(lively music)
- Welcome to another edition of Ask GCN anything.
Without further ado, we're going to get right in with
the questions with this over on Twitter from
Ian M. Stewart who asks, "Hey GCN, when I ride,
"even for an hour, my hands get numb.
"Is it my stem, my bars, or my grip?
I'm trying not to grip the bars too tightly. #torqueback."
Well Ian, thank you very much for getting in touch.
Now, pain, numbness, and tingling in the fingers and hands
is actually quite a common problem for cyclists,
regardless of experience.
In fact, I did have quite a bit of numbness in hands
over the weekend when I rode the King of the Mountains
Challenge in Taiwan, so it is something that affects
lots and lots of cyclists.
Now, it's basically, from a medical perspective,
called ulnar neuropathy and it happens when the ulnar nerve,
which runs from the root here,
right way down through your arm,
finishing in your little finger.
It's when the ulnar nerve is compressed,
generally by long periods of time, in one set position.
So either on the tops, or quite a lot in fact,
on the drops, where basically there's pressure on this part
of your hand.
Now, it can cause tingling as I mentioned before,
often pain.
This can be alleviated by regularly shifting your position
on the handlebars but if it becomes a particularly
persistent problem, you need to start to look at what
the root cause is and we do that in this video.
- Keeping this position on the bike whilst removing your
hands from the bars so that way you're going to recruit more
of your core muscles and your arms, hands, and wrists are
going to be bearing less weight.
So you should look at things like the height of your bars
or maybe the angle of the shifters, et cetera, as well.
If they're too low, it might be you've just got too much
weight going through your hands and wrists.
- Next up, we have this question down in the comments
section from Owen Jones.
"Hey guys, I know you measure your saddle height from the
"centre of the bottom bracket to the top of the saddle but
"this confuses me a little bit.
"Doesn't the length of the cranks,
"or the rise from your shoes or cleats,
"make a difference?
"Or is the calculation based on average length
"or height for both, so it will need to be adjusted
"accordingly? Thanks for the consistently great content."
That was very kind, Owen.
Thanks very much for getting in touch.
Basically, you have answered your question,
you are right.
You do need to adjust your saddle height inclemently,
only very slightly, when moving, when changing saddles,
for example, 'cause if you've got a different shape
of saddle, that can actually determine how high
or low you sit on it.
One of the most fundamentally important things
to double check on as well is the type of pedal system
that you're using.
So, if you're moving from one pedal system to another,
the stack height could be a couple of millimetres different
and that goes, and the same can be said for different
shoes as well.
So, what you need to draw out this question basically,
and what is fundamentally important,
once you've got your ideal set up on your bike,
is make a note of the exact distance.
So measure your saddle height and keep it
and then basically you can adjust accordingly
if you were to move onto a different bike, for example,
or a higher bike or you were to change saddles
or pedal systems.
Now, we do know, it's pretty common knowledge, isn't it,
that getting a saddle height right is important
for comfort, for efficiency, et cetera.
But exactly how important is it?
Well me and Sy went to a lab to answer that very question.
- Believe it or not, out of all the presenters,
he's actually the most obsessive about his saddle height,
which is ironic given that he spends so much of his time
not even clipped in.
One.
- There's two.
- Hey.
- We're gonna test two key parameters.
Firstly, my seated maximal sprint power.
And Secondly, my ability to hold a specific sub
threshold power, whilst at the same time measuring my
expired gases, my blood lactate, and also my heart rate.
Boop, boop, boop, boop.
It's time now for the rapid fire round.
First up is this from Paul Holden,
"How come you guys never seem to have covered Titanium
"bikes? How about an in depth Titanium versus
"Carbon feature?"
That is a very, very good idea.
We have actually written that one down now,
thanks very much for that.
Wouter Peters says, "Any hacks to prevent remnants
"of a gel leaking out the packaging and spreading into
"your back pocket, other than throwing them away?"
Very, very good, green question there Wouter.
What I've done in the past is fold them up really, really
tightly and then put them inside the little bag I've got
with my inner tubes.
Also, you can put them in the pack underneath your saddle,
so in your saddle bad as well and that way they won't
leak into your pocket.
Next up we've got this from Ben Dolby, "I've got absolutely
"nothing against Lasty but we need to see him suffer more."
(dramatic music)
Thumbs up from me there Ben, great comment.
Next up is this from Jack Larkin Mchugh who asks,
"Please do an episode where all the GCN presenters
"get so much money to buy a bike and then have to cycle
"a bike to a destination and do challenges with the bike."
All I'm gonna say is, watch this space.
Next up we have this from Ewan Chadwell, "What happens
"if the world champion also wins the European championships?
"Obviously the rainbows would take priority over the stars
"but what happens to the European jersey? Is it not worn
"or is it worn by the second place rider, like when a jersey
"owned by someone who owns another jersey in a tour?
"Sorry for the length."
Yeah, thanks for the apologies, that was a rather long
and convoluted question but basically the answer is
Peter Sagan, a couple years ago, was European and
world champion.
He first wore the European champion but then, as you said,
the world champion's jersey trumps it,
so if that happens in the future, basically,
very sadly, that Europeans champions jersey will be put
in a drawer and nobody else can ride with it at all,
which is a little bit sad.
So, no, second place can't use it.
This question now from Darren Whitford, "It rained the
"other day on my ride, it doesn't happen very often in
"Australia, what can I do to keep the traction on my back
"wheel when climbing out of the saddle?"
Well, first up, you need to look at your tyre pressure.
Make sure that if you're going out in the rain
that your tyres aren't too hard but on a steep climb
what you need to do is redistribute your weight a little
bit more over the back wheel.
So rather than leaving forward, which you generally do
on a steep climb, just push your arms back a little bit,
put some of the body weight over the back wheel,
and that should improve your traction.
And finally, we have this rather long winded question
for the rapid fire round from Barnaby Grant.
Deep breath.
"If you're having trouble with junctions and intersections
"for interval training, instead of trying to stick to a
"preset interval plan, try using the junctions and
"roundabouts and stop signs as part of the
"interval training."
This, by the way, is an answer to one of last week's
questions about stopping during interval training
out on your bike.
"I have a 30km out and back route with a roundabout at least
"every kilometre and I use the roundabouts as markers for my
"efforts. Between one pair I'll sprint,
the next, then recover.
"The next might be a 10 second effort with 20 second
"recoveries or a ramped up heart rate."
Basically, that is a top haul suggestion for basically
using your environment, your road furnishing,
your traffic for basically doing a tall cliff.
Spot on Barnaby.
And that's it for the rapid fire round.
Okay, time to just slow things down a little bit
with this question from Danial Adzha down in the
comments section.
He asks, "Um, how do you use gears the right way because
"I normally use gears 11, eight, seven, and one. Have you
"got any help please GCN?"
Well Daniel, thanks very much for getting in contact.
Now many of you out there, of no doubt, will think this is
a pretty basic question but for people who are new to
the sport, this actually can take quite a long time
to get your head around.
'Cause when you think about it, if you've been riding
for a few years and you start to break down everything
that you know about cycling, it actually is pretty amazing
because you absorb that information
almost through a process of osmosis.
So, for somebody new to the sport,
no question is a silly one.
And generally speaking, we have a video for every single
question that people ask.
And Daniel, to answer your question directly,
here's me, explaining exactly how.
Firstly, on the right, the lever being fully inwards
changing you to a bigger cog at the back,
which actually makes it easier.
Now on here, I've got electric gears so I'm just using
the paddles.
On the left hand side, when you swing the mechanical lever
inwards, or tap the electric paddle, it makes it,
or turns it to the bigger cog at the front, or chain ring,
which is actually harder.
And finally, on this week's Ask GCN Anything, we have
this question down in the comments section from
Eurotropo who asks, "I got a hell of a climb that I want to
"improve at, therefore I believe easier gears will help.
"Should I change the cassette or the smaller chain ring?"
Well Eurotrop, thanks for getting in contact.
Now, getting easier gears will certainly help you get over
the steeper elements or the steeper parts of the slope
far more effectively and efficiently.
As we all know, if you're churning at a low cadence
on a gear it becomes inefficient,
you start to recruit a lot of muscle groups
and it basically is very inefficient,
unless you are a particular forceful and strong rider.
So, ideally, on a climb, you need to have a gear
that enables you to get on top of the gear
and actually ride in a nice, smooth rhythm.
Now, I don't exactly know what gears you've got on your
bike so I can't really tell if you need to change the front
or the back, but an ideal starting point for a gear with
very wide ratio which will suit pretty much any ability
for most sorts of terrain, would be a 34 or a 36
chain ring at the front and at the back you want to look
at the minimum of a 28, a 30, or a 32 and that way you
should pretty much get over any sort of climb that
the terrain should throw at you.
But, as well as getting your gears dull, which
fundamentally is very important, it's also worth
trying to improve on your fitness as well.
You'll definitely climb faster if you're fitter
but if you want a little bit of a short cut,
how about watching this video.
How to climb faster without getting any fitter.
- You're more likely to be able to ride your optimal power
if you're at your optimal cadence, so get yourself
a compact chain set, combined with a 32 at the rear,
and you'll almost always have the optimal gear to use.
No matter what the gradient, no more grinding away.
(soft music)
- However, what we would suggest is spending around 95%
of your time in the saddle but deliberately getting
out of the saddle every so often.
- So that's it for another edition of Ask GCN Anything.
Thanks, as ever, for all of your questions,
we do love reading them.
And get in touch using the hashtag torqueback
down in the comments section or across on social media
as well.
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