Think I need to lower my handlebars

[Zippy]

Still going through tweaking my road bike (Kona Honky Inc). When riding on the brake hoods it feels like the crook between thumb and hand is taking too much weight and my wrists ache. when on the drops they feel too high or close to my torso. It's almost like the crossbar is too short and I'm hunched over rather than draped over the frame.

I have read around and notice that the handlebars are about 1 or 2 inches above my saddle top and recommendations are to have the saddle 1 - 4 inches above handlebar height. This might solve my problem and improve road feel (I still feel like the front wheel is BIG and I'm balanced on a unicycle with my hands on the pedals!

Lastly, on the hahndlebar stem are what I think are a number of assorted width spacers. I guess I can take a number of those out until the drop is correct - right?

Happy New Year all!

 

[Norm]

I'm not sure what is going on there, Zippy.

Pain between the thumb and fingers usually means, as you say, that there is too much weight on your hands but that, IMO, generally signifies that you are leaning too far rather than too upright. However, the rest of what you write does suggest you are too upright.

You can take out the spacers to lower the bars, but do it with care. When you undo the stem clamps, your front wheel could drop out of the frame. Even if it just moves slightly, there is a danger that the bearings could become dislodged. However, if you undo everything carefully and with your front wheel on the ground rather than working on a stand, you should be fine. Check YouTube or Bike Doctor for videos on how to do it and remember it's the stem clamp which holds it all together, not the allen bolt in the top which is little more than a dust cover. Oh, and the spacers which you take out get put back on above the bars, you don't need to cut the stem for anything other than aesthetic reasons.

The ideal bar/saddle relationship depends on the type of riding you want to get out of that bike. As a generalism, bars below the saddle are better for performance (reduced drag and a better position for putting power through the pedals) but that is not as comfortable, putting even more weight through your arms and hands and requiring more curvature in the spine. Higher bars are more relaxed but less efficient.

 

[GrasB]

As a general rule of thumb the higher your bars are the longer you need the frame to be & as you sit up & rotate your body position back you also need to put the hoods up in the air so you don't put pressure on the heal of your hand. That said you may just not get along with Shimano STIs, I simply can't find a hood position with them that doesn't make my hand ache. Both problems can cause pain, numbness & cramping in the hands. If the drops feel to high then you may well be to crunched up & need to lower the bars &/or get a longer stem. 90-130mm is the nominal range for stems, go further out than that & you may end up with very twitchy or lethargic steering.

 

[cyberknight]

Have you set your saddle set back right yet?

if not you need to set that up first , i know that knee over pedal crank is debatable but it makes a good starting point, this guide helped me find a staring point for tweaking..

http://www.jimlangley.net/crank/bikefit.html

 

[Fab Foodie]

Read here and all you need to know will become clear:

http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/fitting.htm

 

[mickle]

Read here and all you need to know will become clear:

http://www.peterwhit...com/fitting.htm

95% great advice - 5% utter made-up tosh.

 

[Fab Foodie]

95% great advice - 5% utter made-up tosh.

By cycling standards, that's pretty damn good!

Out of interest which 5% didn't you agree with?

 

[mickle]

Just for starters:

..... That fore-aft position determines how your body is balanced on the bicycle. Your balance determines how comfortable you are, and how efficiently you can pedal the bike. Stand up straight in front of a mirror and turn to the side. Look at yourself in the mirror. When standing straight your head, hands, seat and feet are all fairly close to being in line with each other. Now bend over at the waist. Notice that not only has your head moved to a position ahead of your feet, but your rear end has moved behind your feet. If this were not the case, you would fall forward. Your seat moves back when you bend at the waist to keep you in balance.

Your torso needs to be leaning forward for two reasons; power output and aerodynamics. With an upright torso, you can't use the gluteus muscles to good effect. Also, you can't effectively pull up on the handlebar from an upright position .....

 

[Zoiders]

You need to post a picture of the bike in profile to show the set up.

Can't comment on a frame you can't see.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Just for starters:

..... That fore-aft position determines how your body is balanced on the bicycle. Your balance determines how comfortable you are, and how efficiently you can pedal the bike. Stand up straight in front of a mirror and turn to the side. Look at yourself in the mirror. When standing straight your head, hands, seat and feet are all fairly close to being in line with each other. Now bend over at the waist. Notice that not only has your head moved to a position ahead of your feet, but your rear end has moved behind your feet. If this were not the case, you would fall forward. Your seat moves back when you bend at the waist to keep you in balance.

Your torso needs to be leaning forward for two reasons; power output and aerodynamics. With an upright torso, you can't use the gluteus muscles to good effect. Also, you can't effectively pull up on the handlebar from an upright position .....

Interesting: because I find that is the best bit of advice he gives for getting set-up.

He's not saying that you don't need to be leaning forward, quite the opposite, what he's saying is that the more you lean forward, the further backwards (relatively) your seat needs to be to have a neutral or comfortable balance on the bike. The alternative is to have an awful lot of weight (esp. in my case!) bearing-down on the bars through arms and hands. That's spot-on in my experience and seems to work for others. Fine-tune from there.

 

[mickle]

It just doesn't make any sense. I get that when standing in front of a mirror the more you bend over the more your arse sticks out - it's to do with keeping your centre of gravity within the area described by your footprint. On a bike your weight is shared between the contact points; pedals, saddle and bars. White's system is based on his hunch that what occurs when 100% of your body weight is supported by your feet is relevant when your weight is shared over three points of contact. It doesn't follow.

For someone who professes to be an expert on cycle ergonomics he has a surprisingly closed mind.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

It makes OK sense to me, he's illustrating a principle: If I sit on any of my drop-bar bikes I can hold my torso in place with finger-tips on the bars fairly comfortably, if I move the seat forward and the bars by the same amount to keep the same upper-body position/angle then more weight gets transferred onto my arms, even though ,my arse is still on the saddle and feet on the pedals.
Many people setting-up bikes complain of too much weight on the arms/bars because they've set the saddle position to reach the bars fitted (and are too far forward - unbalanced). What Whight is saying is get the saddle for/aft sorted and the height over the B/B to achieve a better weight distribution/COG and then adjust bars to meet you.
As I say, from my own experimentation the principle seems to work just fine.

 

[MacB]

I'm with Fab Foodie on this one but I don't think that section of the Peter White page is well written. He starts off with saying that the saddle fore aft is the most important bit, which I agree with, then makes a bit of a pigs ear trying to explain why. I do get what he means but I'd personally use one of the fit calculators to get a starting saddle setback range and work from there.

 

[GrasB]

I run a very aggressive effective seat tube angle (79 deg) my neutral balance point is half way between the hoods & the drops despite a very low torso position. The result is I actually have to support more of my weight through my hands on the tops than on the hoods or drops. From the hoods I have to rise up to a much more vertical position before I'm truly comfortable in my core again.

This shows something that you've not paid attention to, the critical hip/torso angle, by moving the seat forward a notable amount you've changed the angle of your torso relative to your legs. This means you've changed the amount of leverage your core muscles have to hold your torso in a given position. To truly replicate your riding position you'd have to lower the handle bars. A lot of people fail to take any notice of this angle but it's an important one, get it right & you can dramatically lower arm loads for a very similar body position. While it is true the more you rotate the body forwards the more weight is supported by the arms it's surprising how low you can go if you get the right leg/torso relationship.

 

[GrasB]

This is one reason why people often find that they feel like the bullhorns of a TT bike are in a higher position than the drops of their road bike even when they're actually lower. As TT bikes tend to run more aggressive ST angles even though the handle bars are low the've end up with a very similar leg/torso angle.