I’m 5’7” inseam 30 weight 220ish. I’ve been riding my bike for about 3 months. It’s a polygon premier 4 medium. Trying to get my bike dialed in. Bike feels small to me. I bought an adjustable stem and it had helped but still not solid. Any suggestions?
by Radiant_Taste
6 Comments
It’s a short xc wheelbase medium bike for sure. Do you have a longer trail bike that you can try out? Or a size up xc?
Remove the spacers from below your stem, increases the reach slightly and gets you less upright. Setting the stem slightly angled downwards might also help. Additionally did you play around with the saddle setback?
When/where do you feel the most cramped?
It looks too small. You can slide the seat back a bit, use a longer stem, but it’s just too small unfortunately.
It does look a tad small. What kind of riding are you doing? Light trails, some gravel, or some singletrack? Doing much climbing?
Some thoughts…
1. The seat tube angle on that bike is quite slack at 73 degrees. That may be leaving the rear end feeling short, like you’re way out over the back wheel. Makes climbing harder than it can be on a bike with more modern geometry. Modern trail bikes are in the 76/77 degree range, putting you more over the pedals and less over the rear wheel. Power is easier to generate.
2. You may want to raise the seatpost a bit. Hard to tell from one video, even with the good angle, but many riders will err on the side of a shorter seatpost as it gives a safer feeling to the ride, but getting a full extension will make power delivery easier, spinning easier, and make the bike feel like it fits better. Go up in small increments, 5mm or so at a time. See how that feels. Of course this will affect point #1, pushing you slightly further out over the back wheel. Which may be totally fine.
3. The bike is designed for an upright, comfortable ride. Extending the stem will stretch you out a bit and feel maybe a bit more like the right fit, but it has side effects. You may feel too far over the front in some situations, and the handling will feel slightly more twitchy. This will be exacerbated to a small degree by…
4. The very steep head tube angle at 69 degrees. Modern trail bikes geo is more in the 64 – 67 range, with many at the slacker end of that. This pushes the wheel out further in font and allows the bike to feel more stable going downhill. On some bikes it can make climbing a little harder, but modern bikes compensate for that with the steeper seat tube angle (see above) pushing you further forward.
If none of that resonates with how it feels, ignore me!
All that is to say you can tweak this bike a bit, but there will be some amount of compromise as you change the geo. You may or may not notice, and the tweaks may or may not help. Hard to say from here.
Your local bike shop can help you fit it, if it’s a good one. They may charge a bit for a fitting if they didn’t sell you the bike, you can call around. Hope that helps!
smol.. way too smol…
That’s looks so uncomfortable and too small for you