Pinoysiklista

I recently bought a specialized frame and being a newbie I just followed the chart that specialized has for proper frame size. I'm 5'11" with a 33 in seam and their chart said that I should get a size 56 frame so I did.

Now that the bike is complete the seat needs to be all the way forward ( out of the allowed range of the seat rails) for my knee to be over the pedals. Is this ok?

And my second problem is I'm feeling numbness on my wrists and a friend said that my handlebars are too far forward. I feel comfortable on the tops but I feel that my back is too stretched when I'm on the hoods. My stem is only 100mm and I feel that if I get a shorter one the bike will already look weird.
Is my frame too big? Or I just need more saddle time to get used to the position? But I'm really not comfortable when I'm on the hoods. Pls help

Igualmente

What model frame did you buy?

How much set-back does the seat post have?

Can you provide a photo of the bike, taken from the side and holding the camera at about the height of the top tube?

I am similar in height and inseam to you, and I have a 56 endurance type road bike. I am not very flexible, though, and am temporarily using a shorter stem.

dmooredesign

I'm sure you can make a few adjustments and be just fine. You could possibly even get shorter crank arms. Add a few spacers to raise the stem might help as well. This is exactly why I prefer to buy from a bike shop, or even craigslist. So I can test-ride before I buy.

Pinoysiklista

It's a specialized allez
How short is your stem?
Do you think I should get a seatpost with a lesser setback? Problem is if I do this my knees will not be above the pedals. Right now with this seat placement my knees are in the sweet spot.

Pinoysiklista

The he only adjustment that I can think of is getting a shorter stem but I seldom see roadbikes with really short stems and it might affect the handling.
My cranks are 170mm already anything shorter I think will not be suitable for me.
I'll try putting spacers...

Igualmente

When I bought my road bike it had a 100mm stem. I was changing from a mountain bike with road tires that had less reach. After having shoulder, neck and headache troubles, I switched to an 80mm stem. With time on the bike (3 months) and exercises for flexibility and strengthening neck and shoulder muscles, I might be pretty much ready to move back to a 100mm, though I will probably do a 90mm for a few months.

The 80mm stem made no noticeable difference to me in handling. On the other hand, I'm no experienced racer with calibrated hands and had only been on the bike a short while. Changing the stem does not change the basic handling/steering characteristics of the bike (fork and front wheel geometry, chainstay lengths, wheelbase, etc), and even your centre of gravity will only be slightly altered by your upper body angling upward slightly. Your saddle does not get moved because of the shorter stem, either. AFAIK, the impact that a stem change has is to change the distance between your hands and the centre of the steering axis (the steerer tube) in each handlebar position, which means the amount of motion your hands and arms sweep through while steering and the force that you apply with your arms will be altered a bit. Dunno... you can tell that I've never bought the argument that an 80mm stem changes handling a whole lot from a 100mm stem. Perhaps someone will point out if I'm missing something.

From your photo, it looks like you might be able to raise the stem by moving one spacer lower? I think you have to keep a substantial spacer above the stem on carbon steerer tubes, but maybe you have two?

Knee over pedal is a starting point. If you want to learn more about where your saddle should be relative to your bottom bracket, I suggest these:

SEAT SET BACK: for road bikes » Bike Fit » Steve Hogg's Bike Fitting Website

and

How to Fit a Bicycle (see section on Fore-Aft Saddle Position)

You could also maybe angle the handlebars up very slightly, but it's hard to tell from the photo. They look angled down.

Good luck.

jyl

Seems unlikely your frame is too big, given your height/inseam, unless you have unusually short arms or the 33" inseam is mis-measured.

More likely you are not yet used to, and not flexible enough yet, for a road bike that you've set up with a pretty aggressive saddle to bar drop.

A side picture of you on the bike would help. Hands on hoods, in riding position.

For the bike, I would try, in this order: rotate bars up a little, raise stem by shifting spacers, try shorter stem.

For you, I would work on your flexibility, rotate pelvis forwards, ride more, move hands around between tops and hoods and drops, work on flexibility.

Pinoysiklista

Thanks for this... Lbs told me that the bike is set up just fine for a guy my size. It's me who really doesn't have the flexibility.

I think I need more saddle Time. I hope the numbness goes away soon.

Carbonfiberboy 

The Numb Hands post is here:
https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycli...l#post12953035

and the saddle setback video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z04uoO7U_SA

What you may be experiencing is a lack of flexibility which has caused you to move the saddle much too far forward, which puts too much weight on your hands. As a temporary measure, you might try moving your saddle back and shortening your stem by the same amount. The knee over pedal (KOPS) thing is only a vague approximation. It's validity is questionable and depends on femur length and exactly where on the knee one is measuring from. Many riders do better with their saddles 1-2 cm behind KOPS.

Clem von Jones

I have a bike one size larger than optimal and initially I was obsessed with the concern it was too big and would never fit so I put increasingly shorter stems on it and had hand numbness and worried the handling was squirrelly but eventually I realized my position was bad and that I needed to rotate my pelvis forward to flatten my lower back and stretch out forward a bit. I then swapped to an extra long stem and set the bars lower and have had no problems since.

Your frame seems to be the correct size so I'm guessing your riding position needs correction. My mistake was in thinking a more upright position would be comfortable but the opposite proved to be the case.

Pinoysiklista

Thanks for the tips. It's really helpfully for a newbie right me. I've been riding regularly and found out that switching from tops to hoods to drops before I can feel discomfort made the numbness disappear.

Now I feel numbness in my crotch area radiating to my backside down to the back of my knee whenever I ride 50km or further.

I'm hoping that someone can tell me that this is also normal and that I just have to move forward or backward when going for a long ride...

Dirt Road

One school of thought, particularly if you have a firm saddle, is to lower the nose so that you can balance on your sitz bones (ischial tuberosities) and have your plumbing suspended above the nose of the saddle. You may also be able to shift some weight onto the ramus, or the narrowing of the ischium forward of the sitz bones, but since your plumbing runs between them, you will want to exercise care. You could also get a saddle with a cut-out or depression for said plumbing to dangle in. These may expose all sorts of soft tissue issues, but some folks swear by them. And my favorite way to deal with hand numbness (other than pressure location as linked above in the famous posting) is to make my handlebars FATTER. This DOES make it more difficult to look cool, however.