The craziest bike saddle I’ve ever used

Monera is a Swiss saddle brand with a focus on men’s saddles. This, the ONE/1, aims to relieve pressure on the prostate through a wide and hollow central section and the absence of a nose. Liam takes this wild saddle design out

We also visit Brian at The Bike The Body to pressure map the saddle, compare it to something more conventional and get his bike fit expertise.

Thanks to Brian for sharing his thoughts.

Brian’s Website – https://www.thebikethebody.com/
Brain’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/thebikethebody/

Timecodes
00:00 Morena ONE/1
00:42 Prostate Issues
01:55 Test Riding
03:25 Expert Bike Fit Analysis

[Applause] This is a bike saddle, but so apparently is this. [Music] Cycling is a very conservative sport, conventional if you will. Things have been done one way for generations and that’s the way things stay. It’s why the UCI likes to ban fun new tech with its stick. But every now and again, you get a brand coming along and trying something new, like Marina, and it’s designed for a rather serious purpose. I’ve got it on my bike to test if it works. But first, we need to talk about a serious problem facing cyclists. I’m not going to get too deep into the science because really, this is a subject that warrants much more discussion with actual medical professionals. I’m not one if you hadn’t guessed, but cyclists and male cyclists in particular can have issues with their prostate. And some like Merina have pointed the finger at these, well, not these, these saddles. I mean, I can kind of see why. They’ve got barely any padding. Most of your weight sits right on it. And bike rides can last for hours. I’ve tested a lot of saddles in my life and ridden loads of test bikes with saddles from different brands. There are some that are really uncomfortable for me and have a small list of brands whose saddles honestly you couldn’t pay me to use. I’ve heard experts say that numbness and pain for one ride isn’t something to worry too much about, but you should be looking to do a bike fit or try a different saddle if that pain persists. So, I guess the first thing to do is at least test if this thing is comfortable. Let’s go for a ride. [Music] I’ve had this on my bike now for a few rides and I want to start with that all important pressure relief. There is there’s no pressure. Obviously, there’s such a massive cutout, but I was kind of expecting some of that pressure to go to the outsides. That hasn’t happened. But what’s already noticeable is how much more pressure is being put into my hands. Now, I’ve lowered this saddle massively. We’re talking a few cm to compensate for the added stack height of the design. I can go, dear viewer, from uh seated right down into the aerot tuck so very easily cuz there’s no nose to get in my way. The real kicker for me and where I think I’ll leave this section of real world testing is the price. This thing is €310, which is a significant sum of money, but also is not unreasonable for a saddle, but it does put it in the ballpark of some of the some of the some of the best on the market. Don’t get squirly in a corner, bike. Yeah. Let’s go and see Brian. But first, we needed to get the pressure mapping sensor onto the saddle. As you can see, it didn’t quite fit. So, we had to improvise. So, we’ll get you riding in settled in a little bit. I’ve obviously seen you on a bike before. We’ve done some fit stuff before. And, you know, I know that you can re hold your pelvis reasonably stable cuz you can already see you shifting forwards. And so without any forward pos like without any forward saddle contact here on this part of your pelvis, you’ve got nothing to hold you. So if we look at what we call your balance test, maintain a reasonable power and then what I want you to do is hold your body position and just lift your hands back away to the side. What? Yeah. Right. And he’s gone. On a road bike or a gravel bike, you’re not sitting completely upright. You’re sitting slightly rotated forward. Right. And what that does is it gives you some purchase across this part of your issopubic ramis to have some support forward. Okay. And then on on that basis we have to still provide relief for the central soft tissue pudendal nerves and arteries in the paranium. So that’s where cutouts are often useful or pressure relief channels. Again different things work for different riders but have we have to have something forward otherwise there’s nothing to stop your pelvis from continuing to roll as we just saw when you did that balance test there. There’s nothing there for you to purchase on. It’s really padded with very soft padding and then it’s also really flexible. So if you imagine how your balance feels standing on the ground and then imagine you stand on top of you know one of those physio wobble cushions. Yeah. It takes away a lot of your propriception your feedback. So your body actually doesn’t know where it is in space because it’s on lots of soft and flexible moving surfaces. So you basically lost propric reception. So, it’s like, you know, going from barefoot to standing in a big, say, maximalist shoe, like, you know, like a big ultra shoe. Um, and then standing on top of a wobble cushion or one of those balance cushions, you your foot just doesn’t know where it is because there’s too much instability. And that’s where like getting to the end of this level of padding where you’re like, oh, it’s nice and squishy, but you just don’t have any support. You don’t have any control. You’ll alleviate pudendal uh nerve compression and replace it with excessive ulner and median nerve compression in your wrist and hands and end up with a new problem. Um so if you if you say oh yeah it takes away numbness from the paranium correct but at what cost? A cost beyond that which you can actually ride the bike safely I would argue certainly comfortably and with any kind of stability and ability to perform on the bike as well. So what you see here are these are the only points where the pressure mat is actually able to pick up any meaningful contact but it’s so low 128 mibars up to maximum 257 millibars for reference that’s very low for for your sitbones. Okay. Now what we will say as you said is we have got sitbone contacts. Yeah. And we don’t have contact through the paranium and the pudendal nerves and arteries for sure. But what we do have is a massive discrepancy in where your center of pressure is. Your weight is way off to the right hand side as well. So we’ve shown what it removes. Yeah. But then we’ve also hopefully shown the cost of doing that. Yeah. And so ultimately is there a better way of doing that? Saddle manufacturers are clearly still trying to figure that out. That’s why stuff like this kind of periodically crops up. We then popped on a regular saddle for comparison. This is kind of what we want to see, right? Two areas of pressure more focused around the sitbones, pretty balanced between left and right side. The pelvis, the center of pressure moving side to side, fairly horizontal line. Um, you know, demonstrating good stability and a nice kind of spread of pressure forward. Little point there with slightly higher pressure, but it’s 300 millibars, so it’s not very high. So now with this contact here, you have stability on the front of the seat. So what we should do is look at your balance test, for example. Yeah. So, let’s go riding again. Like that. Yeah. So, that’s what a balance test should look like. The ability to lift your hands off and place them back on. Look at your pelvic stability. Yeah. Actually, the stripe in your jersey is a really good one, right? Cuz you can see it waggling around like a dog’s tail. Here on the the wing seat, your shoulders are more pitched upwards. Your hands are shorter the hoods because you know you’re not stable. So, you’re bringing your hands closer in a bid to support yourself. Your body’s making a decision to put the hands closer to reduce the workload because it’s having to deal with that pressure. There’s nowhere else for it to go. All you need to think about is the torso angle. If the net torso angle, in my opinion, is probably anything more than 80° or 10° forward inclined, you’re going to find that you’re going to just fall forward and be unstable and put pressure in your hands. So, while I love the idea of pressure relief saddles, this one doesn’t do it for me. But what do you think of this design? Let us know in the comments below. And are there any other crazy saddles that you think that we should take a look at? Share a link down in the comments. Thank you very much for watching. As ever, please do remember to like and subscribe if you enjoy this content, and we’ll see you next time. Yeah, please bring bring more crazy seats to the studio. We like them.