Numb hands - gloves or fitting?

[Catrin]

Does that bike have flat bars?

Yes, this is my Trek 7. 6 and the fit needs adjusting slightly.

Catrin, rip the padding out of those PI gel gloves. I rip the padding out of all my PI gloves, something about the pads make my hands go numb. I was mountain biking with a friend last week and after she started complaining about her hands being numb, I removed the padding from her PI gloves, and the numbness went away.

Are you holding on too tightly to th handlebars? a death grip will also induce numbness. Are you leaning too much weight down onto your wrists? Make sure your wrists are in an absolutely neutral position - not bent back towards you when you're holding the bar. Keep your elbows slightly bent to absorb shocks. Move your hands often. If your seat is tilted downwards a bit, sometimes you slide forward and use your wrists to push you back - which causes your wrist to go numb.

I will check these things out at my next ride. I suspect my wrists are not in a neutral position, though closer to it than it was. I find that I want to ride with my thumbs stretched out along the Ergon grip rather than around it - unsure if that might be related to it. I am very happy that today only my right fingers went numb and there was no pain in my palms and no numbness there unlike the other day. I will rip the padding out of my larger PI gloves and see how that goes now the experiment with the weight lifting gloves seemed helpful.

Thankfully this is VERY different from what happens with the road bars - the arthritis is in my palms so I have to avoid a certain hand position entirely - and sadly the road bars puts me into that position perfectly...the Ergon grips totally prevent this position

Also it is my left hand that is the arthritic one and I have ZERO problems with it on this bike - this makes me very happy!