Lower back and quads being dominant can be associated with too low a saddle.
For fore and aft saddle positioning you could try Steve Hogg’s balance test or use a plumb bob to get an idea of knee over pedal spindle, KOPS.
Both too low and too high bars can increase pressure on the hands. Experiment with both.
@mcneese.chad so been playing out and still can’t nail it down to what feels wrong. All i know if the Dogma i tested just felt like it fitted. I didn’t know any different as the SL7 is all i have ridden for the last 3 years!
Another weird symptom im getting now is i want to get out the saddle all the time, again would this be related to a low bar? Half thinking maybe im just not an SL7 shape now 
even though it was bought initially on a fit recommendation?!?!
As usual, I start with questions before answers… so the first is “why?”.
What do you think or feel that is leading you to want to stand more often?
Comfort, power, or another factor that makes you want to stand vs sitting?
Is this “new” since you demo’d the Dogma in a way that your body wants something different now that it had a taste of a different fit?
Yeah tried raising 10mm, all i can do with the steerer.
I gues it is new but only as i hadn’t noticed it before. Always felt a bit stretched but never realized how much weight was on my hands. This is what i assume is leading me to want to stand and the lower back pressure.
OK, that all makes sense. My quick take is that your body wants a taller Stack to be happy, simple as that.
yeah dammit! 
I guess if i could raise it up more then i might be ok as could have the same stack. But not possible with the current steerer length. Annoying the original fit was clearly wrong!
Do you still have a negative stem angle? If so, I’d flip it to positive and test.
How long have you had the bike?
Did you have these issues since you got it, or some time afterwards? Some fits work initially be need change after time.
What worked even 1 year ago may fail now depending on a ton of factors. Training history, injuries, aging, change in life status to name a few. Point being that fit is not a fixed target with a single solution forever.
Ridden an SL7 for nearly 3 years now without thinking but thinking back have always felt stretched and rode out the saddle a lot! The annoying thing is this one is nearly new as was replaced as i cracked the previous frame just at the end of summer.
Tough deal. Bike selection (type & size) is one of the most difficult and trying times in my work at the shop. I understand the level of investment and struggle with those choices in my own life.
Taking on some or much of that decision process with someone else’s money keeps me up at night sometimes. As an OCD perfectionist, there are often blurred lines in these choices and it tends to leave me with a constant internal struggle in all but the few instances where a choice is singular and clear.
Yeah yeah it is tough. TBF when i got it originally the dogma wasn’t available so that one small bonus. I just knew no different. One expensive test ride hahahahhaha
I had a bike-fit yesterday, and left the studio with a large number of changes. I’ve a question about how bike-fit solutions impact bike handling. Before the fit, my bike had a 100 millimetre stem and no spacers under the stem. The bike has endurance geometry, so it wasn’t an aggressive position anyway. Now, the bike has a shorter 90 mm stem and two spacers under the stem. I’m happy that these changes will achieve their goal to redistribute some excessive weight from the hands to the saddle in my riding position.
I’ve ridden in this more relaxed position before and I find it negatively affects bike handling especially the faster you go. On descents, this is most noticeable where the bike handling becomes a bit twitchy.
In an ideal world, perhaps we’d all ride custom frames with geometry and handling to suit our individual needs. But mass production bikes have to fit a range of body sizes.
Bikes are designed to be ridden with 100-110 mm stem and no spacers under the stem, so how do people deal with potentially compromised handling when we’re not able to interact successfully with those positions?
Had a bike fit today. They used a Wahoo Rollr for watching me ride and then had their guru bike to test out different adjustments. Mostly minor adjustments. Raised seatpost a bit. Suggested slightly narrower bars.
But overall pretty pleased with the process. Hopefully the adjustments will help with my issues.
Might be overthinking this but here goes. Built up a new bike. Tried to mimic my current fit best I could but I’m using a different saddle shape so getting the same saddle position has been difficult. I’ve done 4 rides and now I’m having knee pain and a weird muscle pain/strain on the left side. No issues on the original bike. So the timeline is, riding bike A feels great, no issues. 4 rides on bike B, start to have knee and muscle pain. Correlation or just coincidental timing? The knee pain is frontal. The muscle pain is something I’ve never really felt. It almost feels like something inside the muscle is being squeezed, and I get this throbbing pain even when I’m laying in bed. I’ve pulled muscles in the past but usually the pain is only with movement. Granted, it’s been a long time since I’ve actually pulled a muscle so maybe I’ve just forgotten how it feels. But my thought is that this is the thing that changed and the position on the bike is driving these issues. My very basic line drawing shows my knee is out in front of the pedal body. Maybe move the seat rearward?
And I will add that subjectively, the fit feels fine. Riding the bike outside once and on the trainer 3x felt ok, it wasn’t like I was riding and thinking something felt off. It was really the new knee pain that made me think of fit as it was the only change. And I linked the video below. Funny how when riding I thought I had a nice smooth pedal stroke and was solid on the bike but the video looks like I’m really rocking. I’ll try to get a shot from the rear next ride. I will also add that about 5 years ago I had a really bad injury to my left ankle. Had some tendon and ligament damage and lost a lot of mobility, especially in dorsiflexion. I can only imagine that this translates up through my hips. This was well before I started cycling so I don’t know how it’s affected my position on the bike. I think I also just have tight hip flexors and need to work on it.
@CaptainThunderpants, a few questions.
What saddles have you gone to and from and what method have you used for mimicking the position?
Have you changed saddle width as front knee pain can suggest too low a saddle? A wider saddle may hold you further forward.
You don’t mention where this muscle pain is other than on the left. I’m still chuckling about the throbbing in bed!
Difficult to comment on using KOPs as a fore and aft guide without understanding how you’ve arrived at your cleat position. As you say moving it back would seem correct and also effectively extend the saddle height potentially helping the front knee pain.
HTH Scott
I have a Power Mirror on both my road and CX bike but didn’t feel like spending another $450, so I have an AliExpress 3D printed saddle that is similar to the Romin. So it’s definitely narrower. The Power Mirror are 143 but measure 149mm, the new saddle measures 143mm, so 6mm narrower. For matching positions, it was basically eyeballing the spot on the saddle that I thought my sit bones would be resting, and then matching those up between the 2 saddles if that makes sense. Basically the widest spot on each. Saddle height is the same. The muscle pain is left quad slightly lateral, likely vastus lateralus. It’s still hurting this morning after an easy ride yesterday, feels like I got punched in the leg.
When moving saddles around on my fitting jig I use a U-shaped tool that has an 80mm internal width. Maybe you could make one out of card (or use a vernier) and use that to find the 80 mm width point across your saddles and measure saddle height from centre of BB to top of saddle at that point and also distance to bar centre. Just see if there’s any difference and back up the by eye judgment.
Feeling quad-dominant when pedalling can also be associated with low saddle height. Not sure if that links to your discomfort.
Was the 80mm chosen for a specific reason or sort of arbitrary? I could probably 3D print something at home that would work. Just curious about how you chose that width. Normally, I measure center BB to top of saddle in a straight line up the seat post, which is usually right around widest point.
It’s referred to as the BRP . It’s just to give a consistent reference point as it’s assumed a cyclist will always sit at the same place relative to it albeit unique to them.
Bikefitting.com the equipment I have uses 80 mm. I think the Selle Italia IDMatch system uses around 70mm.
Good to know. It definitely looks like something I could print at home in a few hours that would help.
