What can i adjust to so that there’s less weight on my wrists when just pedaling along? Climbing and descending are both fine but these last few rides have been mostly flat and i’ve noticed i’m putting too much weight through my hands. I’ve been off the bike for a month or so, so  could it be a strength/fitness thing? A straighter back or more bend in the arms maybe?  Or can i adjust the bike somehow to make it more gooder?  There’s room for a spacer or two under the stem if that would help but will that screw up how it climbs and descends? Any tips/ideas i could try out for the tomorrow?

” i’ve noticed i’m putting too much weight through my hands”

How?

If the bike was fine before the month off, why not just give it a while, if you haven’t had an injury or something similar? Outside of that a spacer or two might help or just use a bit of core strength.

Bars higher, bars closer.

Put spacers under the stem, or get a shorter one.  Stems can be had for a fiver on CRC or PlanetX so there’s no reason not to experiment.  Try a shorter stem if raising it doesn’t help.  Or you could put your saddle forward.

It won’t screw anything up, but it might change some things, you might like it, you might not 🙂

Core strength? You’re really tall so you should be able to have the bars up way high before you struggle to weight them in turns, so I’d put some more spacers under the stem.

Tilt the saddle back just a bit.  On my road bike my back and neck were twinging a bit.  I tipped the saddle forward  just a touch. It increased the pressure noticeably on my hands but eased everything else. So reversing that decreases the pressure.

I’ve found that spacing the stem up or down can make a massive difference to how I sit on a bike so yes that’s worth a go.

As an aside; I broke my back a couple of years ago and when I was finally able to get back on a bike I found my long stretch, low fronted xc bike far more comfy that my short stemmed, long travel (a 456 at 130mm) bike. As my core strength has improved I’ve found the 456 more and more comfy to ride sat down. I’m also planning to swap the stem on the xc bike from dropping to rising in response to my improved fitness,

Ergon grips, they don’t change your body position, but they do spread the (same) load over a larger area, thereby reducing pressure.

i have them on one bike, its the only way i can ride it. On another (newer) bike, i made sure i had the bars at their max height (by not cutting the steerer) achieving the same result.

The two bikes are quite different so, I don’t really notice any difference, although im not a radical rider.

Pedal harder. Seriously that results in less weight on your hands!

aracer

Pedal harder. Seriously that results in less weight on your hands!

I agree with that.

If you ever go from a singlespeed to gears, you’ll notice some positions that are perfectly comfortable on the SS become uncomfortable either on the hands or bum. I suspect the frequent getting out of the saddle and various body movements involved in SS mean that no part is subjected to continued pressure.

Pedal harder. Seriously that results in less weight on your hands!

Great sustainable solution.. ffs…

Bars higher or nose of the saddle up a touch (saddle nose up will strain your back more, but it’s all a balance between your hands and your back).

Of course, if you’ve been off it will take a while to be comfortable again, part of this might be that you’re not pedaling so hard, but you want to be comfortable during that period and it might just be that your time off is highlighting setup problems that were there anyway.

If you push a bigger gear it will take the weight off the hands too – doesn’t have to be just putting more power down, so the pedal harder advice isn’t that daft, but this might not be great for knees or just might not suit how you like to ride.

You could try moving the seat 5mm or so further forward and tilting it back slightly. My bike was killing me until I realised that the bits I’d used to build weren’t quite the same as the ones that were nicked on the other frame (slightly wider bars, slightly longer stem, slightly shorter forks) and that all conspired to put too much weight on my hands and wrists and bugger my neck and shoulders up on long-ish, flat-ish rides. I whipped 10mm off either end of the bars, stuck a 10mm shorter stem on and move the seat forwards and up a bit and it’s much nicer to ride now 😀

edit- and this-

I agree with that.

If you ever go from a singlespeed to gears, you’ll notice some positions that are perfectly comfortable on the SS become uncomfortable either on the hands or bum. I suspect the frequent getting out of the saddle and various body movements involved in SS mean that no part is subjected to continued pressure.

Just standing up and pushing a taller gear helps loosen things up.

Back sweep. I put Jones Loops on a Spearfish and it is brilliant.

I’d get minor nerve damage in small and ring fingers, both hands, on long rides (by long I mean 12hrs or more). The bike was fine for 8hr rides and shorter but increasingly uncomfortable beyond that. I tried lots of the things as mentioned above – one at a time. Obviously it took a while after each ride to recover so it ended up being nearly 18 months before I sorted it out.

The fix was to tilt the nose of the saddle down by about 5 degrees. Contrary to what you might think it doesn’t increase pressure on hands/wrists as it encourages you to engage your core muscles which are what should be supporting your upper body, not your hands. Obviously if your core muscles are weak then you might have a problem so look at strengthening them.

Thought i try a 10mm spacer under the stem first, so did that and went to take the bike out only to discover the rear was really soft. Bloody tubeless valve had a leak. Not the best time to realise you’ve no spare valves (or sealant) left. Ordered some spares and conjured up a bodge that lasts almost 2 hours before flatting. More than enough time to see if the spacer helps.

It sure does but as (bad) luck would have it it seems my reverb thought it would have a go at taking the weight of my hands by locking up at  half travel 😀

I agree with the pedal faster comment btw – a bit of wind blast makes a difference but hard to do on 2″ of water lying on 3″ of sludge.]

I’ll try some of the other tips once the bike is back to full health. Cheers

I notice this on my mountain bikes, but only when going on the flat.  On ups or downs, everything is fine.  Yet on my road bike, I don’t notice a problem although the position there is more weight-forward.

Anyhow, if you keep the “mountain” in mountain biking things will be fine.

The fix was to tilt the nose of the saddle down by about 5 degrees.

That would depend on where it is in the first place.  Tilted too far forward and you’ll be sliding off the front of it all the time and you’ll be holding yourself up with your hands; too far back and your hips will be rotated backwards and you’ll have to be holding your body up with your hands too.

@molgrips – should have said that my saddle was originally level. It does depend on the saddle as well – very smooth saddles aren’t ideal as even with a small angle you slip forward so a saddle with some form of pattern is better.

Road/track discussion ahead! I altered the angle after reading a piece about the BC track squad having, shall we say “delicate”, problems. In their marginal gains programme they found that riders were getting bad saddle sores. Turned out to be two things: one was shaving – hairs are there for a reason; the other was saddle angle – UCI rules mandated a level saddle but in the somewhat extreme posture employed on track bikes this meant that undue pressure was placed on soft tissues. Tilting the saddle nose down (by up to 9 degrees) meant that the riders were then sitting on their sit-bones again. BC, along with others, made a technical submission to the UCI and the saddle may now be tilted down by up to 9 degrees +/- 1deg.

I suspect that the “soft tissue” problem was what led to my nerve damage, tilting the saddle nose down solved it.