Fitted for Fitness

Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure to spend quality time learning from entrepreneur and master bike-fitter, David Greenfield. He is the owner of Elite Bicycles of Philadelphia and was in town for the opening of the Singapore branch.

From my personal experience, I would recommend deeply considering the relevance and benefits of a proper and thorough bike fit. I raced recently on a bike that was, essentially, improper and risky for racing; I had the opportunity to confirm my hunches and probable cause of my lesser performance.

David, respectfully, asked to assess my posture when he noticed that I slung my knapsack across my left shoulder. He observed that my shoulders were lopsided. He then gently ran a series of physical tests that ascertained that I had muscular and postural imbalances. He assured me that I could correct these in time. I also watch him fit a rider (who happened to be the son of my secondary school teacher), deliberately and purposefully. All this while I watched a fellow teacher at work, generously educating a client while he carefully corrected the bike and the rider’s shoes.

From a thinking perspective, this is reversed thinking. Instead of correcting the rider’s posture and technique to fit the generic features of the bike, David’s philosophy (as a former professional athlete and now recognized leader in bike-fitting) was to correct the bike’s geometry and construction to accommodate to the rider’s posture and riding idiosyncrasies.

If my sports medicine doctor takes the time to ask me questions, conduct diagnostic tests on me, and then explain his analysis and prescription to me I would be highly appreciative of his efforts. This is part of the education I expect to receive as part of medical service. I was fortunate to receive such attentive standard of care and assurance from Dr Ben Tan prior to my attempt at Ironman New Zealand 2010. He advised me of my relative contraindications should I wish to race. I listened, weighed my options and risks, and decided to do a compromised race – focused on completing instead of racing for a personal best.

Reeves Leong wrote about Branded Customer Service in his latest blog posting – he believes that this will have significant impact on the retail industry. I agree, and also think that it will have a much wider reach and implication on professional services, such as training, coaching and consulting. My experience tonight with David and his personally certified Singapore team (led by Elite and F.I.S.T-certified bike-fitter director, Daphne Wee) certainly highlighted this unique, but sensible and sensitive approach to working with the serious cyclist and triathlete.

Elite Bicycles is located at 3 Duxton Hill, Singapore 089589 (Telephone: +65 6224 2578).