Can you be more specific about where the pain is? What size tires at what pressures are you riding? I find that shifting my hands around a lot helps (I don't get pain, but numbness sometimes). Try changing your grip every few minutes. Different gloves that place the padding in different places may also help. Try running the fattest tires at the lowest pressures possible.
If it's wrist pain, be conscious of keeping your wrists in a neutral position, i.e. not cocked. Try this: let your arms hang naturally by your sides, then raise them from the shoulder sockets and note the position of your hands in space. Do any of your bar positions mimic this position? (For most people the answer is no.) Change your setup so you can mimic this neutral wrist position. For me that means rotating the brake hoods in towards the bike's midline on my Noodle, and placing the hoods quite high on the Noodle's hooks, and keeping the flats at least horizontal, if not sloping up towards the front. Cheers, Gernot On Feb 24, 2:13 pm, Rene Sterental <orthie...@gmail.com> wrote: > I can't find a position where I will ride with no pain in my hands. > > I've removed neck and shoulder pain after switching to Rivendell bikes, > but I can't get rid of the hand pain. Raising or lowering the bar doesn't > seem to make a difference. If anything, it seems to me that raising it > actually makes it worse. On both the AHH with Noodle bars and the Bombadil > with Moustache bars, shortening the stem has made me feel the "spot" > overall, as well as lowering the bars some. But the hand pain doesn't go > away. > > Today I raised the M-bar on the Bombadil as far as the brake cables would > allow (raised it about 1.5 cm higher than I had them) and if anything, it > seems that the hand pain was worse. Looking at my profile on window > reflections while riding, it seems to me that I went from a 45-50 degree > forward lean to a 50-55 degree forward lean when putting my hands on the > braking position. When my hands are on the edges of the bar where the > shifters are, I'm more upright but there is still a forward lean. It seems > to me that as long as I have a forward lean of some sort, there is some > amount of pressure on my hands and that causes them to hurt. > > My explanation for the slightly less hand pain when the bars are a bit lower > (still higher than the saddle) is that the 45 degree forward lean allows me > to engage more back muscles as well as use my legs more effectively, and > that raising the bar reduces the work from my muscles and therefore my hands > bear more of my weight. > > They also seem to hurt less when riding gloveless on the M-bars. > > Can anybody offer more insight into what I might try doing to deal with the > pain in my hands? > > Thank you, > > René -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
