Pins and Needles in my hands

cedcott

I have been a mad mtb rider for way too long, and over the past 2 years I have started road cycling as part of my fitness training.
I have always had a problem with cold hands, and mild pins and needles. It is now becoming a safety problem as after 30 minutes I loose all feeling in my hands when on the road bike and 50% of the feeling on the mtb.
I recently had a crash on the road slamming on the brakes far to hard because I could'nt feel the brake levers.
Any advice

homers_double

Has your GP diagnosed anything, Raynaulds?

Monty Dog

Fit wider tyres and don't pump them up so hard. Also wear padded mitts and don't grip the bars so hard.

Sirius631

Get advice on your position. If you're shifted too far forward, you'll be carrying more weight on your bars than you should.

tehtehteh

if you haven't already, double check your saddle is level, if it's nose down you will find yourself falling forwards and putting more weight on your hands, if you get it right your body will mostly hold itself up, this might be tiring at first but your core will soon adapt - you should be able to ride with your arms bent at the elbows without feeling like you're falling forwards

also change hand position plenty of times during the ride, the great thing about road bars is you have many positions to choose from, climb on the top of the bars or the hoods, descend on the drops, cruise around on all 3 - and there are variations on each position too

Sirius631

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19669064#p19669064]tehtehteh[/url] wrote:

if you haven't already, double check your saddle is level, if it's nose down you will find yourself falling forwards and putting more weight on your hands, if you get it right your body will mostly hold itself up, this might be tiring at first but your core will soon adapt - you should be able to ride with your arms bent at the elbows without feeling like you're falling forwards

also change hand position plenty of times during the ride, the great thing about road bars is you have many positions to choose from, climb on the top of the bars or the hoods, descend on the drops, cruise around on all 3 - and there are variations on each position too

Plus, you could find some exercises to do to strengthen your core quicker.

kingstonian

Go to your GP.

I have had problems with my left hand and foot, turns out I have inflammation in a vertebrae in my neck which is putting pressure on a nerve. I wouldn't have fixed the problem with changing saddle height etc.

tehtehteh

not trying to scare you, but I read a story a year or two ago about a girl who died after cycling into a wall because her hands were too numb to pull the brakes

in my early days sometimes numbness would sneak up on me and I wouldn't realise how weak my fingers had got until I tried to pull the brakes, don't take any risks, I'm always checking to see how my fingers feel during a ride now, thankfully I don't seem to have this problem any more since I did all the things I mentioned earlier

First.Aspect

You could also consider new/thicker bar tape, gloves with ulnar padding and so on.

Failing that, try unicycling.

cyberknight

All of the above rings true,
I have reynauds and wind chill even in summer time can mean i have to wear full finger gloves at times and the bike fit is an issue i have had as well.
In the end i posted on here and another forum and the up shot was i moved the saddle back and raised the height of the bars a bit as i had to much weight to far forward and to low .Its early days yet but the alterations seem to have helped a lot as i could not even ride a few miles at times before my left hand went numb but last time i rode ( last week , manflu so im off atm ) my hand felt a lot better .

Joeblack

More than likely its tension in your forearms

YouTube - mobility wod, look through Kelly starrets advice on releasing tension in that area.

neeb

I'd echo the comments above about position on the bike and core fitness. Ideally you shouldn't be putting so much weight on your hands as to cause numbness, assuming that you don't get this problem doing other activities. It's a complicated thing to address though - a genuinely expert bike fit might do it, but there are so many non-expert fitters posing as experts these days that it would be easy to waste your money..

Incidentally I've had Reynauds all of my adult life, but mine is not much like you describe (maybe I'm just lucky to only get a mild form). I basically hardly ever get it when I'm exercising, I assume because the increased blood flow overrides whatever process causes the peripheral blood vessels to go into spasm and contract (which is the underlying mechanism of Reynauds). Seem to mainly get it when I'm sedentary in cool temperatures, with tiredness and low blood sugar being exacerbatory factors. Immediately /after/ a longish ride in winter is a classic time... Hands do the whole turning blotchy red and blue thing and then the fingers go white and numb.. Only tingly / pins & needles when the hands are warming up again. I'm also more than averagely sensitive to cold/numb hands on the bike in genuinely cold temperatures, but that usually feels subtly different.