Why I Love My Sponsors Part I: WN Precision

Welcome to my many part series!  The folks that make the Volkswagen Boise Cycling Team happen really are some of the best at what they do, and I'm going to tell you why.  Today, I got a fit done by Tom at WN Precision.  Here's a bunch of reasons why Tom is the best:

• He's located inside Joyride Cycles.  I'll get to them later in this series, but the Joyride folks are some of the coolest around.
• WN uses super-secret computer technology!  Tom pulled up a webpage with a bunch of words that I didn't understand and boxes to input measurements of said nonsensical words.  Here's a couple screenshots of what happened:

Tom put stuff in here (not here, but something that looks close)

"Brian Parker is the Vitruvian Man" - direct quote from computer

• The computer said that I was man in ideal form, but Tom said other stuff about me.  For example, I'm have one arm and one leg longer than the other.  Then he told me that I'm "gunstocked."  I assumed that he was referring to my massive arm muscles, but apparently it means that my humeruses (humeri? humeren? I have no idea) are rotated in.
• Details!  Tom measures and adjusts everything.  Everything.  I spent a solid 3 hours in there, for my first session.  At one point, I was laying on the floor, legs straight up the wall, shrugging my shoulders. I did repeated squats.  At times I wondered if he was just seeing what he could get me to do ("stand like a flamingo!"), but he always pulled out a measuring tape and plugged something into the computer.
• Pedaling!  Once my cleats and bike were properly adjusted, Tom had me go ride up and down the street in front of Joyride.  Every time I went by, he would tell me to try something different with my feet.  I never really put to much thought into what's happening at different points in my pedal stroke.  I mean my feet are going to go in circles around the bottom bracket no matter what, right?  Wrong.  By manipulating the angle of my feet at different points, I can defy gravity!

I took off on a ride right afterward, feeling like a pro, and it was great.  There was a noticeable difference between my guess-and-ride-around method and WN's magic science box.  There is definitely a reason that the walls of the WN fit studio are covered in photos of National and World Champs.