mtbcyclist

From time to time her hand(s) go numb. Was thinking about either rasing the handlbars or adjusting the reach so the reach is not as far. Anybody have experience with this?

stapfam

Almost certainly, this will be a positional problem, but a couple of points that help me as stoker, A grip that suits my hands, a pair of gloves that have good padding and not grabbing hold of the bars in a death grip. I have the same problem and find that exercising the hand frequently will stop the problem arising.

On the position, the bike position sounds too low or too long. Raising the bars and bringing them back will probably help. I ride a mountain Tandem, and all I had to do was fit a pair of riser bars- That is with my normal pilot. I use another pilot where his saddle is dropped by 3", and that is where I find I have to do the exercises.

will dehne

We learned the hard way how important position is. This is valid not only for the Stoker but perhaps more critical for the one doing the steering. Arms and hands fatigue and steering can go out of control on long trips.
The solution was shifting the body weight more to the seat so that the hands can be lifted momentarily.
Highly competitive racers tend to crouch down to reduce the all important wind resistance. That is the trade off. I assume you are not trying to race?

TandemGeek

Hand numbness checklist:

A. Let's assume she was properly fitted to the bike.

1. Does the bike have padded (cork) or thin (vinyl or cloth) handlebar tape. If it's thin tape, consider changing it out for padded cork tape, e.g., Cinelli.

2. Does she wear cycling gloves with padded palms? If so, do they fit well; not too tight and not too loose? If not, give those a try first.

3. If she doesn't like wearing gloves consider double-wrapping her handlebars with two layers of bar tape, Cinelli's 2.5mm thick gel/cork tape, or that new fangeled gel padding that you can put under your handlebar tape.

B. If you're not sure she's been properly fitted to the bike.

1. Is her saddle set-back position (aka, seat position over the cranks) correct? There are a variety of ways to check this but, in general, what you're looking for is a neutral position that doesn't position her too far or too far forward on the saddle relative to the cranks. Sight unseen, if she has a set-back seat post I'd be more inclined to move the saddle forward before moving handlebars back.

2. Is her saddle level, nose up, or nose down? Ask her if she feels like she's sliding forward or backward off the saddle. If she feels like she's sliding forward or finds herself pushing herself back onto the saddle you might want to raise the nose a few millimeters and see if that helps to reduce some of the load on her hands.

3. If she rides her own road bike, are the handlebars at the same relative ride height as her road bike's; above, equal to, or lower than her seat? If she doesn't normally ride a road bike then definitely consider putting the tops of the bars equal to or above the height of her saddle.

4. Now, finally we get to the reach. If you've checked B1 - B3 and gotten those all squared away she should be able to sit on the bike with her hands on the tops of her bars and not feel as though she would fall face forward if you pulled her hands off the bars. If she feels as though she has a lot of her body weight resting on her hand -- tight and sore shoulders after a ride are also an indication of this -- then you probably want to move the bars back a few millimeters at a time until she finds the sweet spot. Note: Be mindful that as you pull the bars back they will also rise in height relative to the saddle.

C. One other thing to check; it's a pet peeve of mine.

Does she have drop (road), flat (mountain), or bullhorn (uggg) bars? If she has drops, does she change her hand position from time to time? A stoker with a death grip on the tops will have problems with hand numbness. If the bike has bullhorns, consider drop bars with dummy brake lever hoods, aka, stoker rests. Drop bars give all riders far more different hand positions than flat or bullhorn bars and, IMHO, are well worth the added expense and weight penalty.

Just some things to think about.

mtbcyclist

Thanks for the ideas. I did not even think about the set back seat post which it is. I just pulled my seat all the way forward becasue my seat was killing me and its the same design as my single seat. I sat on my single bike and realized how far back it was. I will pull her seat forward a bit as I did mine. Her handlebars were very high so I leveled them out with the seat (might be a bad idea here). I think this will take a bit of trial and error.

Tandem Newbie

Trial and error and more time than you think. Setting up a tandem definitely takes more effort than the single bike. My wife and I finally got things dialed in after about 350 miles of riding. Once you get it set though there's no looking back.

Rincewind8

I, as a captain, had some problems with hand numbness as well. Changed the handlebar from a flat bar to drops and everything is fine now.

We changed the stoker handle bars from flat bars to one of those comfort bars:
https://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?c...eid=&pagename=

And we added foam grips to those.
Since my stoker has CTS and Tendonitis on both hands she rides hands-free about 50% of the time.

zonatandem

All good suggestions . . . here's another one:
Get stoker handrests, either the dummy brake levers or round handrests and make sure she changes hand positions when problem arises.

malkin

When as stoker my hand starts getting tingly, I think it means that it is time to rub the captain's back a bit.