By Maynard Hershon

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In February '02, Michael Sylvester came to our bike shop in Tucson to teach us his program for fitting people to bicycles. Sylvester, 45, a veteran bike rider and racer and a yoga instructor, knows the body and how it works on a bike.

He rides everywhere in Portland, OR, where he works for the four Bike Gallery stores. He has never owned an automobile. He's lean and super-flexible and an example of what we should be as athletes, though few of us are.

All he does at the Gallery is bike fits, six a day, four days a week, $100 per fit. He's booked three weeks ahead - year 'round. He fits racers and freds, fat people and thin, every kind of rider. He's done 1000s of shop fits and traveled the nation for Serotta Cycles teaching dealers how to do Size-Cycle fits.

You look at him and listen to him and you can not sustain your skepticism. Even when he tells you that you have to put a jive, high-rise Technomic stem on your Lighthouse, a stem so tall you're gonna look like a dork on your bike forever and take big heat from your buddies, you cannot doubt him.

Our mornings with Mike Sylvester began with short yoga classes. We did poses or stretches that made us aware (often painfully) of how limited are our own ranges of motion, so that we'd recognize similar restriction in others.

He believes that we have to be comfortable to ride well, that comfort on the bike is more important (in non-track cyclists) than aerodynamics or a so-called power position. He works with nearly no formulas and seldom uses a tape measure.

He is fanatical about level, though, using an expensive spirit level that rests on identical discs screwed onto the quick-release skewer ends, front and rear. He sets you up on your bike on a raised platform so you're eye-level. He stands a specific distance away.

He does everything consistently, so results are consistent from client to client and from this year's fitting to next year's.

Before you climb on your bike or a Size-Cycle articulated trainer, he asks you maybe 20 questions about your riding today and in years past, your crash-and-broken-bones history, your medical past as it might relate to your pedaling or sitting on a bike, your intensity as a rider, on and on.

Then he has you lie down on the floor. He asks you to do certain stretches and notes your flexibility and alignment in several areas, especially your relative ability to tilt your pelvis.

If your hamstrings are tight, as mine are, you are unable to tilt your pelvis so that you can reach for your bars with a properly flat back. Alas.

Unless your pelvis tilts and your back is flat, you curl your spine as you reach forward. Spinal considerations aside, you shorten the distance between your navel and throat, compressing your lungs, restricting your breathing.

You adopt the shoulders-forward "cyclist's slump," further compressing your upper lungs. You need a higher handlebar position than most of us ride.

Sylvester chose me for his first demonstration. I was older and less flexible than anyone else there. Because I am so damn imperfect, I was the perfect model: So many elements to consider in the fitting process.

I did not realize how limited my flexibility was. I knew I could barely tilt my pelvis, that I was rounding my back as I reached for my bars. Michael Sylvester saw all that and raised my already highish Nitto Pearl stem above the minimum-insertion line, until my bars were nearly level with my saddle top.

Not high enough, he said, and spoke the awful word, Technomic.

One of my fellow students asked: "Are you really suggesting that Maynard put a Technomic stem on his beautiful Lighthouse?"

"Without a second's hesitation," said Michael Sylvester, the handlebar raiser.

Sylvester set up two of us shop staffers and one woman road rider during the clinic. He raised all three sets of bars. Tight hamstrings: It's epidemic.

I took my bar-raising hard. I felt as if I was finally coming face-to-face with being old, inflexible and hopelessly unathletic. I imagined myself showing up for rides in front of Café Paraiso with my bars above saddle level.

I imagined paying a hundred dollars to someone so they could tell me yes, that's just what you have to do to be comfortable and fully effective on your bike. I'd have paid a hundred dollars, plus the cost of a Technomic, plus installation, for the privilege of serving as the laughingstock of the Saturday ride.

"Maynard's gonna move to Portland," Sylvester said, "and join my yoga class. In a year or so, you won't recognize him. He'll be another cyclist entirely."

I'd be the cyclist I imagine I am, I guess, the cyclist I now know that I am not. I love how my bikes have always looked -- like racing bicycles. Are those days gone, lost forever on Mike Sylvester's setup stand?

In the days following his visit, I told friends about the things I'd learned. Most were only vaguely interested, knowing, it seemed, all they wanted to know about bike fit. Guys in the business wanted to know what the Bike Gallery did with all the parts Sylvester took off of his clients' bikes.

Few empathized with my distress. After all, THEIR stems weren't going up three inches.

I was sure Sylvester was right, but not nearly so sure I could follow his advice. I didn't feel uncomfortable on my bike as it was. But I'd been set up by the best bike-fitter in the country; could I ignore his recommendations?

While he had me on the stand, Sylvester raised my stem and pushed my saddle forward half an inch. I lowered the stem right away. Later, I pushed my seat back to where it had been. Shoved forward, it felt weird and looked awful.

I did, though, order steerer extensions for my Lighthouse and LeMond, so I can use threadless-style stems with front openings. I'm going to try a 90-degree, 11cm stem instead of the horizontal, 13cm Pearl I have now. I shudder as I type that statement.

I'm doing yoga classes two mornings a week, and plan to expand to three. In yoga, I have a new, time-consuming, expensive hobby that will, I hope, keep me flexible enough to stay at my primary hobby, riding my bike.

If I only had time for one hobby, and I asked Michael Sylvester what I should do, quit cycling or quit yoga, what would he say? Maybe he'd suggest I quit coddling my illusions.

END