Learning Objectives

• Recite the 5 steps to StagesFit from memory
• What are the 2 primary objectives of StagesFit
• I know where to go and who to talk to for all my resource needs regarding the bikes and power consoles

Why Stages Fit?

• To get all riders in the 'safe' zone
• To start class on time, every time

5 Steps to Stages Fit

1. Set handlebar and seat fore/aft adjustments to neutral “0”. Tighten dials.
2. Set seat FitLoc to correct height. Use hip bone (iliac crest) as a landmark.
3. Set handlebar FitLoc to correct height even with or above seat height.
4. Get on the bike and pedal for a minute. Assess seat and handlebar height.
5. Make any needed adjustments and ensure that dials and FitLocs are all locked.

Additional Reading

Why Fit Matters

In the words of Andy Pruitt, Director of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, “Bike fit is a marriage between bike and rider.…Just as married couples must adjust to each other so must a bike and rider.”

Although Andy was referencing a rider and his/her personal steed, his point applies to indoor cycling. There will always be a period of “adjustment” and that adjustment can often make or break the “relationship” with a new participant. One poor experience is all it takes for a potential student to decide that indoor cycling “isn’t for them.” Part of your task as a Stages Indoor Cycling instructor is to ensure that their experience is as positive and success-filled as possible.

Fortunately, The Stages Cycling SC series was created with the user interaction as the design team’s highest priority. Second to that was the need to design a bike that fit a greater majority of users with less room for user error. The geometry of the SC Series provides better bike fit for a larger portion of the population. Combine this with fore/aft adjustability for the seat and handlebars in addition to the patent-pending FitLoc system, and you’ve got the best bike fit experience the indoor cycling community has ever seen.

These easy to access adjustments are intended to suit the anatomy of the rider.

The body, on the other hand, can only be adjusted minor ways. It does indeed adapt by increasing one’s seat time, progressively ramping up intensity, and mindfully designed stretching programs, but it really boils down to your specific anatomy.

The Bike For Every Rider

Adjust your bike to fit your body and recheck your set-up regularly.

Many cyclists get their ideas of “perfect” positioning from watching the instructor, class veterans, pro cyclists on television, live races or finish-line pictures in magazines. Emulating riders that may or may not know what they are doing can lead to a world of hurt. It’s a sneaky kind of hurt, one that may not necessarily happen overnight. Chronic knee pain, back pain, or hip discomfort are your body’s ways of telling you that something needs to change. Re-evaluating your fit is a responsible first step.

As you may have noticed, cycling is a sport of repetition. By its very nature as an endurance sport, cycling continually demands the repetition of the same pedaling motion for the duration of the ride. Even worse still, each pedal stroke is nearly identical! Just think, at a cadence of 90 revolutions per minute, a 60-min ride requires 5400 revolutions of the pedal stroke for each leg. When was the last time you tried 5400 consecutive lunges?

For this reason, informing your participants of the StagesFit™ bike setup is imperative at the onset of each class.

Key Point

It’s easy to adjust a bike but difficult to contort the body into some preconceived “ideal” position.

The primary purpose of a proper fit with regards to indoor cycling is:

1. Injury prevention.
2. Increased comfort.
3. Enhanced power production.
4. An effective cardiovascular workout. Not re-creating race conditions.

StagesFit™

Based on what you now know of the importance of appropriate bike fit, it stands to reason that having the perfect fit for every class would be ideal. However, any veteran indoor cycling instructor can tell you that achieving the perfect fit for every participant is next to impossible. New indoor cycling class participants often do not realize that time is needed for the instructor to properly set them up on the bike. Many times, they’ll arrive just before class begins or even 5 to 10 minutes after the start of class.

Juggling your role as a manager of a group of customers and monitoring individual safety is challenging, yet it is the hallmark of a professional indoor cycling instructor.

For this reason, we advocate StagesFit two times in the beginning of class. By demonstrating StagesFit on your own bike, you can quickly reach more participants. Doing this process at the start of every class makes it feel normal. Even the veterans will feel comfortable to reassess their fit.

For now, let’s focus on the newbies! By demonstrating StagesFit 5-10 minutes prior to the start time of class, you can answer questions and catch a large majority of the participants that have arrived early. Once people are situated and everyone has started riding in warm-up mode, now’s the time to quickly demonstrate for your second StagesFit. We suggest that you dismount the bike and give the StagesFit demo in 60 seconds or less. Do this 1-3 minutes into the start of class.

Master Educators' Tip

Have you ever noticed that new participants often arrive late, seemingly on purpose? No one likes to be called out. No one likes to be “the new kid.” Often times new participants will arrive late hoping to sneak into the back to try the workout. Does anybody really want to raise their hand when the instructor asks, “Who is new to indoor cycling?”

For this reason, addressing the entire audience with the value of StagesFit alleviates some of that “new kid” stress. Individual attention is best delivered at the conclusion of the class, after the new student has had the opportunity to experience success.

What is the "Safe Zone"?

The safe zone is a reference to a window of appropriate knee and hip flexion, measured in degrees.

Knees: When the measured leg is at the bottom of the pedal stroke, the rider’s knee flexion should fall between 25 and 35 degrees. It is generally accepted that most riders produce optimum power, with the least chance of injury in this window.

Hips/Torso: The difference between the height of the handlebars and the height of the saddle can have a noticeable effect on power production and rider comfort. Handlebar height and reach (fore) should be adjusted so your torso angle falls between 40 and 60 degrees. For competitive racers, this angle can be as tight as 30 degrees, but the vast majority of participants will find their greatest comfort and best power output in a less aggressive torso angle.

How is Knee and Hip Flexion Measured?

The most common way to measure a joint angle is by using a device called a goniometer, which functions very much like a giant protractor. A more high-tech solution, dynamic 3-dimensional analysis requires the expertise and diagnostic tools of a trained bike fitter. Truth be told, this process would only be appropriate for individual fit on your personal road, mountain, or triathlon bike.

“Wait a sec. How can I start class on time if I’m measuring people with a goniometer?”

True! Bringing a goniometer to class would help ensure that people fall within the safe zone, but it “violates” our second objective, which is to start class on time.

The Solution

This is where the StagesFit process and the unique design features of the SC bikes come in to play. Let’s be realistic. In the group exercise environment most instructors are simply happy to have people pedaling, music and microphone working before the start of class. Getting everyone perfectly fit and starting class on time would be nigh impossible! The intention of StagesFit is not finding “the perfect fit”; rather it is to put as many riders as possible in the window of safe and acceptable fit AND start class on time. StagesFit done on the SC bikes reduces the possibility of injury and increases the odds of a more enjoyable experience for a first time rider. That’s a win-win!

StagesFit Protocol

Time to completion: 3 minutes or less the first time, 30 seconds or less for the second time.

Step 1: Set fore/aft to “0”

The seat and handlebar fore/aft (front to back) adjustments should be set to the neutral position.

• Loosen the blue dial behind the seat slider.
• Slide it forward or backward into the neutral position.
• To find neutral, look for the laser-etched marked numbers on top of the seat and handlebar fore/aft sliders. The neutral position is marked as a “zero” in both places.
• Tighten the seat slider dial.
• Repeat this whole process for the handlebars.

This neutral position is a great starting point, and often times does not need to be changed once the seat height has been established.

Step 2: Adjust seat height to be even with the top of the hips

The seat height adjustment is by far the most critical component of our StagesFit system. Getting seat height correct means a much greater chance of being in the safe zone.

The seat and handlebar height adjustments are controlled with the Stages FitLoc system. FitLoc combines the safety and security of a traditional pop-pin with the quick and easy adjustability of an over-center cam.

• Firmly grasp the seat post with one hand.
• With your other hand pull up on the FitLoc lever and keep it in this position.
• Notice how easy it is to slide the seat post up or down.
• Release the FitLoc lever so that the internal pin fits into one of the seat post holes.
• Release your grasp on the seat post.

Stand adjacent to the seat. With weight evenly distributed on both feet, locate the top of your hip bones.

• Repeat the steps above until your seat is even with the top of your hip bones. This bony landmark is called the iliac crest.
• Once you are satisfied that your seat height is correct, press the FitLoc lever towards the seat post until you hear it click into place. This is important as it assures that your seat doesn’t move back and forth while you ride.

Master Educators' Tip

In regards to seat height, new cyclists will generally err on the side of too low. The iliac crest is a reliable landmark for seat height. However, it will seem almost too high for many new riders, and in some cases it will be. Just assure your riders that they’ll have ample opportunity to lower the seat in Step 5, if needed. Remember this: Ask your riders to initially err on the side of the seat being too high. Once you’re on the bike and pedaling, it’s much easier to identify seat too high than seat too low.

Step 3: Adjust handlebar height to be even with, or slightly higher than the seat.

Handlebar height is somewhat more discretionary than seat height. However, handlebar height should be at least as high as the seat. New participants will often find more comfort in the lower lumbar spine with the handlebars in a slightly higher position, putting them closer to the 60 degrees side of our torso angle fit window.

• Firmly grasp the handlebars with one hand.
• With your other hand pull up on the FitLoc lever at the very front of the bike and keep it in this position.
• Notice how easy it is to slide the handlebars up or down.
• Aim for the flat section of the handlebars to be even with or slightly higher than the seat.
• Release the FitLoc lever so that the internal pin fits into one of the handlebar post holes.
• Release your grasp on the handlebars.
• Once you are satisfied that your seat height is correct, press the FitLoc lever toward the handlebar post until you hear it click into place. This is important as it assures the handlebars don’t move back and forth while you ride.

Knowledge Nugget

Did you know that it’s possible to have the handlebars too high? 

Many instructors tell new riders to raise their handlebars all the way up because they’ll be more comfortable. This could mean that participants may be sitting nearly upright (90 degrees). 

While this might seem like a good idea, it causes a chain reaction of issues. First and foremost, it’s very difficult to generate decent power at this hip angle. The body’s ability to exert downward force on the 3 o’clock position of the pedal stroke (the forward-most phase), is drastically limited. 

Second, sitting upright causes the pelvis to tilt backwards (posterior tilt) which effectively shortens the reach of the leg. If your participants followed your instructions regarding seat height, it is now nearly impossible for them to reach the bottom of their pedal stroke with the handlebars this high. Typically this leads them to think that the problem is the seat being too high. This causes a cascade of unnecessary adjustments.

Step 4: Get on your bike and pedal!

The simplest way to verify that your seat height is correct is to get on your bike and start pedaling. An often used method of stopping with your foot in the 6 o’clock position to look for a 25-35 degree knee bend is valiant, but is very subjective from the rider's standpoint and once again violates our second objective of starting class on time. Here’s what you need to look for:

• Clip in or place your feet in the toe cages
• Start pedaling with minimal resistance. If the resistance seems too hard, turn the blue dial with the word “STOP” to the left until it feels easy.
• If you can keep your feet flat at the bottom of the pedal stroke with minimal hip-rocking from side to side, then this seat height is appropriate for StagesFit.
• If you must point your toes to reach the bottom of the pedal stroke, or you find that your hips are rocking noticeably from side to side, unclip from your bike and use the FitLoc system on the seat post to lower your seat by 1 hole.
• Repeat this process until you can maintain flat feet and minimal hip-rocking.

Step 5: Final check

Now that you’re certain of your seat height it’s time to make any final adjustments:

• Keep pedaling
• Reach for various positions on the handlebars: The flats, the hoods, and the drops. This should be accomplished comfortably while seated with relaxed shoulders and a slight bend in the elbows.
• If your reach feels over-extended, carefully loosen the handlebar slider and pull the handlebars closer. Secure the slider before putting your weight back onto the handlebars.
• If your reach feels too short, follow the same process, but push the handlebars further away.
• Re-check various positions on the handlebars after your adjustments

Fine-tuning handlebar fore/aft on-the-fly has never been easier than on the SC bikes!

Common question: 

“What about fore/aft adjustment on the seat? According to StagesFit everyone should fit at the “0” mark. What about tall people with long legs?”

Recall from our introduction that the design team modeled the geometry of the SC bikes with the end users in mind. It is this principal that allows us to safely fit the majority of cyclists – even at the zero mark. However, in order for this to be true the seat height of the rider must be correct. This is why step 2 is the most critical to getting riders in the safe zone.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Individuals with longer legs and/or shorter torsos will typically need to adjust saddle set-back to accommodate. But that doesn’t necessarily indicate that they will be outside the safe zone of knee flexion. They may very well be on the cusp, but for StagesFit this is still considered acceptable.

**This concludes the 'Welcome' section. Next, you'll complete a 'Test Your Knowledge' quiz to assess your understanding and retention of the information in this section.