Wrist and hand pain or numbness is a common issue experienced by cyclists. Follow this guide to help reduce your discomfort.

Wrist and hand pain/numbness is a common ailment on the bike. There can be a number of causes which can make diagnosing this issue very frustrating. Luckily with MyVeloFit you can continue to refine your position as often as you’d like.

As always, start by ensuring your position on the bike is neutral to begin with by checking it with the MyVeloFit software. If your position isn’t neutral to begin with, start by getting a neutral position. If your position was drastically off to begin with that could be what was leading to the pain.

Hand numbness is typically caused by excessive ulnar or radial flexion in the wrist, too much wrist extension, or too much pressure on the hands specifically in the wrong place on your hand.

Ulnar flexion (or Ulnar Deviation) is when the wrist bends down towards your pinky finger (you’ll see a crease in the skin of the wrist below the pinky finger) and is often associated with numbness of the middle, ring and pinky fingers.

Radial flexion (or Radial Deviation) is when your wrist bends up towards your thumb (you’ll see a crease in the skin of the wrist below the thumb) and is often associate with numbness of the thumb, index and middle fingers.

Wrist extension is when your entire hand bends back out of line from your forearm and is associated with whole hand numbness.

For any of these issues it is important to make sure your hands and wrists are in a neutral position with minimal ulnar or radial deviation and minimal wrist extension. The ulnar and radial deviation can be corrected by changing the angle of your hoods on a road bike, the direction of the bar sweep and bar width on a mountain bike or hybrid, and the type of extension on a TT or Triathlon bike. It is important to note that your overall body position does effect this so if you lower your handlebars giving yourself a more aggressive back angle, you will likely need to adjust your hood angle or bar sweep to account for this.

It is also important to make sure you are holding your bike correctly. On a road bike that means the webbing of your thumb near the upswing of the hoods. If you are choking back away from the hoods then adjust the reach and drop of the bike so you are comfortable in the correct position.

One trick if you are trying to shorten your reach by holding the “elbow” of the handlebar is to shorten the reach by the distance from the “elbow” to where your hand should be on the hood.

Now assuming the bike is in the correct position for you, it is also important to consider your posture on the bike and how it can affect your overall comfort and efficiency. Please take a moment to review our cycling posture page which will help guide you towards the proper posture on your bike, as well as your specific strength and flexibility recommendations which are generated when you do our mobility screen.