The resource I couldn't find

The first time I rode my new bike, I didn't know how to stop it.

Not the brakes — those I figured out. I mean the part nobody warns you about: I'm 160cm, about 5'3", and when I sat on my first drop-bar bike, my toes didn't reach the ground. So there I was, perfectly able to pedal away, with no idea how to get off without tipping over into a hedge. It sounds so small. But I remember sitting there thinking: surely there's a guide for this. Surely someone has written down the actual, physical, beginner basics.

There wasn't. Not really. Not for me.

What I found instead

What I found, when I went looking, was a wall of advice that mostly wasn't built for me.

Some of it came from riding partners — well-meaning, generous, and a foot taller than me. Their saddle height, their reach, their "just do what I do" — none of it translated to my body. Some of it came from the wider cycling world, which has spent decades writing for men, by men, and quietly assuming that was everyone.

And then the knee pain started. Then my shoulders. I began the slow education every woman on a stock bike eventually gets: that maybe my cranks were too long, my handlebars too wide — parts specced for an average that wasn't me. But figuring that out meant descending into Reddit threads and YouTube rabbit holes at midnight, cross-referencing strangers, trying to assemble one coherent answer out of twenty scattered ones.

The comments section is not a bike fit

At my most stuck, I did what a lot of us do: I posted a video of myself riding to r/bikefit and asked for help.

Some of the replies were genuinely kind and useful. Some were not. And all of it left me thinking: this should not be how a woman learns to be comfortable on her own bike. I shouldn't have to crowdsource my fit from a comment section, brace for the unkind ones, and hope the good advice floats to the top. The information existed — buried, scattered, and rarely written with me in mind — but it existed. It just needed someone to gather it, translate it, and hand it over without the gatekeeping.

So I decided to be that someone.

What Frame of Mind is

Frame of Mind is the resource I wish I'd had that first day — plain-language, no gatekeeping, and built around the fact that women's proportions aren't just a smaller version of men's. It starts from your body, and it's all in one place: quick tools to point you at an answer, deeper guides for when you want the full picture. Everything here is one approach, never a rule — because bodies and bikes vary, and the call is always yours.

So if you've ever felt like you were doing it wrong, like everyone else got a manual you missed — you didn't, and you're not alone. Come take up space on the road, on your own terms.