The Aero Questions Nobody Asks
Ingmar gets asked a lot of the same questions in interviews: the athletes he's worked with, how AiRO started, the Olympic medals. Barry from Regroup Fit skipped all of that. Instead, he asked the questions fitters actually argue about on the shop floor. Saddles versus tires. Boas versus laces. Smooth legs versus stubble. Here's what came out of it.
Posture beats the bike, every time
The single biggest lever for any athlete, amateur or pro, is fit and posture. Ingmar puts it plainly: 60 to 80% of an athlete's drag comes from their position, not their equipment. A rider can spend $15,000 on a frame and get a fraction of the gain they'd get from a few hundred dollars spent dialing in posture. Over an Ironman distance, that's worth roughly half an hour. Half an hour is the difference between qualifying for Kona and not.
The best ROI in the shop isn't aero gear
Before any aerodynamics conversation, comfort comes first. If an athlete hates their saddle, they won't ride enough to hold a good position anyway, so a real saddle fitting process matters more than people think. After that, Ingmar's pick for best bang for buck is tires. The gap between a mid-range tire and a high-end one is bigger than the gap between a mid-range frame and a high-end one, and it only costs an extra $20 to $50. His advice: if you can afford the bike, you can afford the good tires.
And on the wide-vs-narrow debate, wide wins. Wider tires and wheels hold up better in real-world conditions: rough roads, comfort, handling. Unless someone's racing a pursuit on a velodrome, the wider setup is the faster one once you account for actual riding conditions.
Small details, real watts
A few quick-fire answers worth knowing:
Boas are the comfort pick and laces are marginally faster, so Ingmar's advice for racers is to run both: laces for race day, Boas for training.
Shoe covers matter less than people assume. Most of the aerodynamic gain doesn't come from covering the shoe, it comes from the texture on the lower leg, which is why aero socks work the way they do.
Leg hair actually matters. Cyclists sit right in what's called the transitional speed range, where surface texture has an outsized effect on drag. It's the same principle behind textured skin suits, which Ingmar calls one of the bigger performance opportunities available right now, if you can find the right one for your body.
Fitting female athletes: proportion over gender
Ingmar's take here cuts against a lot of assumptions. Differences in proportion within a gender are actually larger than the average differences between genders, so the real variable to watch is how shoulder width compares to hip width, not the athlete's sex. Wider hips generally tolerate a wider handlebar stance better; narrower athletes benefit more from going narrow.
He also flagged a counterintuitive finding on breast aerodynamics: the presence of breasts tends to help drag, not hurt it. The more common issue is the sports bra itself, where a thick back panel can create a ridge that disrupts airflow.
Where bike design is actually headed
Ingmar's prediction: cockpits are going higher, not lower. Pro TT bikes have already added 10 to 15cm of stack over the last decade because shrugging the shoulders and bending the arms is a major drag reduction, given the arms alone account for roughly 25% of total drag. His view is that most current stack numbers are 5 to 10cm too low, and that the trend will keep moving in that direction.
There's an unexpected overlap with gravel bikes here too. Bigger wheel diameters (think 32-inch) already improve rolling resistance, and they happen to add the same few centimeters of height that the aerodynamics suggest cockpits need. Two unrelated trends, same destination.
A challenge to the UCI
Asked which UCI rule he'd scrap, Ingmar didn't pick a specific regulation. Instead, he questioned the philosophy behind the Lugano Charter, the UCI's founding stance that technology shouldn't be allowed to dominate the sport. His argument: cycling has always been about pairing human performance with mechanical innovation, that's the entire premise of the bicycle, and a governing body explicitly resisting that puts it at odds with both fans and equipment makers. He's not arguing for unlimited tech. He's arguing the conversation is worth having.
Watch the full conversation with Barry from Regroup Fit below.
