Commuting - Commuting and proper bike fit

Hi All,

I started commuting, 7 miles each way, on a 17" trek 930 MTB in September
of '05 and started having lots of hand pain. I went to a local shop and
they said the bike was too small. I bought a 19" Gary Fisher Marlin MTB. I
spent a lot of time adjusting the seat to get proper fit. During this time
I started having shoulder pain. Turns out I had to have Slap repair
surgery. I just started commuting again after four months. Recently I have
been trying to adjust the bike to make it easy on my shoulders (still in
therapy for the surgery). I pulled the handle bars in a bit and that
helped a little. Then I increased the height of the handle bars by about 3
inches. Now the shoulder pain isn't bad but now I'm starting to have wrist
pain. This is all road riding on a mountain bike. Is this the wrong tool
for the job? I would appreciate any thoughts you may have on this.

BTW, I have been mountain biking off an on about 10 years and never had
these problems until I started commuting.

Thanks,
Xchequer

How tall are you?

You need to think about the overall position of your ponts of contact (pedal/saddle bars), then fine tune the position.
Fine tuning can include examining the angle of your shoulder/elbow and wrist joint. Flat bars often put your hands at an un-natural angle. Rider or city bars help you adopt a more neutral position.
See
www.peterwhitecycles.com/fitting.htm

I kinda had the same issue when I first biking, but things started to become less painful and more plesant as I rode more. I realize I probably wasnt bike fit...

I adjusted the angle of the brake levers and removed half of my wrist pain. The other half went away with mileage. I think that I was reaching down and stretching something while applying pressure.

I have a hand numbing issue (right hand only ?) that comes and goes and seems to be a factor of weather, it happens mainly in the rain. I haven't figure out what to do about that. I plan to try Nashbar's treking handle bars in the near future.

Do you have bar ends, maybe some additional hand positions would help.

Check how you hold your hands while riding. You want your wrists to be as straight as possible, not bent at an angle. Like bike2math, I had to adjust the angle of the brake levers... in my case quite a lot. I rotated them almost a quarter of the way around the bar... I have fairly large hands so I needed the levers farther away.

That's what MichaelW was talking about also, with different handlebars. Handlebars with more bends in them make it easier to find a hand position where your wrist is straighter. On a mountain bike, you most likely have flat handlebars. If you don't want to change your entire handlebars at this point, you can add bar ends (the longer and curvier the better).

The other thing you get with curvier handlebars and/or bar ends is more places to put your hands. Moving your hands around from one position to another every few minutes helps keep them from getting sore or numb or whatever.

Once you're comfortable with hand position on the bars, if you're still having issues you need to address how much weight you're putting on your hands. Higher bars that are farther back put less weight on your hands and more on your butt. Less weight on your hands means less stress on your hands/wrists/elbows/shoulders/etc. If you look at most cruiser-style (or "city"-style) bikes they have VERY high handlebars relative to the seat, your hands really aren't doing much more than steering the bike. Road bikes on the other hand, your hands and legs are splitting your weight and your butt carries far less (because you're supposed to be working hard the whole time). Mountain bikes are somewhere in between usually.

Sheldon Brown has a very in-depth (but not necessarily super easy to understand) description of bike fit on his web site (www.sheldonbrown.com).

Thank you for all of the reply's. I am 6' 1" and 230 lbs. I'll read "how to fit a bicycle". I'll play around with adjustmants with stem and head set lengths for awhile, and get some bar ends. I've read that touring bikes were more comfortable but the local bike shop says if I'm having problems with a MTB I'll have more with a touring bike. I plan to take my bike there this weekend for their opinion on adjustments and try out a few other bikes to see if there is much of a difference. The hardest thing though is they all aren't that bad until you've ridden about 5 miles and the shop just lets you go around the block.

Xchequer

Sheldon Brown has a very in-depth (but not necessarily super easy to understand) description of bike fit on his web site (www.sheldonbrown.com).
.org ;) (http://www.sheldonbrown.org/bicycle.html).

If I were the betting type, I'd bet that you lock your elbows when you ride, which puts pressure on your wrists and scrunches up your shoulders. Bend your elbows and relax your shoulders. And don't forget to breathe.

Is this the wrong tool for the job?

7 miles is a long way to go on-road with mountain bike bars. With no bar-ends, the angle of your wrists will be bad for riding on-road for that distance. You want your hands to be diagonal (like they are with comfort bike bars) or straight forward-rear (like with bullhorn bars). I think MTB bars work offroad because your body shifts around a bunch to negotiate the terrain and it keeps you from putting repetitive strain on the same parts of the wrists all the time.

It may be counterintuitive, but having low bars with a lot of weight on your wrists might actually help your wrists and shoulders if your wrists and shoulders are at the more comfortable angle offered by drop bars/bullhorn bars. Once everything's comfy, you can relax those back muscles and arm muscles and let the arms carry weight.

You might consider nashbar trekking bars. I alternate b/t an mtb and road bike on a 7-8 mile each way commute. The mtb has a rigid fork and the trekking handlebar, which gives multiple hand positions w/ mtb brake shifters (but you can only brake in one position, so it may or may not work for you. I can't find a url for it, but you might have luck calling. It's otherwise known as butterfly bars. Sheldon brown has a page on bars that includes butterfly aka trekking bars.
I got a bar for $10. You can get drop bars, but that gets very expensive and brings up compatibility issues. It also effectively lengthens your reach by a few inches.
When I rode the straight mt. bars, I did have some wrist pain. I pushed the shifter/brakes inward, and often put my hand over the shifter pod. That was effective. I have also seen setups with two sets of bar ends (one close together near the stem and the other facing rearward at the ends). If you get creative, you can do a cheap knock off of Jones bars that way. Here's a thread about the Jones bars, titec's version, and a creative knock off. http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=1543896

I adjusted and readjusted a bunch and still had neck pain. Then a fellow biker slipped me a phone number and winked. That led to a trip to a different shop and a new life without pain.

You may want to look into a different LBS that takes the time and knows how to fit a bike to you properly.