How To Pick The Perfect Mountain Bike Saddle
As you start to become fitter then you are going to be in the saddle a lot more and for a lot longer. Rides are going to be upto (or even over) two hours. This means you are going to need a serious saddle to keep saddle sores at bay. There is nothing worse than a long ride with a saw ass caused by a poor saddle and in this guide we are going to advise you on how to choose the perfect mountain bike saddle.
First lets take a look at the shape of your saddle. Most saddles are narrow at the front and get wider at the back. This is almost the classic shape however it’s not the correct anatomical shape, especially for women who tend to need more width in the middle.
Mountain bike seats have more cushion than road or triathlon saddles, mainly (and obviously) because the need more cushion to absorb shocks from all the jumps and bumps that you are bound to go over over the course of a normal mountain bike ride.
Lets review so far - first you are going to want to decide if you are a man or a woman and secondly you are going to want to choose how much padding you want.
There are two main types of padding; the standard issue foam rubber which gives you a more bulky saddle or the new, gel saddles which offer comfort without being bulky and adapt to your body to maximise on comfort, form and shape.
There is a third way and that is to use an actual shock absorber seat. These use rubber bumpers and offer variable suspension. They are costly and to be perfectly honest don’t offer much more than a standard gel seat.
Female saddles and cutaway saddles are similar to normal gel saddles except they have the centre section removed to reduce pressure on the body. They are great if you can never get comfortable on the bike.
More importantly that anything else is to make sure that your saddle, seat post and bike are correctly set up as you can have the best saddle in the world but if the bike it’s on is incorrectly setup then you will never have a smooth ride.