I’ve been getting a lot of hand and finger pain recently on rides and can’t sort it out and am running out of ideas.

I’ve also got blisters at the part of the hand which is just below the fingers (don’t know what this part of the hand is called), there is a blister just beneath every finger except the index finger and thumb.

No wrist pain at all. It’s all in the hands/lower fingers.

I’ve tried lowering the brake levers to a more vertical position (maybe they need lowering even more?), I’ve installed ODI Yeti soft grips which haven’t made a difference. Lowered the air pressure in the fork and tires to try and reduce trail clatter.

The only thing I’ve changed recently was my gloves (because the old ones have worn out) but they’re just a pair of SealSkinz DragonEye a fairly common glove I don’t see why that should cause the problem?

This is just normal trail riding.

Anyone know what it could be?

Ditch the gloves, grannyjone – they’re only for effete office workers, and are causing you problems. Your blisters will vanish if you ride your bike like God intended – skin on the bars.

I was thinking of ditching the gloves think I’ll go without them tomorrow.

Skin on the bars is right!
Ditch the grips too, nothing like the feel of bare metal. Makes the trail come alive.

APF

Maybe it’s some sort of RSI from changing all those brake pads?

Raise your brakes towards a more horizontal position not a vertical one. By doing this you’ll be pushing into the bars with your palms more to support your weight more and not tensing your hand muscles as much, also helps with arm pump. Also run your brake levers closer to the bar if can adjust the throw of the lever on your brakes, again not tensing your hands & fingers as much = less pain. Try ESI chunky grips as well, got rid of all the hand pain I used to get. Callouses at the top of your palm under the fingers is just part of riding lots, they’ll harden up after you’ve put enough mikes in. Try gloves with no gel padding or no gloves as others have said

Or try ergo type grips, i had hand and wrist pain for a couple of years which was gone overnight when I started using them, they spread the load over a larger area.
They look a bit geeky, but work well.

Also run your brake levers closer to the bar if can adjust the throw of the lever on your brakes, again not tensing your hands & fingers as much = less pain

I do that, none of my mates get it.

Re grips, I like my lizard skin Northshore grips. Chunky, soft.

sounds like someone has a death grip on the handlebars

loosen the grip and relax

darrell – Member
sounds like someone has a death grip on the handlebars

loosen the grip and relax
engages Geoffrey Boycott voice
Soft ‘ands lad, soft ‘ands

Also the position of the controls make a huge differene along with the grips (though I’ve cycled through chunky lockons, ESI foams, hard thin ones to just about everything depending on which bones in my hands are hurting.

Callouses on the hands are normal, if your not getting them your not riding enough.

Raise the brake levers, that’ll let you drop your wrists and put more weight through the heel of the palm.

Brake levers should be at about 45 degrees to follow the line of your arm. Riding off road without gloves seems pretty daft to me because I used to fall off quite often when riding off road. If there’s too much weight on your hands, look at your saddle; it should be flat or even tilted up by a degree or two at the nose so that your pelvic bones are “cupped” and less weight is thrown forwards.

I’ve got some used Ergon grips in my box of bits if you’re interested. They’ve got little bar ends on them though.

Yep. Wrists > Hands should be straight. Callouses need to be developed. Gloves make it worse but if you’re at risk of falling off then wear them.

Brakes should be one-finger and easy to reach. Light grip, not death grip. Sit up more using your core muscles rather than leaning on your wrists – pressure on your palm is a route to carpel tunnel.

Do push ups and/or planking to develop your core. If you can’t plank for around two minutes without dying then your core is weak and you’ll end up relying on your hands too much.

I’d argue against tilting the nose of the saddle up – it will increase pressure on the soft bits that you really don’t want as you’ll then compensate by putting more pressure on your hands. Tilt the nose of the saddle down by about 5deg, this will encourage you to engage your core muscles. Sounds counter-intuitive but I’d get nerve damage to my little and ring fingers on long (12hr or more) rides, since I’ve readjusted the saddle nose down I don’t get this despite going from suspension fork to rigid.

What’s all this stuff about callouses being normal? There’s absolutely no need for that to happen, regardless of how many miles you’re cycling.

As said already, try angling your controls so that they follow the line of your arm when sitting on the saddle at normal height. If you’re into steeper descents and hanging off the bike a bit more then you may want to try them slightly more horizontal.

Grips are relatively cheap so it’s worth trying different thicknesses and compounds to see what you get on with.

Gloves are usually best if they are a tight fit – enough that you might struggle to get them on when new. That’ll help stop your hands sliding around inside them.

And as Bob says, try angling the nose of your saddle down a crew degrees.

I used to suffer this as well. What sorted the pain out for me was moving the brake levers up, so they are closer to the horizontal position and Ergo grips – no more fingers pain, even on a rigid forks! (I’m not talking about the rest of the body though… 😆 )

I don’t death grip the handlebars as I tend to ride descents at a more relaxed pace, rather than trying to get down them as quick as I can while scaring myself.

I’ll going to move the levers further up and ride with no gloves on my ride today and see if that makes a difference.

…The only thing I’ve changed recently was my gloves (because the old ones have worn out) but they’re just a pair of SealSkinz DragonEye a fairly common glove I don’t see why that should cause the problem?…

Just out of interest, what kind of gloves were you riding in previously?

Brake levers should be at about 45 degrees to follow the line of your arm.

Not true. Look at any pro’s set-up articles from the last few years and you’ll see this varies widely, with many running their brakes flatter.

On old bikes with short reach and/or less steep tracks then more downward angled brakes make sense – but not nowadays.

I had been riding for about a year on 760 and 780 wide bars. I had no problems at first but hand pain became increasingly a issue. I tried various things including Ergon GE1 and GA1 grips, but the thing that solved it for me was cutting the bars down to 710.

I only twigged it after test riding an older bike with narrower bars and realising the discomfort was absent.

Everyone is different. Hope you sort it out.

Hand positioning and grips are all going to play their part. Ive recently switched to carbon bars and fully believe my hands and wrists feel better after a big ride than before carbon.

Just out of interest, what kind of gloves were you riding in previously?

I can’t remember their name but remember that they didn’t have hardly any padding on the palms compared to these ones I’ve got now.

Well I did a ride yesterday with the levers in a more horizontal position and no gloves.
I think the horizontal position helped, the hand pain was still there but the finger pain had almost gone.

The pain is hardly there when riding, it seems to come on a few hours after the ride and lasts until about mid day the next day then it’s gone.

I’m going to try moving the brake levers closer to the bars next time, as they are quite far out, and see if that helps.

One finger braking? If not, try that. Oddly it’s more efficient and less likely to give you death grip. Likewise, rest the index finger on the brake lever. Gives you fast response and less likely to grab for the brakes, plus it’s helping prevent you death grip the bars also.

Ergo grips – I tried them when I was getting hand pains initially, but ditched them immediately when I started doing technical descents and found my hand would slide off them, making it very dangerous. They don’t let you grip the bar and push the bar forward/up/etc basically, which isn’t good.

On ditching the ergos, raising the levers and switching to one finger braking, hand pains stopped.

I’ve always done one finger braking, although I went through a good few months when my brakes were crap due to contamination (leaking caliper) where I had to use multiple fingers, that was when the pain started, can’t get rid of it now.

I’ll have to keep experimenting with different brake lever positions

Try altering your bar position as we’ll be either rotating the them forward or backward so the bar profile sits the most comfortably in your hand. I’m always surprised how much difference a mm or two makes when trying to get new bars set up

I had to go to the doctor’s with hand pain. Doctor told me I had to stop masturbating. I asked why. She said, “because I’m trying to examine you”. 😀

“sofaboy73 – Member
Try altering your bar position as we’ll be either rotating the them forward or backward so the bar profile sits the most comfortably in your hand. I’m always surprised how much difference a mm or two makes when trying to get new bars set up”
Agree with this plus all the other tips re angles/position of controls. Another tip is to move your controls away from the grips a bit, mine are about an inch away(big, fitters hands

You haven’t put too much pressure in your front tyre have you?

Last time I did that I was getting similar syptoms

Ergon GE1’s have solved my hand pain. Worth a try.

You might try thicker grips, and bar ends so you can move your hands to different positions.

How big are your hands? I struggled with hand pain for a couple of years and I’m convinced it was due to trying to hold onto narrow diameter grips (the vast majority of grips out there). I’m also not a fan of thick rubber grips so now I run good quality cork tape wrapped around a lock-on with the rubber grip cut off. Ideally I’d like to try larger diameter bars but nobody makes them. Apart from golf, which probably isn’t very relevant here, I can’t think of another sport where grip on your equipment is important, which uses such a narrow diameter grip.

My hands are medium sized.

Having thought about it, I’ve recently changed the Stem, gloves and Grips *ALL* recently.
These are all things that effect hand pain.

Stem – Gone from a Riser Stem (which no one seems to use anymore) to a 40mm flat stem (which seem very popular now on trail bikes)

Grips – Went from some Hard Grips to some ODI Yeti soft grips.

Gloves – Changed some unpadded gloves for some padded SealSkinz ones.

I’ve just tried changing the grips back to the old ones for now and see if that helps. I’ve read that sometimes softer grips can sometimes cause hand pain.
Cant really change the gloves without spending money, the old ones are worn out and got holes in them.

I’ve heard some of the Specialized Gloves are good for reducing hand pain – can anyone provide a link to any in particular ?

Another vote for Ergon grips. I tried them years ago for a 24hour solo race and they made an enormous difference to hand and wrist pain over longer rides.

I found that the larger surface area they have spread the weight out and with a set of gloves with good padding either side of the carpal tunnel meant I took all the pressure off the carpal tunnel. Also found I was gripping the bars less hard on the flatter sections and therefore letting the forearm muscles that control the fingers relax a bit – less lactic acid build up and less pump up meant they hurt less and still had plenty of grip left for when I needed it on the technical sections.

Contrary to deadkenny’s experience I find them better grip for DH sections – again a function of greater surface area. Only issue I’ve had is when a set got very old and worn (shiny) in very wet and muddy conditions they became more slippy – but that just meant they’d served their 4 years and it was time for a new pair.

I had some hand pain issues a few months back. I’ll see if I can link the threads up for you.

One thing I found that definitely helped was removing my wedding ring while riding. It may be something to do with my finger shape and the bulk of the ring but I think it was vibrating from the bar and then transferring that to the neighbouring fingers and the base of my ring finger.

I use specialized gloves in the winter (deflect) and generally find these unpadded gloves not as good as the Endura trackmitts I wear in the summer which have various bits of palm padding.

Edit…I’m not sure on reflection if it’s the padding making it softer or the fact that it is a bit like a shim between my hands and the grip so my hand doesn’t need to wrap round such a “skinny” grip. I’m of the big palms short fingers hand shape.

I tend to ride the roadie without gloves but I do have fat old Roubaix tape on that!

Edit: and I don’t generally grip the bars much. More resting hands on than grabbing onto. But every so often it pays to check yourself as to if you’re really not death gripping!

my old thread in case it helps

The hand pains tends to come on about 3 hours after the ride, rather than when actually riding. Then I can feel it again first thing in the morning the day after, then it goes away.
Also sometimes experienced inflammation (very hot hands) few hours after riding.
Think this may indicate it is muscle-related than nerve-related ?
I’ve read a few articles on brake lever setup they seem to have helped

Sounds like muscle fatigue in your hands. I had similar sypmtoms from working on the computer 14hrs a day, 6 days a week and on top of that doing the usual house chores. I ended up with Repetitive Strain Injury in one of my fingers. It started with numb hands first thing in the morning. Then the pain started. I wasn’t able to move my hand without it hurting. Could barely pick anything up. I didn’t have time to ride which made things worse, as exercise helps.

You may not be gripping your bars tight but the muscles in your fingers are still contracted when holding something and if you are doing this for any length of time they will fatigue. Tired muscles get injured easier. The muscles and tendons in the hands are very thin and are meant for precision work.

Maybe try using fatter grips so your fingers are in a more relaxed position. Position your brake levers so your fingers are less flexed. Get your fingers moving when you stop pedalling.
Riding never caused me any issues. I tend to rest my palms on may bars rather than grip them.

What fixed it for me was doing push ups, chin ups and resistant bands.
I’ve heard that doing weights work too. So what ever takes your fancy. I tried finger exercisers/strengthers but they just made the pain worse. Building strength in my arms helped overall strength in my hands and fingers. Stronger mucsles are less prone to injury.
Also very important to rest your hands and give them time to recover after exercising them. Finger stretches and massage can help too.
Finger Exercises
Finger pain

Thanks for the replies. I’ve tried as much of the things that I could but its gone worse. The hand pain has been replaced by chronic tingling. It won’t go away. I’ve kept off the bike completely since this started (Frustrating and Hell, with this weather) and 4 days later it’s not gone! This has got me more than worried.
Went to the Doctor and he just told me to take ibuprofen 3x a day and identified that there was no loss of wrist/hand strength/mobility which can sometimes accompany this symptom. He also said it might be Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.