Tricks to Keep Your Balance on a Bike

To keep your balance on a bike, it's important to be comfortable at all times and to keep a correct posture. You should optimize every part of your bike to use it effortlessly.

In cycling, spinning and mountain biking, it’s very important to keep your balance on a bike. To achieve this, you must make adjustments that will depend on your own body. In the following article, we’ll offer some techniques that will help you to achieve it.

Adjustments to keep your balance on a bike

Let’s go over the main factors that you must keep in mind when adjusting the seat of your bike to start training. Not doing this beforehand may cause injuries or pain that will prevent you from working out correctly.

Seat height

It’s an essential element for anyone who rides a bike. The height of the seat must allow for almost a full knee extension, when the pedal is at the lowest point.

It’s a priority to keep your balance on a bike. If you don’t adjust your seat properly, this could cause different types of injuries. Back problems, cervical problems or an overload on your muscles are all frequent consequences that result from this mistake.

An easy trick to adjust the height of the seat properly consists in standing next to the bike. Then, raise the seat until it’s three or four fingers bellow your hips. Finally, adjust and test it by riding the bike to make sure it’s at the height you actually need.

Seat angle

Have you noticed that with some bikes you slide forward as you ride them? Besides being very uncomfortable, this creates extra tension in your arms and back, and therefore, you may suffer from annoying injuries.

As a rule of thumb, the seat should remain parallel to the ground. To achieve the ideal angle, you can use a mobile app that works as a bubble level.

If the seat is too far back, it will exert too much pressure on the perineal region, so you must avoid this. There are even some anti-prostate seats that have recently appeared on the market, and they have a downward point on the tip. This way, men can avoid prostate problems due to the pressure we were just referring to.

Handlebar height

This is another important feature that you need to adjust if you want to keep your balance on a bike. The handlebar should be at a height that allows your back to be straight, your arms to be relaxed and your shoulders to be down.

These three aspects are essential to avoiding injuries that are due to a muscle overload or to bad posture. Generally, the distance between the tip of the seat, and the center of the handlebar should be around 50 to 60 centimeters.

Special considerations according to the type of bike

Depending on the type of bike and the cycling modality that you practice, the requirements for good posture may vary.

Spinning

Generally, the requirements to keep your balance on a bike for spinning are the same as the ones that we discussed before. Remember, always look in a mirror or ask a professional to evaluate your posture when pedaling.

Mountain bike

In this discipline, there’s an important element that we need to consider: the stem. This part is responsible for joining the handlebar with the frame of the bike fork.

In this sense, you must consider both the angle and length of the stem. Those two aspects will depend on the build and the style of the athlete that uses the bike.

Finally, one last point for tall riders: the size of the crankset. The most common sizes are between 170 and 175 mm. However, tall riders may find 180 mm more comfortable to work out.

Route cycling

In this case, since this is a demanding style of cycling, there are other aspects that come into play. For example, one of them is the size of the bike frame. You should pick one according to how long the inside of your legs are, multiplied by 0,66.

As you can see, to keep your balance on a bike you must make certain changes while keeping in mind your physiognomy and the bike itself. Follow these tips to improve your experience with this sport, in addition to preventing injuries that may cause problems.