Numb Hands While Cycling? (A Simple Approach to Fixing)

so welcome back or welcome to the 14th edition of the RCA training tip show we're going to get into things straight away again today because I'm joined again by an expert by critter nil Stanberry who's been fitting road cyclists for around ten years in conjunction with being a sports physiotherapist and today we're going to be talking about a very common issue why cyclists get sore or numb hands and what to do about it now I am conscious this topic has been done quite a few times in the past notably by GCN in fact they did a video a couple of weeks ago on the topic which was very good but I'm confident if you watch this video as well today if you watch that piece by GC and you're gonna leave this video with an even greater insight of why this happens and what you can do about it so let's get into it why does that happen and yeah how can we stop it from happening yeah you ride man it's super super common it'd have to be maybe 50% of people or more that rock up for a fit with me it's one of their complaints even if it's not that primary complaint it's one of their complaints and numbness and tingling in the hands - I compress innervate or a restriction of circulation or a restriction of circulation to the nerve rather than the hand itself so they fall into two main categories the classic one that you'll you'll read about if you google it is is carpal tunnel compression which is compression of the carpal nerve just in a little section of the median nerve where it passes through the wrist here it passes through a little shallow space between a couple of bones and that area if you if you hold it long enough or put pressure on it for long enough it can kind of scarify around the nerve and you can end up with a semi permanent compression of the nerve which needs to be surgically released or something like that and cyclists are really prone to it because of the static nature of holding onto the bar and absorbing road vibration and that type of stuff and the second type of so that that one will give you a numbness in the median nerve pathway which is sort of the palm of a hand and into a couple of the middle fingers the other ones fall into one other sort of main category which is which is which is proximal to that area soso compression of the nerve pathway through the forearm the elbow the shoulder where the nerve pathway passes out underneath the clavicle here which is called thoracic outlet syndrome and then there's some some which also come from your neck so if you've got a nerve compression in your neck from a little bone spurs and arthritis or or a disc herniation or something like that that will often also manifest for the first as the first symptom is pins and needles in your hand so you get these kind of two areas the ones which should occur here and the ones which occur further up and there's lots and lots of different types of those ones the primary cause of most of the ones which affects cyclists is too much weight on their hands it's not so much a local problem where I you know my bars are five millimeters too high or too low or too far away from me or too close that is the position of the front end is one of the causative mechanisms but it's definitely not the main one the main causative mechanism of of compression of the nerves anywhere through the arm on a bike is usually too much weight on your hands and that opens up a huge can of worms ooh I've got too much weight on your hands well there's a lot of different reasons a seat height the seat for an off position the seat setback the cleat position bizarrely can can play a role in it too if you've got if you've got a dodgy cleat position which is which is not allowing your glutes and your hamstrings to function strongly and lift weight off your hands the mass in your upper body you know all this sort of stuff and then secondary that the position of the bars high and reach and then it and then one of the one of the least causative mechanisms is actually the position of the hoods and that type of stuff it very rarely causes big trouble what could there be a third I'm thinking because there's a lot of people that are just getting into road cycling to support the channel that being they don't realize that they shouldn't be putting so much weight on the handlebars could that be a reason as well it can be yeah yeah especially if they've if they're new to it most a lot of new riders really hold on really tight because the road bike is a twitchy apparatus when you first get on it compared to like a mountain bike or a Kmart but they were over there a kid the road bike is sharp and precise and so a lot of them and you see a lot in ladies who who are arguably much more risk-averse than most men they will hold the bars really tight and brace themselves almost as a safety mechanism it's an unconscious thing that they do but in most people it is just just too much weight forward over the hands and so what we seek to sort of strive to do in with the position in a global sense is to create a balance where you're cruising along on your bike at a decent clip we're not going to hide not going to slow just just around your threshold or down below that and you've got very little weight on your hands you can get the weight off the riders hands there won't be a compression issue so they need just enough weight on their hands to steer the bike but not so much that they're really loading their hands and so that's kind of the the ethereal concept of balance is really the best thing you can do if you've if you've nailed down the balance of the rider fore-and-aft up-down you know their glutes are engaging well their bars are in a nice comfortable position they've got a gentle bend in their elbows and then there they're not loading their hands heavily regardless of where the compression is occurring it'll probably disappear mm-hmm and so it's a function of a lot of things you know the seat height and the setback and all that sort of stuff and it's very rarely a massive problem in the wrist although every year I come across a few people who've got a proper carpal tunnel and it's become an issue where they're getting it off the bike just as much as on the bike and and the bike is worsening it but it's actually a you know a mechanical problem in their wrist which they need to get sorted out by oh by a surgeon or or something like that but that's fairly fairly rare so we try and create balance on the bike and and sort out the front end position so that it's very comfortable and the rider can can ride along with just enough weight on their hands to steer the bike but not so much that they're really loading their upper body and gripping and upper body mass so I guess so I should mention comes into it as well if you're a really lightly built rider like myself who's really light in the upper body that ride is gonna throw less weight forward for a given position than someone who's got large you know it whether it's muscle or not somebody's large in the upper body they've got more weight cantilever it out over the bars the heavy day the upper body so is that what you see with your fitting clients that's when they when people complain about that they're typically heavier yes okay certainly more common in people with big shoulders or probably gut you know anyways heavy in the upper half yes it's it's a much more of a problem because that rider is just gonna throw more weight forward almost no matter what you do than someone who's built like Chris Froome or like me who is very light in the upper body and playing into that comes the person's core strength you know how well they can stabilize their torso in a flexed position and so forth yes so if they've got rubbish core strength your more weight on their hands right yes so it's kind of an interplay between all of these things and a good way of sort of examining it yourself if you're wanting to know if too much weight is is being applied to your hands are you routinely riding with your elbows locked because when you bend them your triceps fatigue too much so if you bend them slightly and you're having to really push down with that tricep that means your weight is still trying to tip board right if that's happening you know you're getting a lot of tricep fatigue unless you lock your arms out yeah you've probably thrown too much weight forward for one reason or another and another great another great way of sort of quantifying it is to look at Steve Hogg's seat setback balance I think he calls it the balanced test and somewhere deep in the depths of Steve's huge website as a video and some photos of this and if the rider is riding along at a moderate clip say a twenty or thirty minute if it's something that they can you know around their threshold sort of power yeah if they can swing their arms back next to the hips and maintain the same torso position or vote or very very you know that sort of tipping forward or sitting upright just with the act of pedaling that means most of the time they'll be able to place their hands back on the bars and have very light you know very little weight on their hands and that's a that balanced test isn't as a nifty way of kind of examining saddle setback and seat height and bar position for being sort of grossly wrong or girl or grossly right yeah okay so if you've got your seat way too far forward and you go to swing your hands back while you're riding you're just gonna get ya whack on the bars right it means it seats too far forward assuming that all else about the his good means you see tis too far so would somebody try that type of thing that test on the road on the trainer I'll try that on a track yeah yeah I can do it on the road but I'm assuming there's no cars around I've got amazing core strength and I'm very light in the upper body so it's really easy for me but you should definitely do that on a trainer the safety is active yeah yep so what about the seat because someone once told me and I've kind of run with it that if you don't have the right seat width or C position hmm that can affect blood flow from down there and yeah your hands luckily that's a that's a turbine me that's me yeah yeah yeah the sensory nerve pathways go one way so they go they go from the limb towards your spinal cord in your brain the descending motor control of your nerves and muscles goes the other way yes but this is a feedback system so the one in your in your pudendal nerve the one in your crotch won't play a role with your hands except for the the possibility that the saddle is grossly wrong it might throw your weight forward right or you might find yourself creeping forward constantly on the saddle which loads your hands interesting or something something external to that can play a role it certainly can't yeah yeah saddle choice yeah can certainly play arise one of the things that we change relatively regularly is is the saddle too to create a better balance for the rider that that fore/aft up down the pelvis the cantilevered position of the pelvis which dictates where the shoulders are on the bike and that sort of stuff comes a lot of the time from the correct saddle choice in the first place if you've got a saddle which is not allowing you to roll your pelvis forward to the degree that your central nervous system wants you to ride out then you know we're just pressing up under your crotch as soon as you roll your pelvis forward for example that rider will post you really rotate their pelvis to get away from the seat which messes up the front end so shorten their torso and and you know then they'll get in trouble with their hands and shoulders so it's all kind of an integrated system is the the moral of the story but I guess if you could put it into one kind of nifty sentences what causes pins and needles in my hands a lot of the time for most riders is poor balance on the bike you know and most of that I would sort of argue probably 75% of that comes from the position of the pelvis relative to the cranks not so much where the front end is now the front end needs to be right but it can be it can be a bit off and you'll be fine as long as you're in good balance at the back okay interesting you

Channel: Cam Nicholls

Views: 692,680

Rating: 4.8911061 out of 5

Keywords: sore hands cycling, numb hands cycling, bike fit, global cycling network

Id: gbFrz5FsIow

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020