99% Of Cyclists Make This Mistake When Buying A New Bike

🤔What is the biggest mistake you've made when buying a bike?
Let us know 👇

If you make a mistake buying a new bike..it is the local bike shop s fault...unless you buy internet direct..then the fukup is all your fault...go to a good lbs

This is so cool!

Buying the expensive bike is the mistake.

How tall are you?

Only 8 locations in all of the US and Canada, so the cost of the fitting plus round trip airfare

57.5 recommended... but 56 can work. What if you want the smaller frame for lighter weight? It would be cool if you could enter optimization parameters, to sort of guide the selected bike based on niche desires.

Selle Italia SLR Boost... legendary saddle. It came standard on my Canyon Aeroad and, 2,000 miles later, I've never ever thought about it. I mean, my body has never produced pain or pressure points pointing to the saddle.

Nice idea. Then try getting the vendor of the $15,000 bike to adjust the standard stem or crank or… anything at all. Some manufacturer is going to win a lot of market share when they actually focus on the customer and fix that problem.

Was wondering when we'd see this weirdo bike again! I forgot how sophisticated it is. The hardware, the bike itself, is amazing... but the software, the calculations, is where the real magic happens.

didn't you guys do this exact video but with Manon last year or something like that? Still a very cool concept. Too bad it's not more widespread and more available.

I generally always have to change the Stem and Handlebars as they come with a 90 or 100mm stem and I run 120, and handlebars are 42 with a 80 to 90 reach, where I run a 40 and slightly shorter reach between 70 and 75.

I see a Microsoft Xbox One Kinect sensor in use, I use one for rudimentary 3D scanning.

i bought a Canyon. they suggested a M. Which i got. I then adjusted all the components to feel comfy. cant be any more difficult than that --also makes sense to raise stack for a longer ride. That what my brain would think. You never said how much it costs to get a bike fit. also id have to throw in airfare from vancouver and hotel.

It blows my mind that 99% of cyclists including GCN presenters that I assumed were relatively experienced & knowledgeable are on the wrong sized bike.

Got to love the motion capture is done with an Xbox 360 Kinect :-) very old school

I actually love this idea. I'm sure it will work better and better and that's exactly what everybody needs before getting a bike - the bloody fit.

Thanks for the video! I personally can't bring myself to spend thousands on a bike. I do appreciate a bike that fits me. I changed my stem to a shorter and more upright one. And moved my saddle forward 3 cm. The bike feels much better. I'm looking for compact bars 70 reach and 122 drop like Simon's. Do you know the brand he uses?

Would be interesting to see what results the machine gave me.
I ride a 65cm canyon with an upwards pointing stem and a saddle height of 952mm.

May be worth the £300 to be told it’s only the 64cm roubaix or maybe a 2xl canyon endurace and nothing else.

I appreciate that for the endurance fit it raised your handlebar without shortening the reach. Most riders can manage sitting a little bit higher without having to scrunch their spinal columns.

Very few brands give you any choice now on component changes. You get what you get or you have to pay the shop to get and install a replacement the right size.

Ollie would not ride a 57.5 because there would hardly be any seatpost sticking out and be exceptionally stiff. So this 'machine' has not learnt anything!

Those aero farings on that car bike are almost as sexy as Ollie's cow lick quiff. I wonder if either are UCI legal...

Click bait title to force a long add in to the system. Not cool

Phil Burt's book should be required reading before you get a bike. He is amazing - so is his book.

Why is every new gcn video a fkin add, I miss the old days

I bought a Trek Domane in 54 cm, and always felt uncomfortable riding it. Swapped to an 80 mm stem, and 170mm cranks and the bike is much better now. The relaxed geometry helps. I purchased a Madone the next year in size 52 cm, and it fits like a dream.

I have a suggestion for a GCN video…..are cyclists the most salty audience in the world? What is it about large sections of the cycling community and their miserable, penny-pinching attitude to anyone or any company (like GCN) offering up free content. All they are suggesting is get a fit before you buy, not after. No one (normal) could argue with that. Other than the cycling peasants out there that is

Removing 'when' from the video title would make it more relevant

Interestingly after my fit I shortened stem and cranks and tweaked position but after some time and subsequent fits I’m back to my original stem albeit in a much lower position.

It is important to note that ID Match fits are done in the drops, completely ignoring your position when riding on the hoods (where you spend most of your time) and thus also handlebar reach and hood-position itself. As those latter two have a rather big impact on your position I'm not sure how good exactly the fit is in the real world.

Also, I did an ID Match fit because I wanted to buy a new bike and was looking for the exact set-up, but I never got access to the bike database. Their customer service stopped replying after one email, at which point I had not received any information yet and the fitter redirected me directly to ID Match itself. The website states that such a database seems to exist but there is no information to be found whatsoever.
The fitter also managed to measure my foot wrong and lined up my cleats with the ball of the foot. Something that hasn't been done in the last 10+ years anymore - resulting in instant knee pain on the next ride. Upon asking him why setting up the cleats that way he cited several decade old studies and pulled out some screenshots that didn't really say anything.

Between the system that is not really considering your real-world riding position and a weird experience with the fitter itself I would not recommend ID Match. Instead I would suggest you visit an experienced bike fitter with a background in physiotherapy or similar and not only looks at how you "look" on the bike but also considers your physiology and past injuries etc for the fit - a thing the computer struggles with.

Ah. also. It is a Selle Italia program so naturally you can try different saddles but only from their own range.
The result sheet showed that I might need a slightly wider saddle. Guess if I got the information which one it might be? Nope.

Quirky that the system doesn't use hoods and forces the rider to be on the drops. Most people don't ride on the drops.

The cycling industry never fails to discover new and innovative ways to extract money from affluent consumers.

Like a lot of GCN videos, 99% of us don't have access to this fitting technology.

Always selling product, vids are them jabbering about blah, & I’m done. The vids are sales pitches for product most of the time. I do appreciate the cast, but I’m out. Unsubscribe.

This is what we should be using AI for. Seriously cool tech.

this is really cool and all and i get that instead of paying so much in parts to replace and all that you can pay for a one time fit to find out but i feel like people dont get how expensive this would be. its around 300 dollars for the fit itself and i can imagine its not everywhere, so you'd also have to pay to travel to wherever you can get an idmatch bike fit. it just makes it kinda hard to justify it when i could probably get it done for much cheaper

Correction: 99% of cyclists do not have access to this machine.

A bike fitting should be included with the price of a bike and be offered in every bike shop for every bike.

I had my bike fit done with Vires Velo and Hayden, went up a bike size too and shorter crank length 😊 then i bought a Factor ostro vam 🤷‍♀️😳🤣🚴🏻‍♂️

It'd be great if gcn did a accuracy comparison on online bike fit sites with physical fits like this. Unfortunately, I'm not in 0.0001% of gcn viewers that can afford a 'proper' fit. Having been off the bike for a few years, my old settings were causing serious discomfort. With an extra 4" around the waist and seriously unfit, I found an online site that took my new body size and existing bike then recommended changes. Have to say, it's been pretty accurate. Saved a millennia of time tweaking stuff myself. Not entirely discomfort free, but better by considerable degrees.

I wish manufacturers let you pick your components a la carte. I fit a size 58 Trek Domane and had to swap out the handlebars for 40cm ( stock was 44) and am planning on getting shorter cranks eventually ( Stock is 175mm). I should have been able to make those choices at time of purchase, at a minimum with the same component level, possibly same or optional upgrade to a higher level, and then they could assemble my bike.

I think that the key point is to consider getting a pro bike fit that uses an adjustable bike-emulation machine before buying a bike. Both my wife and I are in the middle of a fitting where the fitter used mechanical device, similar in concept to the one in the video but with manual dials and levers, to dial it to fit our dimensions. He also used devices to measure our sit bones and shoe sizes. So this cost $200 each (was $150 last year), and the conclusion was that we both had bought bikes that were too big. My wife found her entry-level Specialized gravel bike to be too uncomfortable to ride more than 10 miles, but after getting new handle bars, stem, grips, and a seat with proper set up she is now riding without pain. Perhaps investing in a bike fit first could have saved us the extra $400 in new bike parts for her $750 bike. Still waiting on parts for my road bike…

Using the id match locator: Sorry, we couldn't find a store in the area you searched for. Oh, and it's $300

Being stupidly tall (2.03m), it's surprisingly easy to choose a bike: "I'll just take the biggest bike you have, thanks!"

In all seriousness, a lot of manufacturers (cough cough Ribble, cough cough) build really small bikes and XL is only 58cm fitting folk up to 190cm. It's pretty annoying.

Seems odd that there wouldn't just be a known best fit algorithm and that it would have to learn. Does that mean that if I waited a year I would get a better fit than if I ran out and go and got a fit right now? My guess is that they are just trying to use AI/Machine Learning buzzwords to get into the media. Can you provide feed back after a few weeks of riding to let the machine know how well it actually worked? Because without good feedback down the line after you've had some time to determine how good the fit was, I don't think it could really learn much.

Isn’t ID fit already old news? I think I saw it on Eurobike 2019. It’s just that it’s a very expensive tool that doesn’t do much, so it’s rarely seen. There is no electronic bike fitting better than a very good bike fitters eye

How much ? You didn’t say!

not very informative