In order to ease the pain of using these implements of torture, people often angle the saddle with the nose down.
This makes it impossible to sit on the saddle. You tend to slide forward. You end up pushing against the handlebar just to keep yourself on the saddle.
Get yourself a saddle you can sit on so that your pelvis is resting on a level surface. For most saddles that would put the nose of the saddle a bit higher than the rear. Women’s saddles should be wider than men’s since a woman’s pelvis is wider.
Many women’s saddles now have a cutout or low density foam section in the center to take pressure off the pubic bone while allowing a level saddle position.
The closer you can get to a level platform, the easier it will be to find the best fore-aft position of saddle and handlebar.
Once the crank length is determined, (by whatever means), the saddle should be set at a nominal height. There is no objectively determined ideal saddle height for any rider based on leg length alone.
Some riders naturally pedal toes down, while others have the foot in a more level position. For starters, sit on the saddle with one leg hanging free and your hips square, (not tilting to either side).
Set the saddle high enough so that your other heel can just touch the pedal with your leg straight, and with the pedal at the bottom of the stroke, in line with the seat tube.
For most people this results in a saddle height that leaves some bend in the knee at the bottom of the pedal stroke, when you’re pedaling with the balls of your feet over the axle of the pedals.
It also should prevent you from having to rock your hips through each crank rotation. This gets you close enough to your optimum saddle height that you can go through the rest of the fitting process and fine tune saddle height later.
Any later saddle height adjustments shouldn’t be enough to throw off the other adjustments other than handlebar height, which is easily changed.
