Body adjusting to new stem length and rise

ScottLev10

So I've been riding with a VERY upright set up for sometime now. Hold off on judgements, but I've been using a 70mm stem with a 17 degree rise. I've gotten much more flexible in the past few months, and have been working a bit on my core. As such, I started to feel cramped in the cockpit, so I decided to get an adjustable 80mm stem, with 8/12/16 degree rises. I set the rise to 12 degrees, and took a short ride (maybe 10 minutes) and developed lower back pain fairly quickly. I know there's an adjustment period for your body with new bike adjustments, but could use some general advice. Was this a bit too much of a sudden change? Should I set the rise back higher to 16 degrees then bring it down gradually now that the stem is longer? My saddle position feels good as far as KOP and weight distribution, so don't know if I should make any adjustments there, but maybe I'm wrong. Should I just scale back my routine to compensate till I acclimate to the change? The back pain wasn't very severe, but certainly noticeable. I know reducing the rise also increases the reach, so my gut says it was a bit too much of a change too quickly, but any advice will be greatly appreciated!

joey54321

Firstly, KOPS is rubbish, you can pretty much ignore it. There are some good articles about it if you google.

10 mins seems like a very short period of time to develop back pain if you have been riding longer periods regularly and doing flexibility and core stuff. To be honest it sounds like you might need to go see a fitter (but a good one, there are a lot of bad 'bike fitters' out there).

Alternatively you can try going back to 16 degree and spend period of the ride with your arms more bent to get more accustomed to a lower position.

trekvet

I would leave it as original and do a lot more body work before adjusting, then body can cope with anything. If body can't cope, as you found out, then you need to do perhaps months of S&C work. Exercises like Superman and Child pose come to mind.

shirley_basso

Use your original stem and try riding around using only the drops?

kajjal

KOPS is useful as a starting point to adjust from but you can normally tell when the weight balance is right once you get there.

If you search on line for a stem calculator and chose the yojimng.net one it lets you see what effect various stem changes make. Putting in the numbers you have provided you have made your reach to the bars 12mm longer with no change in height. Potentially that could explain your back pain as you may have already been at your limit for reach and the extra just tipped you over.

When setting bar height it is down to personal preference to some degree and best to lean into the bike slightly and see where your arms and hands naturally fall to. Your arms need to be slightly bent or just like having the saddle too high it can cause you body to be too tense causing various issues. When it comes to bar height many people have their bars only slight below the saddle or even level. Fewer have a significant drop from saddle to bars. Just listen to your body.