I find that on long rides, my perineal area becomes bruised and often rubbed raw from extended riding in the saddle. I have tried a softer seat but most seats have the padding at the back, not on the horn. I thought it might be because I was wearing ordinary cotton boxers underneath my leggings, and the extra fabric was causing the rubbing, so I switched to padded cycling shorts and nothing else, but still the issue persists. It becomes so painful I have to spend at least half of my time riding standing up, to relieve the pressure off this area. How have other long-distance riders come to deal with this issue?

1. Reduce the weight on the saddle by pedalling with more force.
2. Use a saddle with a cut-out and that fits your particular body.
3. Fit, fit fit. How the rest of the bike is set up can affect which saddle is right for you and how comfortable you will be.
4. Stand on climbs and even on some flats to allow for blood flow through otherwise compressed areas.

Good luck.

Ride for months with out issues Myself .. On those Brooks leather saddles

Bike shorts , buy several , always put on a clean pair daily and wash the skin 'down there '

every night.


I adopted surgeon's scrub to knock back surface bacteria ..
Topical Ointment ala NeoSporin for hot spots .. Applied At Night

Never had a need for padding , just a seamless sits place pad in them ..

I started when shorts were wool and the liner was actual Leather Chamois ..

Your synthetics wash out Better Now.

In my experience too soft of a saddle is more likely to be a problem that too hard. B.Carfree's list says much of what I would have said.

Proper fit, riding form, and strong core muscles mean more weight on your legs and less on your saddle. Hours in the saddle built gradually increasing over time are needed as well.

That and not all bike shorts are equal. Try a few brands and models, avoid gel, and fit. Ones that fit well and with no wrinkling, bunching or bagging are needed. To accomplish that they should fit quite snuggly. I find mid priced ones OK, and my personal preference is Pearl Izumi Attack shorts, but Performance Century model or better are OK too.

I find that for me it helps to pull the shorts into the crease of the inside of the hip joint on each side, forming a slight pouch for my "junk", but with no excess or wrinkled pad material.

BTW, I have not found extreme measures to promote cleanliness to be necessary. I have lately taken only one pair of short on even long tours. They sometimes get washed or rinsed out only every few days, but I do try to air them out at night. I also find it important to air out myself by switching to mesh brief running shorts once in camp and while sleeping.

I don't use chamois creams. If I do get any abrasion an application of Balmex or other zinc oxide diaper cream on the irritated spot, worn overnight, works like magic. I might dab a bit on a sore spot during the day if necessary. That said following the other recommendations, I usually have no problems and the majority of tours, even multi week or multi month ones, I don't need to use the Balmex.

Your soft seat is almost certainly adding to your problem. When you sit on a saddle with lots of padding, your sit bones sink into the padding and squish it up into your perineum. This is bad.

You should not be sitting on the horn at all. The horn of the saddle has no real function on a modern synthetic saddle and is a tension point on a leather saddle. Your butt should be on the rear/wide part of the saddle and idealy your perineum shouldn't have any pressure at all on it.

Some heavily padded cycling shorts are just as bad as heavily padded saddles. Like Bob said, old cycling shorts were just a leather chamois to help with chaffing, sewn into wool shorts. Some "modern" cycling shorts are ridiculous with the padding. Might as well be wearing an adult diaper.

I assume by now you realize that wearing cotton boxers is a big no-no, although that is probably not contributing to your pressure issue.

My advice is to bite the bullet and find a good saddle. Sometimes it can get expensive unless you hit a good one early on. I have a whole box of saddles in my garage that I've tried and rejected. Some shops will let you try a saddle and return it if it doesn't work, I personally don't have one where I live.

I highly recommend trying a Specialized saddle. Something like the Avatar or Romin. Those saddles have excellent reputations for solving the exact problem you have. But there are, unfortunately, a huge selection of saddles out there to choose from.

Fit. Make sure you have the saddle positioned so that when you ride your sit bones are on the wide part of the rear of the saddle. If you have the saddle too far back, or your bars are too far forward, you might be prone to sitting forward on the saddle. Don't. Basically, I always figure that if you are riding along and you hit a bump in the road, you should feel that bump jar your sit bones and not in your perineum. If you feel it in your perineum, something is wrong. Many times a more upright posture will help alleviate perineum pressure. Raise the bars in order to rotate your pelvis back.

As far as pedaling harder, I agree that it does help. It will effectively lift more of your bodyweight off the saddle with each stroke. But it's a trade-off. My touring bike is set up with the bars higher and a more comfortable saddle than my regular road bike. That's because when I ride my road bike I know I'm liable to be pedaling a lot harder because that's what the bike is for. If I rode that particular bike slowly I might end up with some perineum discomfort, but I never do that, so I can afford to drop the bars and get more aero. I can sit on my touring bike all day while noodling along and never get any perineum discomfort because of the more upright posture. My touring bike is a pig and doesn't like to go very fast.

Yes, it's all said in the above posts.

Invest in a good saddle. This was the best $200 I have ever spent Selle Anatomica - We make the world's most comfortable leather bicycle saddle. Period.

Clean body is a healthy body. Wash before and after a ride. If there is irritation after, wash well and apply aloe vera gel. Skin tends to toughen after a while.

Before a long ride, I shower, apply a dab of Bag Balm, and put on my clean shorts.

Make sure the bike is set up well, good fitting is another good investment.

This is an area where it does not pay to be cheap.

+1

The only time I've had an issue with saddle sores or pain was when I did a tour with ill fitting too large shorts.

Agree too on saddle choice. It is counterintuitive, but a cushy saddle may feel comfortable initially, yet over any length of time it puts pressure on parts of the body that aren't equipped to handle it.

I get his exact issue, no matter what I am wearing. I have a b17, at I switched to this year as well. Going to try bringing the nose down a little bit to see if it helps.

I've had the problem only once. It started on the third day of a 1000 mile tour and that day had been preceded by 75 miles in the rain on day 2. I too swore off cotton shorts after that. When the problem developed I tried to buy a gel saddle cover but had difficulty finding one that would fit the existing saddle until I decided to ditch the saddle as well. In the interim I tried Body Glide with some temporary success. I finally bought a not-too-expensive saddle and gel saddle cover, both with cut-outs for the perineal area. It immediately and completely solved the problem and allowed healing to start. I probably could have dispensed with the cover by the end of the tour but I'd become used to it by then and stuck with it. The saddle cover still travels with me but is usually reserved for long dirt/gravel sections of road. I'd never had the problem before nor since. The one downside to the system is the "old-lady look" it gives to my bike but I have to admit I'm not the hard-ass I once fancied myself to be and swallow my pride.

+1 on letting things "air out" during the night. That, and no shorts, along with the occasional application of Body Glide or something similar seems to do the trick at present.

Switching to a recumbent would probably do the same thing. It probably would also keep my hands from going numb which is still a problem. I'm not quite ready for that switch.

If you are putting enough pressure on the saddle horn to cause bruising and to make you long for a saddle with a well padded horn it sounds like you may have a fit/saddle position issue. Maybe you are positioned so far forward on your saddle that the majority of your weight is concentrated on the horn? I could also see that causing rubbing as your thighs move up and down along the sides of the horn. In fact, I am getting a case of the willies thinking about riding in such a poston that would make me wish for a well padded horn.

There are hornless bikes saddles out there... never tried one myself.

I'd only do that after doing what's recommended in the 1st reply.

Besides all the above good advice, saddle is probably the wrong shape/type. If the rider is getting up on the horn, it's usually because the back of the saddle necks down too slowly. The rider's upper leg contacts the saddle and pushes them forward. Just the right saddle is hard to find. That's why there are over a hundred different models, which still isn't really enough. The best way to start is to go to your LBS and get your sit bone width measured. Then look at saddles with the correct width. You may need a saddle with a cutout to relieve perineal pressure. The cutout introduces another problem, which is that it makes some saddles too wide in the horn. So you just have to try saddles until you find what works. Go to an LBS that has a saddle return policy. Return a saddle that didn't work for you washed clean and in the original packaging. The Specialized Romin seems to fit a lot of people. I have an inexpensive Performance Forte Classic on all my bikes.

Aside from all the excellent advice above, Are you rocking slightly from side to side as you pedal? If so your saddle height may be too high and contributes to some of your problem. I would lower your saddle slightly in progressive increments to test this or have a shop do a bike fit session for you.

+1 on the Selle. Until you have the problem solved completely, taking more breaks where you walk around some off the bicycle helps.

Here's how my husband set up his saddle to avoid pressure:

Check the angle of the saddle...

+ Bump. I crossed the continent 4k miles on wool and chamois sitting on Ideale Record 80 leather. First two weeks were bit sore...after that, no issues. Saddle was not saggy, sat on perch bones (key). 'Course I weighed 153 dripping wet....not a whole lot of fat to get in the way and I rarely sweated.

What others have said... Minus the bike shorts thing unless you Want to wear padded bike shorts. They're by no means a necessity. I wear athletic boxer briefs and everything is just fine. If you want bike shorts, by all means do it, but you definitely don't Have to wear big padded shorts to ride a bike. I, along with Many others, wear regular shorts or pants fitting for the weather and it's no problem with the right seat and underwear. Anyway, as others said, the padded seat is probably contributing. Also, to reinforce what others have said, does your seat have a cut-out in the middle? I personally Have to ride a seat with a cut-out or I get serious chafing and soreness too, no matter what I'm wearing. I would also recommend that you stop riding when it starts to chafe rather than continuing until you're rubbed raw. I'm sure you'll be happier, and I'd think you'd get in more biking since that must take a while to heal. I'm seriously cringing at the thought of a skinless, raw, and later scabbed perineum. Hats off to you. You're more of a man than I.

Agree with Carbonfiberboy: if you're sitting on the nose of the saddle you either have 1) the wrong saddle, or 2) serious fit problems. Different saddles, different shorts, fancy creams, and all the rest aren't going to matter much if you're sitting on the wrong part of the saddle...

I would attack the position problem before doing anything else. If you start out sitting on the back of the saddle and tend to slide toward the nose, then it may be necessary to tilt the nose up a bit. If you're always sitting on the nose of the saddle, trying pushing the saddle toward the front of the bike. If you can't get it far enough forward, you might need a zero-offset seatpost or in extreme cases a different frame. If you've never had a professional bike fit, it might not be a bad idea to invest in one. I've been riding for quite a while and have my fit dialed in pretty well, but a professional fitter made a few small tweaks to my setup that resulted in some noticeable improvements to comfort especially on longer rides.

Try changing to the B17 Imperial - it's the same as the B17, but with a cutout in the center. I had the same "mashed up" feeling down there with the standard B17, the Imperial was much better.

https://www.wallbike.com/brooks/b17-f...s-b17-imperial

There's great info in this thread. I ditto staehpj1's comments exactly plus IAMAMRA's comments about tipping the nose of your saddle down a bit.

No... it wasn't likely the extra fabric... but the fabric itself. The idea behind a chamois is the padding more-or-less adheres to the sweaty skin and absorbs any movement between the skin and the saddle. That is what prevents blisters and abrasions.

I prefer the comfort of a cut-out saddle. I myself don't feel a need to use a lotion-like product to lubricate that area, but many do.

Maybe you should let yourself completely heal before returning to cycling. Make sure you heal without infection.