We're all individual, but how well do you know your body?
We've had couple of interesting fits of late that have started us thinking, how well do people actually know their bodies? Did we when we started? What role does a bike fit have to play to highlight these differences?
Lets start with question 2, did we know when we started all about our bodies and how it affected how we fit our bikes? Definitely not. It's part of what made learning to be bike fitters such an interesting journey and largely why that journey started in the first place. You think you know, but then you find out some small element that completely changes your riding position. When you're working in millimetres to get the correct fit, any little deviation can make a big difference.
We've had a couple of people in the last few weeks with leg length discrepancies. One was pretty substantial from a road traffic accident but the other 2 clients were completely unaware. They'd struggled for years with various niggles and couldn't understand why fixes they tried didn't work. The client that knew they had the discrepancy just thought that there was nothing that could be done and they would just have to make do.
So what can be done? We have many items that can help and techniques to use when the items can't. Wedges to adjust for variations in forefoot alignment (more common than you'd think), spacers for leg length difference, a wide range of adjustments that can be used to tweak the bike or you to accommodate the individual situation etc.
Most people will have something unique. It might be small enough to be insignificant or it could be the reason your struggling. Finding it and then adapting to it is where a bike fit comes into it's own.
The point is don't think you need to suffer through it. We haven't found a person that couldn't be helped yet.