stapfam

Most of the concensus seems to be for raising the bars to give a more upright position. So why does that not work on my road bike? Riding on the hoods is about as far as I have got on the road bike. I have still got a hand problem and I think that is down to the gloves and not anything else. However- I do get a numb hand after riding for 30 minutes or so on the hoods. Just recently I have been getting down into the full drop position. Perhaps not for too long and for a reason such as wind or downhill or trying to get speed. No more numb hands.

In my youth- and I did have one once- I used to the occasional Race on the MTB. For this I used to put on a 10mm longer stem and reverse the Stem to lower the bars. Never had a hand problem in a 2 hour race. However if I tried this on a normal ride- I had controll problems at the slower speed on the more technical parts of the trail- had Numb bum sydrome by not getting out of the saddle quite so much and a lower back pain that used to hit me after a couple of hours. So for casual trail riding- Back to upright position and the only problem I got was trying to stay off the bar ends.
Perhaps it is worth a try of extending the reach on the bike. The profile is lower and the back will take some of the weight off the wrists. OR- Try rotating the wrists downwards on your existing bar to get the back lower and straighter. This is the technique I use on gnarly uphills now to stop the rear wheel from losing traction as it throws the body weight rearwards- or sometime it is rotate the wrist upwards to bring my weight forward to keep the front wheel down.

My main cure for this problem though is to hand exercise as soon as I feel the problem coming on. Then it never gets to the severe state that it used to