Anatomy of Fit

Heiden Cycle Works — Reference

Anatomy of Fit

Two diagrams, one idea: your body has a geometry, and so does your bike. Everything below explains what each measurement means, what it actually changes, and why it matters before you sit down at the configurator.

01 — Your body 02 — Your bike 12 + 15 measurements, click to explore

Part 01

Your body isn’t a size — it’s a set of proportions

Two riders can share a height and still need completely different bikes. Click any measurement below to see where it sits and what it’s actually used for.

Drives the frame directly Refines component choice Context only

Click a measurement to see it on the figure.

A note on “male” and “female” bodies. On average, women tend to have proportionally longer legs, a shorter torso, and wider hips relative to shoulder width than men — the two figures above sketch that general tendency. But “on average” is doing a lot of work in that sentence: plenty of individual men and women fall outside it, and it says nothing useful about trans or gender-nonconforming riders, whose bodies don’t sort neatly into either column. That’s exactly why Heiden doesn’t size a bike off your gender — every frame is built from your own measurements, not a demographic assumption.

Part 02

Fit is your relationship to the bike. Handling is the bike’s relationship to the road.

The frame has its own set of measurements — some describe how you sit on it, some describe how it steers. This is the same nominal geometry we build from, drawn to scale.

Fit — your relationship to the bike Handling — the bike’s relationship to the road Both

Click a measurement to see it drawn on the frame.

Fit describes your relationship to the bike.

Geometry also describes the bike’s relationship to the road.

Now you’ve got the vocabulary.

Take it to the configurator — you’ll get more out of every fit and handling question we ask.

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