Lifehack – Self Bikefit

Every real cyclist knows this moment: Your wife looks irritated at you, cause you watched out for that bike rider on the right again instead of this freaking hot woman giving you a near pass on the left.

And every good cyclist then can tell, if the saddle of the rider is too high, too low, the bars are too wide or the stem is too long. After a few years of riding you know how a position on the bike should look like.

For myself, I’m the type of person who can totally immerse into a topic. I test out things, get advices or just read a stupid big amount of books on the topic. That’s why I also read “Bike Fit – from Phil Burt“. It’s the modern bible for riders and bike fitters. And with this knowledge, you can fit other riders fairly good to their bike. The Problem is, you can not fit yourself, cause you have to see yourself from a third person view.

And here comes the trick:

With modern technology, I was able to do that. Tools needed:

• A bike trainer
• a folding meter stick
• a smartphone
• a tv
• a google chromecast
• and a selfie stick with tripod

You set your bike up on the trainer. Since you have to level your bike to the ground you should measure the “ground to axle distance” of your rear wheel with the folding meter stick. Then raise the axle of your front wheel exactly to the value you measured on your rear wheel. I had to get a smaller book under the front wheel since the provided Tacx wheel-support brought up the wheel too high.

With the bike leveled, you can now set up your “third person view”. Get your smartphone into the selfie stick. I’m using a “Foneso selfie stick” here. I like this, because it already comes with a small tripod and has a nice and fast locking mechanism for folding it out. Also good for my Gopro on bike rides 🙂

When set up, start your camera on the phone, start your tv and with that you’re chromecast should start automatically. If you haven’t already installed your chromecast, you have to download the app and connect the chromecast to your wireless lan. Since Android 5.0 you can mirror your smartphones screen to a nearby chromecast and that is what you want to do right now. You can find that “screen mirror” option in the settings of your smartphone.

And voila, you have your “third person view”.

I fitted myself again last week and it took me about 2 hours for the whole process. Setting the trainer up, looking at myself from different angles and adjusting the bike.

Since I already had all this tools at home, this fit cost me nothing.

Do you have a lifehack for your bikelife?