About 3 years ago i was entering the Bike Hell 🙂 : i had many complaints on my bikes (both racing and MTB) and thought it was time to visit a bike fitter. I went to see one and the guy fitted me with sensors all over my body to see what he angles my different body parts were while riding. Of course he did an interview to find out what my type of riding was, how many hours a week, he let me do some stretch excercises to see how flexible i was, had a look at my feet, … .
All this took about 20 minutes before putting me on the bike to do some testing and adapting the test bike to achieve to the ‘right angles’. After about 2 hours all the measurements were transfered to my real bike.
I was a happy person and thought i found the solution to ride without any pain and feel powerful.
Man, i’ve never been more wrong! But i didn’t give up and visited another bike fitter, and another one, … until i saw 5 bike fitters but never found the solution to have a super feeling on the bike and feel powerful.
I reached the peak of the bike hell mountain but never gave up searching for a person who could really help me, not throwing formulas at me, but a person who would look at me as a unique person who was able to be put in balance on my bikes so i could ride for hours.
And then one day i read about Steve, his blog and while visiting the blog i instantly understand he was offering us loads of bike fitting information that you can test yourself (feet insole adaptation, saddle height test, saddle setback test, …) and so i tried it out a little myself and already felt better compared to the results that the previous 5 ‘pro bike fitters’ came up with!
I soon read about the only 4 colleagues who visited and trained with Steve and as i am living in Europe, Scherrit (Knoesen) was the closest to visit so i made an appointment. This was the best thing that ever happened to me concerning who i should see about fitting me on my bikes.
The meeting with Scherrit was very warm, no computers or pro looking bike fit machines which look great but that’s about all they do. Just a trainer mounted on a higher platform so Scherrit could look at me from all angles he wanted while i was riding on my bike. BUT Scherrit didn’t put me on the bike after the interview (this is the only thing which other bike fitters do but from that point on they lost the path they should follow), no he looked at my body over and over again, let me do stability tests, … . And looked at my feet, looked at my feet again, …, and looked at my feet again 🙂 , why? Because they are so important while riding our bikes, after more then 3,5 hours the inner soles of 3 pair of shoes were prepared to finally put me on a bike but first we had some lunch (well ok Scherrit did because i’m not a huge eater 🙂
After lunch Scherrit did 3 bike fittings for me: one on the race bike and two for the MTB because i’m using two pair of MTB shoes with one pair having much thicker soles compared to the other pair so he didn’t bother fine tuning the MTB bike fit for the other shoes as well, it wasn’t much of a difference but according to Scherrit it was important to maintain the same feeling on the bike when using the other MTB shoes. Now that’s what i call being a professional and giving your best effort for your clients.
During the day i spent with Scherrit there was only one danger: we both like to talk although i must say i’m guilty to keep on asking questions about why is this and why is that but at the end of the day i understood a lot more how things were supposed to be  done rather than according to my previous bike fitting experience.
Scherrit and Corinne Knoesen: their shop is called ‘The Bike Whisperer’ and they deserve this title 100%, their service is superb and i recommend them to anyone.
The weeks after the new fitting i was very comfortable on the bike and felt powerful as never before. This hasn’t changed and i keep on enjoying long rides without any discomfort, never experienced this on a bike before.
I had to go back to Scherrit once but this was my fault 100% because the MTB i took with me was fitted with a brand new high end fork and i forgot to set the sag correct when i first visited Scherrit. Afterwards when i had changed the fork sag to the correct setting i could go to Scherrit again and he did some small changes to the saddle position to match the new fork sag, job well done and he didn’t charge me anything for this although this of course takes him time to look at me on the bike again.
My lesson from all this: never give up when not feeling great on your bike and go and see Scherrit Knoesen in the UK.
If you’re lucky like me Scherrit’s wife Corinne might come over with her two lovely dogs to give you some extra (dog) love as well 🙂 .
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