Note, for the TLDR folks, skip to the last line.
Surely on an ebike forum we can recognize that the prostate torturing masochistic crouch might not be the most anatomically optimal posture for anyone who has evolved to walk upright?
See I would not take it that far. As much as placebo may play a large part of the "comfort" of said "lean forward" position there is merit to the idea of the narrow seat when leaning forwards. As I said, it would prevent chafing where the gluteus maximus meets the spate of muscles and fat in the upper leg. I think some people--
your typical "aaah wall of text" TLDR nose-breathing half-tweets--might have missed that detail whilst knee jerking to "how dare you call it BS"
The marketing scam hoodoo-voodoo nonsense is that the inaccurately named "sit bones" have ANYTHING to do with that. Again in the lean forward narrow seat position they're completely out of the equation. And when seated upright they may be pressure points, but that does
NOT mean that "most of your weight" is on them.
It also doesn't mean it doesn't work for those types of riders. Where it becomes even bigger bullshit though is when you try to blanket apply that design to everyone. We're all different weights, we all prefer different stances on the bike (upright vs. lean forward), men and women have differently shaped pelvis and ... equipment down there, we all have different range of motion.
Most of my accessibility knowledge applies to websites and software, not ergonomics, but study in that side of it is required when you start working in accessibility and efficiency.
Why are some programmers less productive? Sometimes comfort plays into it. When you have an office where every single chair and desk is the same, there's a problem. You'd be surprised at how many people blame sitting in the office for their back problems --
something scams like "standing desks" exploit -- when their problem is a crappy chair. Again, see those '90's "ergonomic" chairs that kind-of worked at the start just because it was a different posture. The long term result is often adding muscle strain, fatigue, and just changing where the pain is directed.
All for something that getting a better chair and going for a walk at lunchtime could fix.
What I kept telling clients about their offices: The keyboard, mouse, display, desk, and chair are the number one things you interact with. In a work environment those are more important than how "powerful" the computer is for productivity when you're stuck sitting there 7+ hours a day. They'll blow five grand on the computer, and then cheap out on everything else when it should be the other way around!
You see the same thing in industrial just on a grander scale, where the engineers creating production machines put zero concern into the comfort of the worker, and as such leaving a lot of productivity on the production floor.
And that's a great simile for biking. Don't assume what the bike came with is ever going to be good for you. Don't assume that the "everyone needs a thin seat and to lean forward" is going to apply to everyone. It takes time and money if you're going to ride more than an hour on the weekend to dial in everything for your best comfort, safety, and efficiency. Again, "one size fits all fits nobody."
Society as a whole has a problem with taking good ideas that apply and work across a narrow range, and slathering it in as the answer to every problem. Worse thanks to cost-cutting and corporate greed, the idea of "one size fits all" is a mantra that does more harm than good. This is only exacerbated by the various fallacies that an ill educated and gullible society accepts as fact. False simplicity, survivorship bias, confirmation bias (CB), cognitive dissonance (CD)...
CB and CD are two sides of the same coin. The former being "it worked for me so it must be the truth", the latter being "it worked so it's the truth so anything else must be a lie". The door to glittering generalities and card stacking, two out of seven of the core propaganda techniques.
When it might not be true, or factual, and if it worked it may have just been blind luck. You figure the "social animal" and the human need for belonging into the mix, and you've got "bandwagon". (3 of 7). People like to belong to groups, those groups are often formed of the like minded, so anyone or anything that threatens the group's beliefs is an enemy to be fought. See mind-numbingly ignorant rubbish like religion. There's a reason threats of "excommunication" and "pity and distrust of non-believers" are core principles of every single fairy tale about lunatic genocidal sky wizards.
Thus leading to the "popularity fallacy", where "so many people can't be wrong." Not to single out Christians, but you'll hear the "true believers" say things like "2.2 billion people can't be wrong". Ignoring the other 5.5 billion who think Christians are full of s***. It's why when people say things like "millions of riders believe and benefit from the narrow seats" it sets off my BS alarm. Popularity doesn't make something good.
See the crime against music that was handing the tone deaf auto-tuned bimbo Billie Eilish a Grammy. Where the hell is Floor Jansen's Grammy?
Billions of people believe all sorts of crazy nonsense. Racism, bigotry, religion, shoving jade eggs up the holiest of holies, organic foods, naturopathy, and the Ice Capades.
Doesn't make any of them right! Arguing "but the mob agrees" is not persuasive, it's manipulative.
Again logic fallacies play their part. You take the "pressure maps" used. They try to say most of your weight is focused on the "sit bones" because those are the highest "points". A concept as screwed up as the "flaw of averages". (and why one should prefer median, not average).
I've written about logic fallacies and propaganda a good deal.
I recently wrote an article “PHP Isn’t Dying” where a lot of people missed the point. I was ridiculing the endless stream of articles…
medium.com
Near as can be told the “Seven Classical Propaganda Techniques” were first codified in an uncredited article in the second issues of…
medium.com
In the case of the pressure maps of your backside for seats we see a statistical fallacies. Let's see... looking for a sample pic:
Ok, do you see the fallacy? Whilst yes, there are two pressure spots, few if any people have "sit bones" that close together. More so though, the majority of weight being applied is likely NOT on those red spots, that's just where the
most pressure is.
There's a difference!
Side note, I'd love to see a pressure map done using something shaped like one of the narrow seats with the subject leaning forwards instead of sitting upright.
Without a number key to indicate how much pressure those values mean, it's entirely possible the green area or even the blue area are in fact holding more total weight than the high pressure red. Drawing a conclusion based on these pressure maps is utterly flawed, and the type of shortcuts more commonly taken by marketers and scam artists. In fact,
reducing pressure on the highest points has been known to reduce back pain.
All you need to do is look at decades of research for wheelchairs.
That is the opposite of the message these bicycle seat makers are delivering where they run their mouths about lining up the seat to direct pressure on the tuberosities. It's literally the rule of 12.
It's like if you had a hex-map. Oooh boy, ascii art time. Let's say we're measuring pounds of weight by distribution.
Code:
___
___/ 1 \___
/ 1 \___/ 1 \
\___/ 5 \___/
/ 1 \___/ 1 \
\___/ 1 \___/
\___/
The center hex is a pressure point holding 5 pounds all by its lonesome, but the majority of weight -- six pounds of it -- is being held by the surrounding six hexes. Same reason a main battle tank doesn't dig in on mud while a car does. The design of the treads is meant to spread out the weight so it puts less pounds per square inch into the ground despite weighing ten to twenty times as much.
This is why the idea that
directing more weight towards the tuberosities is the OPPOSITE of good ergonomics! It's nonsensical gibberish!
And if it works at all, as I've been saying, it's because the lean forward riding position moves weight away from the "sit bones" altogether. They hit upon something that works, but the reason they're using in the marketing to explain how it works is 100% grade A farm fresh manure.
And it certainly is not the be-all end-all answer for every rider. Again, that blanket application that happens when cultism, elitism, and just plain confirmation bias result in a good idea being applied to all the wrong places.
TLDR: The narrow seat isn't BS if you ride leaning forwards, it just doesn't apply to those sitting upright, and the "sit bones" claim explaining it is a bald faced lie.
