TL;DR: Our saddles don’t neatly align to the marketing paradigm around saddle fit. But it’s on purpose. Here’s a little TMI about why.

How many options will there be?

For now, 3.

Slim is pretty typical of perfomance saddles, with minimal padding and a silhouette that allows free pedaling

Thicc is a bit wider through the middle and nose, meant to be comfy when you need to move around a lot (i.e. mountain biking). The extra width in the middle also tends to align the hips a bit more automatically, so is ex-Olympic mountain biker Sam Schultz’s preferred option.

Slim-thicc is of course the best of both worlds, a narrower silhouette with a touch extra padding.

What’s the width and length?

Nominally, about 135 mm W x 270mm long. But saddle shape greatly affects the effective support of the saddle. The Catahoula saddle has support similar to most 140-150mm saddles. It tends to work best for men of medium to large stature and most women.

Despite the prevalence of sit-bone measuring devices, the sit-bones are only partially responsible for weight bearing on a saddle. When a wide center channel allows the rider to roll their hips forward, more of the weight is borne on the bone structure between the sit-bones and the pubic rami. In this position, the morphological variance between riders is lessened, and so one “width” can work for a broad range of people.

The current design has evolved slightly from the photos shown here, but we can’t show it quite yet.

Short nose saddles are in vogue, why isn’t Catahoula like that?

Super-short nose saddles are good for enabling a forward position if you’re racing under UCI guidelines and can work in certain designs. But they fix the nose height at a point very close to the sit-bone position, so the natural curve of the saddle shortens dramatically, out of step with the body, which can actually create more perineal pressure without a radical nose-down angle. It also limits the flexible length of the shell, which is essentially a leaf spring and needs length to allow more forgiveness. Finally, short nose saddles don’t provide secure steering of the bike between the thighs. We were designing saddles before they came out, have tried them since, and have opted not to hop on this particular bandwagon.

The Catahoula saddle has a fairly long rear section in order to move the riders weight more equally between the rail attachment points, which means that the effective length of the nose is a little shorter than the 270mm length might indicate.

From the outset, Catahoula wanted to address three major fit issues:

• soft-tissue pressure relief

• sit bone comfort

• pelvic stability

Soft Tissue Pressure: wide, smooth center channel

Soft-tissue pressure relief through a wide channel allows:

• Room for soft tissue to recess into it without creating pressure on any part of the tissue. Being soft, pressure anywhere is pressure everywhere.

• Room for a thick chamois or cycling shorts, both of which effectively reduce the size of the channel.

• Room for the rider to roll their hips into the saddle, to keep the lower back straight and engage more of the pelvis onto the saddle, improving stability.

Stability: Consistent shell and padding contours

• Viewed in cross section, two flat, slightly angled seating sections provide inherent stability and proprioceptive feedback, helping the rider maintain a square and stable position on the bike.

• Our wide cutout works in tandem with these shell contours to improve stability: by rolling the hips forward (which is only healthily allowed by a wide cutout) the rider brings the pubic rami (the forward and interior part of the sit-bones, right next to your taint) into contact with the saddle, which regains the fore-aft stability lost in the reduction of soft tissue pressure.

• We avoid drastic changes in padding thickness or density across the saddle, especially fore-aft, to provide a consistent platform.