Numb hands/ nerve damage?

Casper10100

Does anyone have experience of numb hands/fingers after rides? Possibly nerve damage?

I did a training tour of 3 days doing 100-120 miles a day and was in the saddle for quite a while each day. At the end of day 3, pretty much out of nowhere ,the movement in my right hand was pretty reduced. Over the next week my smallest two fingers had badly reduced movement, my smallest finger being next to useless. Two weeks later it has come back to 95%. Does anyone have any ideas about this? Possible nerves that could be damaged etc Any doctors out there?

I know I could/should adopt a less aggressive riding position, more padding on gloves shift position more but just seeing if anyone has had any experience of this.

How do other people reduce stress on the hands when riding?

Thanks

gavmac

I had exactly the same thing after a couple of long days on a charity ride having just turned to some road biking after years of just mountin biking. It was the first time I'd ridden in a bunch on the road and was probably quite tense a lot of the time and not as relaxed as I should have been on the bars. My hands were very weak for a few days with the smallest 2 fingers curled in and difficult to straighten, everything came back to normal in a couple of weeks. My brother in law who is a GP said that damage to whatever nerves it was was common and mostly transient. I've since bought some Specialized road bike mitts with bigger pads which seem to help but I havn't done any 100 mile days since. My best mountain bike that I do enduro events on has ergo grips with the little lip that coushions the part of the palm that the best gloves protect so I hadn't needed the really padded gloves offroad and had not had anything other than the usual fatigue from log offroad rides.

singlespeedexplosif

I've suffered from this a bit. Best thing for me is double-wrap bar tape, or Ergon grips, depending on the bike. I believe Specialized BG gloves do the trick for some people but made no difference for me!

Dr_Death

Littlest two fingers = ulnar nerve = being squished whilst on the bars (usually). Try some Spesh BG gloves, thicker bar tape, altering position on bars....

oldwelshman

Dr-Death is correct, well almost small finger and half the second smallest equals ulna nerve.
Unfortunately mine is permanantly damaged from broken elbow and always numb

Dr_Death

Not everyone's nerve distribution is the same......

and if you wanna be truely censored about it its going to be the palmar cutaneous branch of the ulnar nerve (probably)....

Alex_Simmons/RST

Bearing too much weight on the hands and/or having wrists in a non natural position can cause numbness in the fingers.

This is normally a bike fit issue.

Extra padding is a band aid. Better off to address the root cause.

Casper10100

Thanks all, I'll try gloves and tape suggestions. Plus raise handlebars so I'm not leaning so far forward.