painful hands

[julay]

Help! After 20 years of riding a Dutch bike I've just bought a flat handlebar bike so that I can go on long rides. After first few rides however my palms and thumbs became painful and now it looks like the tendons have swollen up on one palm. It feels like repetitive strain injury - stiff with shooting pains sometimes. I've adjusted the saddle height and started using padded gloves. It feels as if the wide handlebars may be forcing my hands into a strained position. - Will this improve as I get used to the different position or should I stop or change bikes ?

[OakLeaf]

Bars, stem, and/or grips.

Shooting pains isn't something you get used to.

Are your wrists angled when your hands are on the grips? Find a set of bars that lets you keep your wrists straight.

[lilly99]

Find a set of bars that lets you keep your wrists straight.

This is definitely the key! It’s really trial and error, but once you find a match, you'll feel better

[Cataboo]

There's a few threads on this already - you might want to do a search ( and we might want to create a sticky)

But- you could get yourself fit to your bike and they'd tell you if your handlebars are too wide.

Flat bars are hard because there's only a few hand positions you can use, you can change the handlebars to trekking or butterfly bars for more hand positions or soma sparrows.

Other things to do - sometimes it's the gloves, if the gloves close tightly around my wrist it sets my hands off, same with ifthere is padding in the gloves.

Is your saddle tilted downwards? i f it is, you're sliding forward off of it and holding your weight on your wrists - you don't want to hold your weight on your wrists. Idealy you're just going to be holding the handlebars gently (do not have a death grip on the handlebars, becuase it will lead to hand pain) with your elbows slightly bent and your core muscles will be supporting your weight... this sometimes takes a while to develop your core muscles for a new position on the bike. you want your saddle just titled slightly downwards - not enough to make you slide off yoru saddle, but enough that the front of it isn't digging into you.

what else? You want your hands in a completely neutral position - when you are holding your handlebars, you don't want your wrists to bend back towards you - you also want to keep that straight line for when you are using your brakes/shifters - so if your shifters are angled so you have to bend your wrists to use them, loosen them and swivel them around the bar.

You can get ergonomic grips - called ergo grips or ergon grips that help a lot.

So try all of that and move your hands around as you are biking, flex your fingers, etc. too long in one position hurts.

If all of that doesn't help, you might want to consider a different type of bike (if you're riding aluminum, the vibrations can contribute to hand pain, and either adding carbon components to kill the road buzz or getting a steel frame can help.)

Ibuprofen is your friend - and once you've started aggravating your hands/wrists, it's pretty important to not sleepwith your wrists bent or your hands clenched

[OakLeaf]

once you've started aggravating your hands/wrists, it's pretty important to not sleep with your wrists bent or your hands clenched

+1 - and many people do this unconsciously, just like bruxing teeth.

It's amazing how much difference it can make to sleep in a simple wrist splint.

[featuretile]

When I bought a slightly used Bike Friday with flat bars and took it on the first long ride - 40 miles, my hands and wrists really hurt. I was leaning much too forward and putting too much weight on my hands. When I had tested the bike and ridden 10 miles, it was not noticeable. So, it takes a long ride to see how you are going to feel.

I sat on the bike and imagined where my hands would be if they were resting in a comfortable position. I went to a bike shop (I was on a trip and nowhere near home and called around to see who had adjustable stems.) There was going to be more riding on this trip and I did not want to continue with my hands and wrists hurting. I put on the adjustable stem and raised the handlebars to where my imagined hand position should be. No more hand pain the rest of the trip....

So, this is going to take either experimenting with handlebar position with an adjustable stem (it only cost about $30, and I know, is a little heavier....) or getting a bike fit and then changing either the stem or handlebars or both. You could also try moving the saddle a little forward in increments to get it closer to the handlebars - your reach may be too long. Just please do something and don't keep riding like that or you could do some damage to your hands and wrists that would take awhile to reverse.