in today's episode of bike fit tuesdays fixing neck and shoulder pain on the bike
with help from rachel
cool that's a wrap guys so perfect opportunity today to do a bike fit tuesdays on neck and
shoulder pain because it's tuesday because we have someone with neck and shoulder pain with
us thanks rachel for helping us with this video it's okay stop my pain out yeah sort of hang out
it's it's now so long she just doesn't want to pedal anymore she's had her she's not enough
are you killing me yes this is a camera just to explain this is the second video we've done with
rachel so she's she's tired she's done about 50k on this thing and i've had two cakes on my coffee
and you've had a lot of a lot of caffeine so what are the common causes of neck and shoulder pain
on the bike excessive ball width when the bar's too wide riders very often end up rolling the
wrists in which creates quite a lot of tension through the the upper arms and into the neck and
shoulders and into the traps if the reach is too long if the rider is essentially doing a plank
and having to ride a bike at the same time based on the fact that we all like our bikes to look
a certain way with very long stems and then them to be quite quite aggressive uh that again i mean
if you have a look at rachel's shoulders here how they've sort but they've sort of ridden up
uh that again is going to create neck and shoulder issues um you know it creates an inability to look
ahead as well that's usually quite important when traveling at speed other common causes
are excessive saddle pitch so uh thank you british cycling for your solution on women's
saddle issues just applying loads of pictures of the saddle which creates a slope what happens when
you put something on a slope it rolls down the slope i'm talking about the ever-present force
that is gravity so you end up rolling down the slope break some of the arms okay lots of neck
and shoulder tension again insufficient saddle setback so if the saddle is too far forward
it ends up putting the right center of gravity into the front of the bike again very common in
racing positions and particularly thanks in no part to silly short-nosed saddles uh which
encourage us to push this out further forward to open the hips up thank you physiotherapists
what that does though it turns it throws the weight of the rider into the front of
the bicycle so you end up next shot i think neck and shoulder issues tend to accompany by other
problems particularly hand issues uh so you know numb hands ting tingling pins and needles that
sort of stuff what else excessive saddle height as well unsurprisingly if you watch the last bite
fit tuesdays you'll see that basically every cycling element under the sun uh can be traced
back to excessive saddle height now controllers uses no is no exception when the saddle sets you
high the rider ends up again kind of they end up with uh postural uh engagement of the hamstrings
which throws into the front of the bike again so again excessive cell height and shoulder issues
so how do you identify which one of those is causing the pain okay if we start with
the handlebar you consider first and foremost uh most off the shelf bikes uh handlebars too wide
particularly for women uh women's bikes they women's bikes there's no such thing as a
women's bike we don't get me on that soapbox basically women's bikes the handlebars are
generally a little bit narrower but they're nowhere near narrow enough basically uh a
very common uh symptom is to roll the wrists it's generally a means of trying to align
the hands with the shoulder width i mean if you consider that as a human being nobody stands like
that so why would we want our hands to be like that on a bicycle uh the hands fall by the side
so it makes perfect sense to me that we want our hands to be the same with those shoulders uh we
have actually talked about this in a previous video you're going to put a link down below
handlebars but you can measure yourself or have a friend measure we're going to use chris over here
and you can measure across a chromium process the distal part of the top scapula so uh chris
is a quite a slender guy so he's 32 centimeters basically that to a certain degree can dictate
handlebar width the next one is reach excessive reach how do you know if it reaches too long well
you've got one of these on your bike if you've got a you know extremely long stem on the bike that's
almost definitely going to be a good giveaway uh one of the things to consider is if you feel a
little bit stretched out you're almost definitely way too stretched out we have this conversation
with rachel earlier in the uh you're very good at absorbing dysfunction as a human being makes us
such a successful species if it feels too long uh like i said it's way too long on the grounds that
with regards to reach you'll be able to absorb absorb absorb absorbers or to the point that oh
now all of a sudden i can feel it so realistically if it feels a little bit long have a guide locking
20mm off the front of the bike uh that could be one way of going about it do not and this leads
us to our next point do not push the saddle further forward because actually if you've got
insufficient setback applied to your saddle it'll offset your center of mass so if the saddle's
pushed really really far forward on its rails on your seat post that could again be another another
potential cause for neck and shoulder issues um and finally if you've got loads of pitch applied
to your saddle level it really causes you issues uh drop it if it still causes you issues changing
so in terms of remedies you kind of covered a few in the last segment like reducing your stem length
and fixing the saddle tilt reducing the width of the handlebars but are there any other ways
you can remedy this if you've already done all of those things the most common change i make one of
the most common changes i make to people's bikes is handlebars but in the sense that it quite often
kills two players with one stone it's important to understand that handlebars have different reaches
so with again with rachel's bike it's got a uh a bomb trigger handlebar which i which has quite a
long reach for this from the difference the reach being the distance between the center of the ball
to where the control is located um the reach is very very long by changing the handlebar
same width but just something with a slightly shorter reach like this daler rhm
uh lops off about 20 mil of reach without really making huge changes to the uh to the bike so
that could be another potential uh change to make to the bike it's also a nice way of reducing the
reach without going really dinky in the stem so it's worth it's worth noting that not all
handlebar shapes are are born equal they're not all than all the same in terms of this distance
uh so yeah that's a very common and actually even control location on the handlebar and where it's
located so if you've got the control located lower down on the handlebar that tends to add
to the reach but rather than so what i tend to do is set the handlebar with the drop relatively
uh flat and then have the control located almost as high as i can possibly get it on the grounds
that it offsets that that reach so even just a means of playing around with bar rotation
and control location can actually pay dividends in improving neck and shoulders and that's free
what on the contra on the subject of controls actually uh quite often if you've got control
completely flat that again could also cause neck and shoulder issues on the grounds that you end
up having to rotate the wrist what we're looking for is for a nice smooth interrupt locker a uh
a non-tense into a soft interaction with with the bicycle we don't want
you to be kind of twisted and contorted and have all this tension being held
so if i quite often add a little bit of elevation to the shifters so that they kind of fit the hand
as the hands present to the shifter rather than hand flat almost never have a negative like this
so that's just another potential trick that might prove things for you did it work yes 100
you can't even reach the handlebars now though so that concludes another episode of bike fit
tuesdays uh please like comment and subscribe please leave a comment down below if you have any
questions and james and myself will do our best to answer them equally i'll put a link down below
to james's shop if you want to book a bike fit and just in person you just did what i'm just thinking
hey dylan you're like a parrot on my shoulder i'm a parrot on your shoulder get a bike fake