Tips and Tricks

What matters is less the bike type than your riding position. The more upright you sit, the more weight rests on your sit bones – that calls for a wider, more heavily padded seat surface, as city and trekking bikes require. The further you lean forward, the narrower and firmer the saddle can be, because weight is shared with your hands and pedals. On an e-bike you usually sit more upright than on its non-motorised counterpart, so a bit wider.

Saddle width depends on the distance between your sit bones, not on your height. You can measure at home with corrugated cardboard: sit on it with your full weight, stand up and measure the distance between the centres of the two impressions. Add roughly two to four centimetres to that value depending on your riding position – more when upright, less when sporty. The saddle finder asks for exactly that and does the maths for you.

Usually it's not the padding but the support surface. If the saddle is too narrow, soft tissue carries the load instead of the sit bones. If it's too soft, you sink in and the pressure spreads exactly where it doesn't belong. Height and tilt matter too: a seat post that's too high makes you rock sideways with every pedal stroke, a nose tilted forward keeps pushing you forward. Numbness or tingling means pressure on nerves and blood vessels – that doesn't go away with riding in; the saddle or the setup has to change.

A suitable saddle feels right from the first ride, it just isn't instantly familiar. Allow two to three weeks of regular riding until your body gets used to the new support – the material itself hardly changes. If something still presses or numbs after four weeks, it won't ride in. That's why you can test every Alpensattel in real-world use for 30 days and get the full purchase price back if you don't like it.

No. Suspension in the saddle pays off where nothing else is sprung: city and trekking bikes without a suspension fork, cobblestones, dirt tracks, upright riding position. On a road bike or a full-suspension mountain bike it works against you, because it bobs at high cadence and absorbs power. If you ride sporty, you're better off with a firm, well-fitting saddle than a sprung one.

In summer ventilation matters more than padding. Short-finger gloves with a breathable back are enough for most rides, and thin padding on the palm absorbs vibration without losing the feel at the handlebar. Lots of padding tends to make the hand restless because it no longer wraps the grip cleanly. Fit is what counts: the glove shouldn't shift, but shouldn't constrict either.