 Fit & Comfort
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Lower Your Seat For Mountain Biking
If you find that you regularly change your off-road riding position; it's helpful to have a quick-release seat-post clamp. Some bikes come with these but it's an easy upgrade if yours didn't. We can show you a quick-release bolt that'll fit.
Quick-And-Easy Seat Change
With a quick-release seat-post clamp, seat-height changes are as simple as opening the QR, sliding the seat to the correct position and clamping the QR closed. With practice, some riders can do this while riding, but it's not easy. The best bet for most riders is to stop, adjust the seat and continue riding.
Lower For Control
The most common time to lower a seat is when you're riding tricky sections of trail such as dropoffs and rocky descents. Here, the correct pedaling position isn't important. What's needed is a comfortable and safe body position so you can apply body English to the bike to get through the tricky sections with safety and style.
Lube The Post
One important and often-neglected point about seat adjustment is that you've got to the keep the post lightly lubricated in the frame so it's easy to move. Left dry, the post can actually freeze in the frame due to corrosion and due to water that can seep between the seat post and frame on wet rides. To prevent these types of problems and keep your post moving freely, extract it about every couple of months (more frequently if you ride in wet conditions a lot) and apply a little lube to the inside of the seat tube on the frame (if you smear the lube on the seat post, it'll get scraped off when you slide the post into the frame).
Mark Your Seat Position
When you begin changing your seat position, you might forget where you had it in the first place. That can be a pain if you spent a lot of time getting your seat height right for optimum efficiency. The solution is to mark the seat post with an indelible marker so you can always find your original settings. It won't hurt to measure the distance from the top of the saddle to the center of the bottom bracket. If you memorize this number, even if your mark wears off, you'll be able to find the proper position and re-mark the post. (Don't scratch the post to mark it because this can weaken it and cause it to break.)
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