Originally Posted by 79pmooney

The "balance point" is the place for the seat (actually your hips) where the moment of the forces of your weight and pedaling force add up to zero, meaning there is no weight on your arms. But obviously this "point" only works at one pedaling force. My real question is why weight on your arms or hands is all that bad.

I ride with real weight on my hands most of the time. (Being relatively aero so I can ride upwind relatively comfortably didn't suddenly become less important as I started into my 7th decade. If anything, it became more important.) But it has becoming increasing more obvious also that I have to pay more attention to the actual fit of my hands on the handlebars, esp the angle of my wrist. If that angle is wrong, esp if my wrists are cocked up (hitchhiking and pulling your thumb toward your shoulder) I get hand numbness. The more I rotate my brake levers and handlebars down, the happier my hands are. My setups are with traditional HBs and look like racing setups out of the 60s and 70s. (I look at modern "ergo" bars and brake hoods that are intended to point up like horns and wonder how that works. I need the bottoms of my handlebars and brake hoods to be roughly level.

My practice when setting up a bike is to 1) not tape the HBs (except just enough electrical tape to secure the brake cable housings) and go for a ride with all the HB and brake lever wrenches. Stop and adjust as needed. 2) Wrap the bars with cloth tape because it has enough stick to repeatable un-tape, more levers and re-tape. Not until that tape is worn out do I put on the good stuff.

Of course, I do put my handlebar, brake hood and hand positions to a greater test than most by riding many of these bikes uphill in sometimes very big gears. (A reality of riding fix gears.) I have learned that on real hills, real injuries happen if all is not just right. It sucks when you feel that injury starting and you are only half way up. And back to the issue of "seat balance"., well all of that climbing is out of the saddle and the primary "weigh" on my hands is pulling. The undersides of my brake levers and hoods matter far more than the topsides.

Ben