Would you go and see a doctor or a physio etc. without a specific goal in mind?
Doctor: “How can I help today?”
Patient: “I would like confirmation of good health thanks”
There are certain circumstances where an evaluation of general health is a good idea. A check-up to see if you require any preventative medicine or treatment. The same can be said for bike fitting, but in the majority of cases, this is not true for both medicine and bike fitting.
Most often, there is a catalyst that drives the motivation to see a professional, and the professional will seek to resolve the issue presented to them with the greatest efficacy they know.
It seems quite sensical, that if you walk into an appointment and tell the practitioner about a problem, that the experience of the pratitioner will lead them to treat the problem with the information and tools available to them. The information comes from a number of sources but mainly comes from the quality of the questions asked of the patient. The evidence to treat the patient a particular way will come from the quality of the experience and methodology of the practitioner, which usually involves testing. The method and quality of the testing will narrow the margin of inefficiency for the solution.
The same thing written a little differently
Some practitioners have a more specific education to the problem at hand
Some practitioners have more experience than others, which leads to them asking the more important questions.
Some practitioners have better ways of getting the answers to the questions (using better tests or testing equipment)
Some patients give different answers to the same questions depending on the confidence in the practitioner
Sometimes the patient doesn’t have the same issue between one visit and the next
So when you present to a Bike Fit, realise that the person treating you, is going to do so based mostly on what you tell them. This means that the result is going to be relative to that information, and in some cases will be different to the fit you would need by either the same, or a different fitter in 12 months time.
As a process:
1. Identify the problems
2. Identify the restrictions (of bike, body and patient expectations)
3. Test the differential diagnosis
4. Apply a solution
5. Test the solution
As you can imagine, treating the same patient can yield more options than a typical ‘choose your own adventure’ book.
And that is how you can have three different fitters, with three different fits.
