Anyone here a SME on bicycle seats? I bought an air assault bike to stay in shape during covid and after 20 minutes my penis goes numb. I did some research online and it could be how I’m positioned or could be the seat itself. Putting pressure on the nerve around the perineum/taint. There’s some seats with the middle scooped out and some seats with two prongs.
Let’s assume my exercise bike uses an industry standard seat interface because I think it does, and if it doesn’t I can probably find an adapter.
The older I get, the more I realize every hobby has their 9mm vs 45 and AR vs AK debates and I don’t want to get sucked into spending 6 months learning about bicycles from the PF version of bikes. I also don’t want to go to a local bike shop and be tricked into the bike seat version of recommending a woman’s first gun be a snubbie j-frame revolver.
My budget is say up to $300 or so because this bike wasn’t cheap, and the penis numb thing can cause erectile dysfunction and if the bike is uncomfortable I won’t use it which will cause obesity. If there’s a Cadillac of bike seats that’s a few hundred bucks but is guaranteed to make riding comfortable without injury, I’m down. But I’m also not opposed to a $30 seat off amazon.
I am thinking of hitting up local bike shops who might have display models to try, but like I said I’m not sure how knowledgeable or trustworthy those dudes are. Like you wouldn’t send a person to a random local gun shop for gun advice.
Also not sure how much it matters that it’s an air assault bike so the positioning of my body might be leaning forward more than a regular seat.
Last comment, is I remember looking up bike seats a decade ago for a mountain bike and was told I wanted a hard uncomfortable seat to condition my glutes/ass muscle and it wouldn’t be uncomfortable once I got conditioned for it. I stopped mountain biking for unrelated reasons so I don’t remember if I ever got conditioned and I mentioned this to a bike enthusiast associate in passing recently who said that’s BS and comfortable gel seats are fine and he rides with gel short inserts that feel like a diaper but he enjoys them.
I want to buy the best bicycle seat within reason, I never want to think about it again after this purchase, and I don’t want to become a bike enthusiast. I want it to be a tool that I jump on for 30 minutes every morning to do a medium pace aerobic workout, occasionally doing a 5 minute HIIT routine, and I want it to be bombproof, and not even notice it’s there because it just works without pain.