I am an avid road bike rider. I’ve been riding for years. I normally ride between twenty four miles to thirty two miles about two or three times a week. I wanted to address an issue that may be affecting many bike riders in general. The issue causes numbness in the groin area. The seat you see below in Figure 1 is the original stock seat that was included with my road bike.
This is the original stock seat that I bought with my TREK bike. It is very comfortable, and the comfort of the seat allowed me to experience bike rides in excess for fifty miles. With that being said there are many discomforts a bike rider can experience if his or her road bike is not fitted for him or her correctly which brings me to the topic of this article. The issue I was experiencing for about five years when I went for my road bike rides is numbness to my groin area during the ride. It seems to be caused because of decrease pudendal artery blood flow. The shape of the white seat you see above in Figure 1 seemed to cause me to sit on this artery. So, it decreased penile blood flow. Essentially the saddle shape affects penile blood flow. The narrow saddle is associated with more of a reduction in penile blood flow. I thought there was no remedy for this. After doing some investigation, I found that there might be a remedy. It may have to do with the seat design itself. I wanted to share my findings with you. I went to the bike shop and purchased the following seat in Figure 2 as a solution to the issue.
As you may notice, compared to the white seat, this particular seat has a nice size cut out in the saddle area. It seems that the theory behind this is that the rider will no longer sit on the pudendal artery due to the cut out in the saddle, and hence will not decreased the blood flow to the groin area. The other observation to notice with this seat is that this seat really doesn’t have a nose on it either. I’m happy to report that with this seat I did not experience any numbness. I think it’s because of two reason. One reason is because of the cut out in the saddle, and the other reason is because of the absence of a long nose on the saddle. There was a different issue with this seat; so, I took it back to the bike shop. I wasn’t aware at the time I purchased the seat, but the person helping me at the bike shop sold me this seat that had a bone placement of 168 which is too big for my body. My body requires a bone placement of 138 to 143. Make sure you have your bone placement measured. So, although this new seat solved the numbness issue, it caused other issue because it had a size of 168. If I had gotten the seat size of 138 or 140, there would probably have been no reason to return the seat to the bike shop.
After returning the 168 wide seat in Figure 2 I bought the following seat in Figure 3 & Figure 4.
This seat is narrow like the white seat in Figure 1 that I mentioned above, but it has the cut out similar, but smaller than the seat that was sized at 168 in Figure 2. The new seat has a size of 138. It fits my body perfectly because it is the same size as the white seat in Figure 1 above. I went for a 32 mile bike ride using the latest seat in Figure 3. There was definitely less numbness if any because of the cut out in the saddle. So, my plan is to go back to the bike shop to get the second seat in Figure 2, and buy it in size 138 or 143. I think it may be the perfect solution.
The numbness issue is very very seriously! It doesn’t matter if your object is to enjoy road biking or to use road biking as a means to get healthy. You don’t want to damage your pudendal artery; So, my recommendation is to spend the money necessary to remedy the numbness issue. It is important. It’s not worth possibly permanently damaging your pudendal artery. It could have side effects that you may have to see a doctor for. Feel free to leave a comment, post on your social media page, and subscribe to this website.
