How can I know which model is the right one for me?
- Measure your sit bone width
To measure your sit bone width you need a piece of cardboard and a hard surface where to sit on. As you sit on the cardboard try to keep your pelvis in natural position and your back straight up, this will give you the widest possible distance. For making the marks to the cardboard it helps if you have some place under you where to grab (for example the edges of a chair) and press yourself more against the cardboard or you can ask your friend to push you a bit down from your shoulders.
After you have made your marks to the cardboard you should see two round edged slots on it. Now you should measure the center to center distance of those slots and that is your sit bone width. At this point you can also take a look at the sizes of those slots. If the slots are equal in size your pelvis is in good balance and your weight is distributing evenly to both sides. If you see that the other slot is much bigger than the other contact us and let’s think about if you would benefit from side specific seat pads where the other side could be thicker than the other. - Think about your riding style
Now that we know your anatomy we should think about a bit how you are using it. Ask yourself these questions:- How aggressive is my riding position?
- Do I like to change my position every now and then to an upright position?
- How much do I tilt my pelvis forward when I go to aero position?
- How long rides I am doing and is there lots of variability in the length of my rides?
- Choose your seat frame version
Now we should have quite good background to make a decision of your seat choice. As a rule of thumb you should never choose a RAMUS seat with a model number that is smaller than your sit bone width in millimeters.
For example if you measured your sit bones to be 120mm, leave the RAMUS 115 out of question. Also the 120 would be a bad choice in this case unless you are only riding in a very aggressive aero position with pelvis tilted heavily forward at the same time (having most of your weight in the front parts of your inferior ramus bones). So the best options in this case would be RAMUS 135 or RAMUS 140. The difference between 135 and 140 is that the 135 has curved edges while the 140 has more flat edges in the rear area of the seat.
It is somewhat an individual preference whether you like the curved or flat edges and you can think about your riding history that which type of seat you have liked to use. If your goal is to maximise the free space for your soft tissues between your sit bones while sitting in upright position then the 140 would be your choice. To help your decision making between 135 and 140 you can think about (and try) how you would feel while you are sitting on a flat surface versus if you were sitting on top of a round post like a wooden log for example. It’s your choice which one you prefer and depends a bit on your pelvic arch height also. Keep also in mind that men typically have a higher arch than women by nature.
If you measured your sit bone width somewhere around 100mm or below, you can go through the above chapter but change 135 to 115 and 140 to 120 and you should be able to choose your favorite option. - Choose your seat pads
If you have read articles about seat cushioning recommendations you might get confused. You can see suggestions that harder is better for long rides as it keeps you better stabilized on top of the seat or that more cushioning is definitely needed to make the seat more comfortable for longer rides to avoid seat related sores. There are also discussions about “riding in” your seat meaning that you get yourself used to a specific shape of the seat and hardness of the cushioning. As you see above it is quite hard to give an exact answer to the question that which kind of cushioning you should choose. You can compare this situation to the fact that there are also lots of opinions and philosophies of running shoe cushions. Some advisers are telling you to use bare foot shoes and in the other end of spectrum are the heavily cushioned models which seem to be in fashion especially at the moment.
In short think about your riding history and use that as a rule of thumb to select your padding. The firm RAMUS seat pad is really firm so keep in mind that in most cases this requires some extra padding coming from your cycling shorts while the soft seat pad version works fine also with your old shorts with totally worn out cushions.
Also keep in mind that RAMUS seat pads are replaceable. You can buy seat pads with different hardnesses and change them whenever you like. Maybe you like to have harder seat pads for shorter rides and softer ones for longer rides or vice versa, no problem you can easily make the changes with the Velcro attached seat pads.
What’s the base of the seat made from?
The RAMUS seat frame is 3D printed nylon material. It is printed with an industrial HP 3D printer utilizing multijet fusion technology. This technology enables to make very durable yet lightweight products. 3D printing technology also keeps the door open for future design changes if necessary not to mention special individual seat customization projects. Take a look at this site if you are interested to see how strong this material really is: https://forerunner3d.com/…r-mjf-part-strength/
Does the seat pad foam get slippery when wet?
No it doesn’t. The foam material has a closed cell structure and this prevents the foam material from sucking water, so you can make the surface dry very easy just by wiping it. However even if it is wet it is not slippery as the surface texture of the foam is a bit rough.
How durable is the foam?
The foam material that is used for RAMUS seat pads comes from Germany from a company which is dedicated to manufacturing long lasting foam materials. This company manufactures materials for custom made shoe insoles and prostheses paddings. The foam material used for RAMUS seat pads is dermatologically tested closed cell foam and it can be heat shaped.
How durable is the velcro attachment of the seat pads?
The velcros are original VELCRO® products. Velcro has been selected to assure that the material is long lasting and high quality. The front tips of the seat pads are secured firmly in place with plastic locking parts in addition to the VELCRO® fixation.
I am interested of RAMUS seat, could I have one for testing?
This has been recently probably the most common question related to RAMUS seats. We really would like to send seats to everybody who wants to try them, but there are some major limitations for that.
First of all we don’t have a large demo seat pool what to use so getting a demo seat for everyone would require a lot of time. Secondly the shipping costs can become as big as half of the seat price if the demo seats are sent back and fort and finally the purchased seat to the customer.
What we recommend is to take a look at carefully the selection guide above and why not share some of the purchase costs with your fellow triathletes. Just give a hint of RAMUS to your teammates and order one together and fight after that who can keep the seat 😉
Many bike fitters have been contacting us with this same question too. If you are considering to have yourself fitted, why not motivate a bit your bike fitter on getting couple of RAMUS seats to their studio. We are all the time updating the TEST CENTERS page where you can locate all the bike shops around the world who already have RAMUS available for you to test.