https://youtu.be/O3sCtHs11P4 Here is a short video of me cycling in circles, down and up, and all the same again in slow motion. The saddle should be in correct position. The question is about the handlebars and stem length. I feel like there is too much weight on my hands. Also I am worried about the curved position of my back. It seems like at this point all I can do is either get shorter or longer stem. What do you guys think? : )
IMHO your setup is about right if on a long ride your hands, feet, and butt all give out at the same time.
You can take weight off your hands by pedaling harder, either putting out more power or riding in a higher gear.
Your bike looks fairly short so your arms are closer to vertical than horizontal. If you want to move the bars I think raising them up would have a bigger effect than moving them back. It looks like you already have some spacers under the stem so you would probably need a new stem which is angled up more. Your stem looks pretty short so changing the angle won't raise the bars a lot. You could also get more height by swapping the bar for one with some rise.
You might also want to try test riding a bike with a larger frame to see how that feels.
I just started my cycling journey and in 3 weeks I did over 650km. Averaging 50-60km a day. After last 75km ride, my fingers were tingling for the next whole day. After few days my hands still hurt when I try to cycle. So i guess the arm/hand position is wrong. I tried to angle the handlebars up (as on the video) but have not tested it yet. Some people told me this bike is kinda short and is the worst choice for me since I've got shorter torso and longer legs. Another advice was to make the bike longer by remvoing the spacers (moving steering down) and moving the saddle backwards, which seems quite opposite to what you are saying.
You probably don't want to hear this but I'd say your frame is one size too big. Your saddle looks to be a bit high and it would appear that there is not much post showing as it is. Correspondingly, your hand issue is most likely being caused by the reach to the bars being too long; when the core tires, riders tend to fall into the bars increasing the pressure on the hands. Your arms being fully extended when you are on the hoods is another indicator of this; you are essentially levered off the saddle with your upper body not taking much load until the core fails and once it does, the pressure on your hands increases dramatically.
What can you do? Well, a shorter stem should help and move your saddle forward(KOPS is antiquated and based on nothing so don't worry about that). Hopefully your shop will have some cheap stems you can borrow and experiment with. I'd suggest a stem that is 1-2cm shorter and moving the saddle 1cm forward and give that a few rides. You will probably find that to be better but at some distance the same problems will most likely return. Depending upon what your endurance goals are, you might be fine. You can make small reach changes by manipulating the angle of the bars but remember that the angle of the hoods will change as well so you'll have to play with that being comfortable. If you are comfortable making these adjustments yourself, your best bet is to ride for ~an hour and stop and make adjustments; that way you'll be in tune with how your bike feels. The worst thing folks do is ride and then make changes afterwards.
I'm a retired fitter, Serotta and Specialized Body Geometry trained so while some of this may sound counterintuitive...
I really am confused, if the bicycle is short (from one wheel to another) and I apparently have short legs but longer torso, should I not aim to have longer bicycle and more stretched position (longer stem/or bars lower + saddle further away)? I made a simulation. Kinda silly, but what else can I do? What you are recommending is either red or yellow. Is that correct?
First, don't confuse wheelbase with having anything to do with the fit dimensions. Maybe, hopefully haha, you are not and you just said wheel/wheel as a reference point. Frankly, unless you had someone professionally measure your dimensions, I would suggest being careful about translating what you think about your body proportions with how they correlate to bike fit. Flexibility and core strength has WAY more to do with it Plus, very few, meaning virtually nobody, has equal side/side flexibility due to being left/right handed and the typical injury history that most folks accumulate over the years. Riders tend to think that their old HS sports injuries are healed up but rarely do they not have an on-going effect on flexibility and, more importantly, flexibility variance
I would say that yellow looks more appropriate to me. However, I have to say that at this point my suggestion would be to find a local fitter who can see you in person and go from there. It sounds like your riding goals involve some fairly long riding and the easiest way to get there will entail some in-person fitting. It's tough to find a good fitter; I would start with asking how long a fit takes; IMHO, you cannot properly fit someone in much less than 2 hours because you don't really see what is going on until the athlete is at least somewhat fatigued causing the ugly to surface. Also, seeksomeone who wants your input, not a fitter who seems inclined to want to tell you where you should be on your bike. Only you can feel your comfort and performance, however you define it, follows comfort because if you are comfortable, you will ride for as long a you want, not as long you can tolerate. Lastly, you will most likely want more than one session; once you are happy riding 75K's you will probably develop new challenges as you push your distances further and overall fatigue becomes more of a factor..
I'm going to agree with SWGraveler's recommendation to see a fitter. Certainly better than taking my opinions too seriously.
My personal preference is to ride with my arms reaching forward more than downward. My frame has a long top tube and the bar is only 10 cm (4 in) lower than the saddle. I use a time trial bar because I never felt comfortable in the drops. It woks for me, I find it comfortable and I like the stable steering and braking. YMMV. 🙂
My brain goes to where and how you intend to ride. The right setup to go a long distance fast is to me not the right one to best handle mixed and tricky terrain or tight quarters or traffic. The right way to be on the bike you do really bad roads and some single track isn't same if you are after covering a long distance on smooth gravel with room around you.
Speaking from experience I recommend in your case a Redshift Shockstop stem 30 degree X 100mm and maybe their Kitchen Sink handlebar top grips or maybe both top and drop grips which may be used on most any drop bar not already aero. The grips are somewhat akin to Ergon grips for flat bar bikes and do wonders for the comfort level of your wrists and hands. If you're not a racer and don't need to be aero or hunched over doing push-ups the whole time what you need for long distance riding comfort is a more upright riding position to take the weight off your hands and give your back a rest. I generally ride the tops of all my drop bar bikes for comfort sake, not so much the hoods or drops and all my drop bar bikes are mech disc ( Paul Klampers....excellent! ) or V brakes so I also use cross brake levers for easier access. The bike I ride the most runs with almost a full Redshift kit, Redshift Shockstop stem 30 degree X 100mm which due to being 30 degrees translates to 90mm from handlebar center to steer tube center which raises the handlebars about 2 inches and about 10mm back; Redshift Kitchen Sink handlebar 50mm tops, 20mm rise, and I believe 7 degree? back sweep, somewhat like a Ritchy Venturemax which raised the bar another 3/4 inch or so and also added on the top grips. This combination in my case brought my handlebars up and back and also brought them above my seat height by almost 3 inches. Also have a Redshift Shockstop seatpost on the backside and this combo makes for a super comfortable upright long distance riding position. This bike combined with proper tire pressures rides like a Cadillac, on gravel, washboards and bad paving. Weight weinie's need not apply....
fafor wrote:Thanks guys, well I guess there's no other way to fix this than getting a proper bike fit.
Ideally, you get a fit before buying a new bike. A fitter may be able to make you more comfortable on an existing bike, but it does not optimize other aspects—efficiency, handling…
[QUOTE username=baric userid=7287348 postid=1333381185] The bike I ride the most runs with almost a full Redshift kit, Redshift Shockstop stem 30 degree X 100mm which due to being 30 degrees translates to 90mm from handlebar center to steer tube center which raises the handlebars about 2 inches and about 10mm back; Redshift Kitchen Sink handlebar 50mm tops, 20mm rise, and I believe 7 degree? back sweep, somewhat like a Ritchy Venturemax which raised the bar another 3/4 inch or so and also added on the top grips.
Throw the third switch! And that's all I have to say about that..
Search for myvelofit. Online fitting where you use videos you can make and upload with your phone to assess your flexibility and determine proper bike size. You can then take videos of you riding the bike on a trainer and get recommendations for fit. It's a bit simplistic as it suggests 3 areas for adjustment - raising or lowering the saddle, moving the bars closer or further away, and raising and lowering the bars - in increments of 5mm as far as I can tell. It looks at angles for knee, hip, back, shoulder, and arm. And gives you detailed explanations of the ranges it wants to see for those angles and how they affect your comfort on the bike.
It's not going to be as precise as going to a fitter, but a lot of people don't need that level of fit. But it will get you in the ballpark and you can make minor adjustments on your own after that.
And you can choose from comfort or performance fits, and road, MTB, gravel, or aero fit. There's also a lot of good articles (things like cleat placement).
It's free for the basic fit (but you can only upload 1 video per day). Or pay $35 for 5 uploads per day and access to sizing and flexibility assessment. OR Pay $75 for unlimited uploads and 1 year access.
I was having trouble with my gravel fit after coming from 20+ years of road riding. I don't know any fitters I trust locally and prefer to do things myself, so I figured what-the-heck and I paid the $35 to check it out and made the adjustments it suggested, although I was SURE they were wrong (after 20+ years I KNOW what my saddle height needs to be!). What I found out was that the recommendations were right, and as I have aged, my inseam has shrunk! I then paid the extra $40 to upgrade to the one year plan and have been using it to make adjustments to my position and...what do you know...it's working.
So I think it's an option for people that don't have access to a fitter, can't afford a fitter (cuz they ain't cheap), don't know which fitters to trust (big margin for error there), or just want to do it themselves to really start learning about their fit.
Worth checking out the free version if nothing else. And no, I have no affiliation with the company. I just love seeing an alternative to high priced bike fits that most of us don't need.
I was away for 2 weeks. I still had no chance to try anything new. I will first experiment with the bike adjustements which I can do msyelf for free. If that fails I will see what else I can do. I heard about redshift, but that is a long shot. For a little bit more I can get a bike fit where I live (poland). Thanks for the website. I will try that as well : ) SWGraveler, what do you mean by saying "Throw the third switch!"?
For me it seems about right for gravel. I think you could try changing the angle of the STIs, lowering them and making your hand more inline with your arms (blue arrow). You can test this just rotating the whole handlebar. Also, your wrists seems to be angled outwards, usually it's a sign of a handlebar that's too wide. In your video is hard to illustrated (a frontal shot would show this better), so I took a picture from another video showing this (red line). Reducing the handlebar width will also reduce your reach a little.
I think you should aim for your hands to lay as naturally as possible in the hoods, like in this picture:
Thanks, I will try that. I think my elbows might have been locked because I exhausted my core already with long week of cycling. Everyone keeps saying that the bar should be shorter. Gravels tend to have wider bars for control by why the heck if everyone recommends changing them ? 🙂
fafor wrote:Thanks, I will try that. I think my elbows might have been locked because I exhausted my core already with long week of cycling. Everyone keeps saying that the bar should be shorter. Gravels tend to have wider bars for control by why the heck if everyone recommends changing them ? 🙂
Wider and shorter are different dimensions. Your bars may be fine but you the suggestion is for a shorter stem to reduce your reach. Yes, wider bars increase reach all things remaining constant, but it's a very small increase. I wouldn't worry about the bar width at this point as over some time/miles you will sort that out.
fafor wrote:Thanks, I will try that. I think my elbows might have been locked because I exhausted my core already with long week of cycling. Everyone keeps saying that the bar should be shorter. Gravels tend to have wider bars for control by why the heck if everyone recommends changing them ? 🙂
It's complicated. I believe the ideal width for ergonomics it's somewhere very close to the shoulders (measured in the joint, using the bone protrusion, the acromion). Anything wider will be a compromise, trading ergonomics from control. If the problems really is handlebar width, you'll need to find a good balance between the two.
As a tip, you can get really great carbon handlebars at Og-Evkin in AliExpress, and aluminum ones at UNO, at a very good price.
And like was said, shorter and wider are too different things. Handlebars also have a reach measure, usually from 70 to 90mm, which is added to the stem length.
I find hard to understand the handlebars in 29" MTBs these days, every time I see they seem to got even wider! I used them and found awful to pedal. But I also dislike flat bars in general, so my opinion shouldn't count too much on this.
