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As per the title really
After about an hours riding, palm and little finger go numb.
Any words of wisdom, suggestions for grips/gloves that would help alleviate said numbness
There's so many things to consider unfortunately, so there's a bit of trial and error.
- Gloves/no gloves/padded or not
- Grips
- Bar height
- Reach
- Bar sweep (that makes most difference to me).
What is your current setup?
And how strong your core is.
Mines shit, so I put too much weight through my hands.
There is no quick win.
Reeksy has summed it beautifully, fork and tyre pressure are free to try first before you start buying.
I had it riding the northern section of the Pennine Bridleway from Kirby Steven to Hebden Bridge over two days. I was riding a rigid Pinnacle Ramin, steel fork with a 29x2.6 Rekon (at maybe low 20s PSI) on the front, can't remember at what point my hands went numb but it lasted for a good few days after the ride, which was a bit worrying!
I now use a different bike with a suspension fork for big rides or multi day bike packing stuff.
Mate did over 300km on the WEMBO 24 hour race on a single speed last year...still got some residual numbness.
I got rid of this with a combination of switching away from gloves with a padded section under the heel of the hand to Specialized Grail gloves and also changing to Ergon GP1 grips, both of which helped massively in spreading the load across the hand. 'normal' padded gloves can actually make things worse and concentrate pressure to just where the padding is.
Men's Body Geometry Grail Long Finger Gloves (specialized.com)
I think there are others doing a similar glove now but if not, perhaps just try unpadded gloves, assuming you aren't already.
And how strong your core is.
I’ve found this is the biggest factor. Started doing sit ups (30 a day) and pretty quickly I was only resting hands on the bar not the bars supporting me.
Firstly, thanks for all the replies and advice.
In no particular order:
just getting back into it proper so my core is shite, but then never really had a core lol.
current set up: e13 20mm riser bar 800mm wide 35mm clamp. 50mm stem and stock Orbea grips
I do tend to rest on the middle of my palms when ride along or up hill
tire pressure might be my first port of call
Another core vote from me. When I’ve be slack on exercising and riding I really suffer until I’ve got improved core strength.
What’s your job? I’m a desk jockey so hunched over a computer stiffens my shoulders. This pinches the nerves and blood vessels that go under the collarbone which add to the problem.
Was going to say that improving flexibility of shoulders and thoracic spine is important for me, but FB-ATB has beaten me to it
I get this in my left hand on my hybrid. I think it's a combination of the bars being too narrow and gloves being too tight. But I also get a pain in my left wrist whenever I try to do press-ups
WLB - it's my left hand as well. I've been off the bikes for a couple of years, just getting back into it. So can't really remember if i suffered before.
The only big difference in setup apart from geometry is the 800mm bar, last bike was 760mm wide i believe. Off out this weekend so will play with tyre pressure before buying carbon bars, which I secretly want to do anyway 😉
I used to get this quite a lot - found some bars are worse that others to trigger it for me. Renthals make my hands go numb the quickest. My current setup is alloy Burgtecs with the minnar super soft grips and no gloves. Numbness is rarer now. I've tried numerous carbon bars, but the alloys are more comfortable for me.