Bike Seat Types
There are hundreds of bike seats to select from, and they can divided into the six broad categories above. Keep in mind that there’s crossover between categories and types. For example, gel bike saddles are available in race, mountain bike, comfort styles and others. The important thing to understand is that there’s no reason you can’t use any bicycle seat for any purpose if it feels good to you.
Comfort Bike Seat: if you ride in an upright position where the handlebars are as high as, or higher than your seat, then this will put a lot of weight on your seat. - so a wider, plusher seat is suitable.Comfort bike seats will be wider, especially at the back, will be more padded with foam or gel, and may have extra springs or elastomers to absorb bumps. They are though, the heaviest of all the seat types.
Ergonomic Bike Seats & Saddles: you've tried a lot of bike seats but you still get or are concerned about pain,tingling, irritation or numbness. You've tried different bike and saddle fits but still no luck. A lot of research has been done in the past few years to create ergonomically correct bicycle seats. This has resulted in various cut-out shapes, different nose angles and other changes to eliminate pressure points.
Mountain Bike Saddles: when you ride off road a lot your body can take a beating. You may move around a bit on your seat in technical sections e.g. sliding off the back of the seat when descending a steep slope. MTB seats will generally be fairly narrow, a bit more padding than a road saddle, shaped to ease moving rearward and backwards and can be a bit more reinforced to cope with off road stresses.
Racing Saddles: are lightweight, have minimal padding, a narrow shape and are generally fairly stiff. Road bike saddles are designed like this because the riding is fairly aggressive, the stance is crouched over with the saddle lower than the handlebars, thus the legs take some of the weight from the saddle.
Vintage Full Leather Saddles: are beautiful, absorb body heat ,and break in to shape to your anatomy over time. Be careful of water damage though and will take some patience to "wear in".
Womens Bicycle Seats: due to the anatomical differences between men and women, the ladies model of a particular seat or sadddle will be shorter and relatively wider than the mens version.
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