That’s 50% of the battle. The grim reality is for some people, there’s only usually 1 or 2 styles of seats that will be comfortable for them, and it can be brutally expensive to figure this out if you try to do so yourself (not trying to push a fit, but…). Some people seem to be saddle ambivalent, I got a buddy like that, like you could stick him on a plastic 1970s banana seat and he’d be fine. But if you are like me, my butts pretty selective.

Case in point, I’m a stick of a person (6 foot, 165lbs), and for some unknown reason I have a crazy wide sitbone width, like my road bike saddle is something crazy like 168mm wide. Figuring that out was half the battle. But I still couldn’t get comfortable, and I’ve tried pretty much every manufacturer between my mountain bike and my road bike in the first half dozen years. My findings were for mountain bikes, my saddle has to be a WTB saddle, and it doesn’t really matter which one, but WTB or bust. It seems to be something with the general profile of the shape, not so much the padding. Whereas with my road bike, Specialized branded saddles seem to work best. Especially the ones with the Mimic insert, which are actually marketed towards ladies, but my bike fitter put me on one a few years ago and I swear by that thing now.