Please explain this cycling concept
 

I know, I should be asking in General, but I'd get three different answers and two pages of bickering and I just don't have the patience for that.

"You have too much weight on your hands, you need to lower your handlebar." It sounds counterintuitive, so what is the reasoning behind this? TIA.

I don't follow, either. I think lowering the handlebar increases weight on the hands.

Agree with Tom. If you desire less weight on the hands/arms, you raise the bar to get more body weight on the butt. Whomever told you this doesn't know what they are talking about

I never heard that before.

The only way I feel I can lessen the weight on my hands is to raise the stem so that it is easier for my back to support my upper torso weight. I expect the better way to do this would be to strengthen my core, but I am not that disciplined to be honest.

Chiming in to agree with everyone else that's backwards. To reduce the amount of weight carried by your hands you'd want to bring the bars up so that your center of gravity moves towards the back of the bike and more weight shifts to the saddle.

I guess it depends on how big your gut is. Once you lower your bars enough so that your gut is preventing you from bending any farther forward, then lowering the bars further will take weight off the hands on to the gut.
I have found this to be true, not sure why. Maybe because of hand position. Maybe because I tend to raise the bars when I have a longer stem.
Brent

It isn't wrong, it just is specific to a particular problem.

If you have reasonable saddle set back, when you lean forward adequately some of your upper body weight is taken up by your hamstrings, so it isn't on your hands. If your bars are too high, none of your weight gets supported by the hamstrings and goes to your hands.

Of course, if you sit up even further beyond that, more of the weight goes to your butt. However, in between there may be a back angle that does neither, so you can either go up or down from there and decrease hand pressure.

This works for me. Too short, I am pushing out and down. Longer, I'm only pushing down on the bars.

We can use a bit of trigonometry to show that this is sometimes true. But I won't bother. ;)

Odd man out here. If your stomach and core muscles are fit, they'll support much of your weight. I dislike that in-between position you get with raised bars. Not high enough to sit up and not low enough to let your body do the work.
This one is very comfortable with the hoods at least inch below the saddle. Of course, it's all relative and personal. Yes I like the tilted saddle, just like that.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...ca8df813f6.jpg

My understanding has always been that the way to take weight off of the hands was to have more supported by the butt and legs. This is best achieved by moving the rider's center of gravity back towards the butt and legs, which is done by moving the seat back. Of course, you don't want to change the relationship between the hands and butt, so the handlebars have to move back by the same amount.

The issue of how to distribute the weight between the butt and legs is largely a function of how much the legs support, which is determined by how much force is applied to the pedals. i.e. the harder you pedal, the less weight is on the butt.

I'm guessing that someone on youtube has done a video on this??
I should check my Rivendell Readers and see what Grant's reasoning is/was behind his "raise 'dat stem" philosophy. I'm thinking it was more related to general comfort than getting weight off of the hands.

Steve in Peoria

edit: I found the Riv Reader article, and it's mostly about flexibility and issues with the lower back. Not about getting weight off of the hands.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...adae4b94ae.jpg

It seems to me that lowering the bars can only work if you already have an extremely strong core (or as Kontact says your weight is being supported by your hamstrings, which seems to assume that you have a strong core between the hamstrings and the arms). If your core is strong enough to support most of your weight and the rest of the bike is proportioned correctly, then lowering the bars could take weight off the hands. I don't see how it could work any other way.

The hamstrings support the upper body, not the arms. And they do that for the same reason people can't touch their toes. It's just tension, not strength There is a mechanical limit to how low you can bend over the bars and it is incremental.

I can tell you when I got my Canyon 4 years ago, I built it up with all the spacers under the stem (hence stem as high as it could go), and my first 10 mile shakedown ride had me almost in tears, because my hands would go numb within a minute or two on the hoods. I had just spend $2400 buying a bike unseen based on careful measurement and video reviews, and I could barely ride it. So I went back to careful measurement and determined the bars were 1" higher than on all my other bikes. I moved 2.5 cm of spacers from below to above the stem, and Voila! Hands no longer went numb.

The way I see it, the bars have to be at the right height, and above and below that, it's a problem.

A lower bar setting does not necessarily mean more weight on your hands snd arms.
ln the 80's I learned how to carry a good part of my upper body weight through the muscles of my mid torso. This let's me position my bars quite low on the bike for better aerodynsmics by having my upper torso as horizontal as I can get it
i based this on how Gitane's pro team positioned most of their riders on their bikes at that time. It was hard at first but I got used to it.
it minmzed the downward load on my arms and hands when on the drops. It concentrated most inputs to the bar to just steering the bike and not carrying my upper body weight. The lighter inputs on the handlebar helps to ride through rough patches and still maintain stability and precision....

As some one who has done this I well say it can help for bigger rider with hand pain by improving hand position but doesn't really change weight on the handler bar. One other thing one can do depending on rider size is to run slightly wider or narrower bars your hands should in line with your shoulders in a good riding position with a strait back either somewhat down or a bit upright.

I try to reduce hand pressure by moving my saddle back to make sure my knees are a cm or two behind my pedal spindles. This puts my center of gravity closer to the chainset so I’m supporting my upper body more with my legs than with my hands.

Sometimes I also get a stem which is 1 cm shorter.

I recently built up a “comfort” road bike with a 1cm shortened reach and even bars/saddle. My hands started going numb. For me it appears that a standard reach for my size and say 2 inches of drop relieves stress from my hands and is more comfortable. Go figure. But I could still use more data.

I’m not strong, but whatever strength I have is in my core and hamstrings.

I find that seat tilt has a lot to do with pressure on the hands. You need not go "nose up," but you don't want to be using your hands to push yourself back onto the saddle, instead of sliding forward.

Did anyone mention where the hoods are located on the dropbars? Everyone these days seems going for a high placement. I find that wrong.

Here is a pic from a manufacturer. Wrong, IMHO. Rotate those bars for a flat ramp to the hoods, or move the hoods some.. Sheeesh!
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...a42960e2a5.jpg

and this makes my wrists ache, biggly. This person can't reach brakes from drops. Wrong.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3d03a10161.jpg

I think I've seen that advice from roadies. I thought maybe it has something to do with engaging your core, but I was never sure. From what I've read, I'm still not sure.