When it Comes to Tulips, It’s Not All Roses Part II: Women’s Saddle Pain
by Elizabeth Bouchard, PCI #905-B/EMSCI #204-B
University of Guelph (ON) Campus Community Police
IPMBA Secretary
Part I of “When It Comes to Tulips, It’s Not All Roses: Women’s Saddle Pain” was published in the 2019 Board Issue of the IPMBA News. In it, we discussed the fact that many female cyclists suffer fairly extreme genitourinary issues caused by their bike saddles. Additionally, we looked at the academic literature pertaining to how riders interface with their saddles and learned that the same amount of scientific vigor has not been afforded to the study of female cyclists as it has to male cyclists. As such, there is much we don’t know regarding what saddles are doing to the female body and why they are causing problems for so many women.
In Part II, we’re going to look at some of the steps a female cyclist can take to alleviate saddle discomfort. Again, because the science is so weak in this area, many of the recommendations made here are anecdotal in nature.
This is a good time to remind everyone that I’m not a medical professional, a bike fitter, a researcher, or an engineer. I’m just a person whose saddle caused me to hurt, which in turn inspired me to read a bunch of academic articles. If your bike is causing you pain, I urge you to seek help from the experts!
What Can One Do Alleviate Saddle Problems?
If you are having saddle problems, the first thing you want to do is spend some time examining your pain. Ask yourself: Exactly what hurts? Where does it hurt? What could be causing this pain? Is the pain closer to your rear end or more toward the front? Is the pain on one side or more generalized? Are you experiencing pain related to pressure or is it chafe? Is the pain internal or external? Are you experiencing other symptoms like bumps, swelling, open wounds, or numbness?
Since there are many different causes of saddle pain, spending some time figuring out exactly what is hurting will go a long way in troubleshooting how the saddle is causing it. Remember also, that your doctor can be a valuable resource in helping you figure out exactly what is going on down there.
Next, if you’ve been riding for a while without any problems and suddenly find yourself in pain, ask yourself what has changed. Are you riding a different bike? Is your bike set up the same way? Did you get a new saddle, new handlebars, or new grips? Are you spending more or less time riding? Has your body changed? If you are nursing an injury or your body has changed in some way (e.g., gotten stronger or weaker), this may affect your riding posture and/or pedal stroke, which in turn can affect how you interface with your saddle.
Once you’ve examined your pain and asked yourself what has changed, you can move onto troubleshooting.
Bike Fit and Adjustment
First and foremost, make sure your bike fits! You want your ischial tuberosities (IT), a.k.a. your seat (or sit) bones, bearing the majority of your weight while seated in the saddle. If your bike is too large, you will have to stretch out while reaching for the handle bars, causing your pelvis and weight to roll forward, which will result in pressure on those soft tissues. Many women find relief by simply raising their handlebars, achieving a more upright riding posture.
Second, make sure your bike is adjusted appropriately. If your saddle is too high, you will rock your hips from side to side at the bottom of each pedal stroke, causing unnecessary movement on the saddle and leading to chafe. If you’re suffering from pressure-related issues or numbness, you should also check your saddle tilt. A nose that is too high can cause these conditions. In fact, a 2016 article by Factory Media reports that many women find saddle pain relief by adjusting the nose down a few degrees (we are talking tiny increments) below level. Keep in mind, however, that if the nose is too low, your weight will start to slide forward onto the nose of the saddle and those soft tissues, and may put extra pressure on your hands and arms.
If your saddle is already level and you are experiencing pain, you might try dropping the nose down a few degrees and seeing if it provides relief. If you get relief, slowly raise the saddle up one degree at a time until you find the right balance between saddle pain relief and bearing too much weight on your arms. Finally, if the saddle fore and aft is incorrectly adjusted, your weight might be resting on the wrong portion of the saddle, like the nose. Andy Pruitt, who is widely considered a leading expert on bike fit, said it best when he said, “The right saddle in the wrong place is as bad as the wrong saddle in the right place.” (Yeager, 2020). If you are consistently having issues it might be worth taking your bike to a professional bike fitter. They can help you get the best setup and can even perform pressure mapping of your current saddle to ensure that it’s in the best location.
Clothing
Are you wearing a chamois with your shorts or pants? If not, you might consider trying a pair. A chamois may provide just enough padding to prevent pressure issues, particularly in the IT area. Quality chamois are made without seams and can also help prevent chafing. It is not recommended that you wear underwear with riding shorts, as they become another layer of fabric that can bunch up or move around. Chamois are also designed to absorb bodily fluids, which in turn can help women avoid issues like vaginitis and UTI’s. Just remember to change out of your chamois as soon as you’re done riding – you don’t want to be sitting in a damp, sweaty chamois any longer then necessary. You want your chamois working for you, not against you, so make sure it is not binding or causing chafe. Chamois are available in many shapes, sizes, and thicknesses, so try on different makes and models to make sure you get one that provides the best fit and coverage for your body.
Grooming and Creams
Do you suffer from saddle sores, chafe, or infected hair follicles? You might want to consider your grooming habits. When it comes to cycling, hair might actually be a good thing because it can act as a layer of protection, whereas women who are clean-shaven risk suffering from shaving rash and/or exasperating chafe. Shaving can also lead to folliculitis that can be extremely uncomfortable and in turn can be compounded by the friction caused by cycling (Yeager, 2020). There are a number of chamois creams on the market designed to lubricate and thus limit friction related to issues. Many manufacturers now produce women-specific varieties that offer a healthy pH balance.
Saddle Design
If all else fails, look specifically at your saddle and how it is designed. Since everyone’s anatomy is unique, there is no “one saddle” that will work for every woman. Nowadays saddles come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and offer many different features to help alleviate a host of problems. Since you’ve already spent some time examining where exactly your pain is and have tried to diagnose what is causing it, you should be at a point at which you can experiment with different saddles to help alleviate your problem. However, you should be cognizant of the fact that some of these features may actually be the cause of your problem.
The first thing to consider is the type of saddle you are using. A road bike saddle tends to be longer with minimal padding, affording the rider maximum power generation. The mountain bike saddle tends to be a bit shorter, with more cushioning, and is made of more durable materials. Mountain bikers tend to spend less time in the saddle and shift around the cockpit more frequently than road cyclists; this design affords the rider maneuverability while offering a bit more cushioning to help absorb trail vibrations.
Touring saddles are a combination of the road and mountain bike saddle designs in that they are a bit longer than a typical MTB saddle, but offer more cushioning then the typical road saddle. Keep in mind that extra-soft saddles can cause problems for those who a spend a long time spend actually seated in the saddle as their sit bones tend to sink into the cushioning. This can cause unnecessary pressure on soft tissues and also led to chafe. For these reasons, touring saddles are the saddle of choice for the majority of public safety cyclists.
The next thing to consider is whether to select a unisex or woman-specific saddle. Many women are perfectly comfortable riding on unisex saddles. However, if you’re still reading this article, it’s likely that you are experiencing discomfort, so it might be time to think about women-specific saddle features. Women’s soft tissues sit further back, as compared to men, so our sensitive tissues tend to come in contact with the saddle sooner. Additionally, women tend to have wider ischial tuberosities. As such, many women find relief using saddles that are designed with the female anatomy in mind.
As we noted in Part I, there is some academic research that suggests that women do benefit from saddles designed with a wider back so as to accommodate those wider IT’s; however, the research on other women-specific saddle features is inconclusive (Potter, et. al., 2008). If sit bone pressure is your issue or you feel your IT’s are not bearing enough of your weight as you ride, a professional bike fitter can help measure your IT’s and then help fit you to a saddle of appropriate width. You can also find a number of videos on the internet to assist you in performing this task on your own. If you suffer from chafe on your inner thighs, you are going to want to examine where the back of your saddle begins to flare out and if that might me the cause of unnecessary friction. Where the saddle begins to taper differs from one model of saddle to the next, so if this is a problem for you, try a different saddle.
Other women’s specific design features include:
Saddles that have a shorter nose. Many women ride smaller bikes and/or bikes with shorter top tubes, so a shorter nose may aid your ability to move around the cockpit and may be helpful in getting on and off the bike. This is especially true in the public safety cycling environment where a long nose can inadvertently get hooked on a duty belt or other equipment. Some manufacturers also include softer material toward the nose of the saddle to help cushion sensitive tissues.
Cutout or relief channels. The early women-specific saddle design almost always included a center cutout channel, the purpose of which was to alleviate pressure on soft tissues. Many women find relief using a saddle with a cutout, so if the cutout works for you, then don’t stop using it. However, there is some research that suggests that the cutout can cause undo pressure on the tissues that sit along the outside of the cutout, creating its own pressure problems (Bastone, 2019). For this reason, many women hate the centre cutout.
John Cobb of Cobb Cycles maintains that his internal research suggests that the length of a woman’s labia minora is a major contributing factor to saddle comfort. According to Cobb, women with longer labia minora, whom he describes as “outies,” tend to have more pronounced and exposed soft tissues and thus often prefer saddles with cutouts and wider noses. Alternatively, Cobb suggests women who are “innies” have less exposed sensitive tissues and thus don’t necessarily require a cutout and often prefer a narrower nose (Arthurs-Brennan, 2016). Andy Pruitt, conducting research on behalf of Specialized, designed a clear plastic saddle and then physically watched what was happening to the tissues of a number of female subjects as they rode a stationary bike. Pruitt suggests that for some women, their tissues can actually fall into the cutout while they are riding, causing the tissues to swell painfully. As a result of his research, Pruitt designed a saddle with a relief channel as opposed to a cutout. The channel is made of layers of foam that are designed to cradle the soft tissues (Bastone, 2019). If you choose to use a saddle with a cutout or a relief channel it is imperative to remember that the placement of that channel has to line up with your particular anatomy or else the design might actually work against you.
In conclusion, the bike saddle is an inherently personal piece of equipment. While there is still a lot we don’t know in terms of how women interact with their saddles, the good news is that there have been number of high-profile female riders who have started to demand answers. As such, bike saddle manufacturers have taken notice and the academic community is also starting to come on board with women’s specific research. Hopefully in the next few years there will be more concrete scientific evidence to help alleviate women’s saddle pain. In the meantime, if you are experiencing pain or discomfort, it is important to recognize that you are not alone and you should NOT have to suffer while riding your bike.
There are a number of steps you can take to help alleviate pain and discomfort, and there are myriad saddle designs you can try out. Since every person is different, you may have to try out many different saddle variations and tweaks to your bike setup to ensure that everything is coordinated for your specific body. If nothing seems to be working, it may be in your best interest to seek the assistance of a medical professional, a physiotherapist, and/or a professional bike fitter.
Remember, happy tails equals happy trails – stay safe out there, ladies!
Liz is a sergeant with the University of Guelph Campus Community Police where she supervises a platoon and oversees the organization’s bike patrol unit. She has been an IPMBA instructor since 2006, was elected to the IPMBA Board in 2018, and is currently serving as secretary. A good day for Liz involves a backcountry trail and a cold beer; when she’s not enjoying either she can be reached at ebouchard@police.uoguelph.ca.
Citations
Arthurs-Brennan M. “The Saddle Comfort Question: Are you an ‘Innie’ Or An ‘Outie?’”. Total Women’s Cycling.com, 2016, http://www.totalwomenscycling.com/fitness/cobb-saddles-ask-innie-outie.
Bastone K. “Specialized’s New Saddle Puts Women’s Comfort First”. Outside.com, 2019, http://www.outsideonline.com/2398635/specialized-bike-saddles-mimic-women.
Factory Media. “Beginners: Bicycle Saddle Angle Adjustment”. Total Women’s Cycling.com, 2016, http://www.totalwomenscycling.com/commuting/beginners-bicycle-saddle-angle-adjustment.
Potter J, Sauer J, Weisshaar C, Thelen D, Ploeg H. “Gender Differences in Bicycle Saddle Pressure Distribution during Seated Cycling”. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2008; 40; 6; 1126-1134.
Yeager S. “How To Prevent Saddle Sores and Common Issues For Women”. Bicycling.com, 2020, http://www.bicycling.com/training/g20048467/protect-your-lady-parts-against-these-5-cycling-afflictions/.
Photo courtesy Raymond Cervantes/Fort Worth Police Department.
(c) 2021 IPMBA. This article appeared in the 2021 IPMBA News Product Guide.