sliding forward with a level saddle is fixed by moving the saddle aft until, riding down the road normally with the hands on the hoods, one can lift one's hands off the hoods without sliding forward. Not by tilting the saddle back. You shouldn't feel the saddle nose at all.

If you can't move the saddle back far enough, you may not have a setback seatpost. I haven't heard of anyone who couldn't balance on their saddle who was using a setback post and a saddle with normal rails, i.e. not a Brooks.

Miele Man

A few years ago I amazed my riding buddy when whilst going downhill and riding on the drops I showed him that I could remove my hands from the bars and keep my hands beside the drops without sliding or falling forward. He didn't know that was even possible.

Cheers