Custom crafted handlebars

Ever get numb hands or fingers on a ride?  Of course you have.....I'm sure nearly every cyclist has experienced on some level a bit of hand wonkiness while out on a longer ride. 

You can understand then that hand placement, pressure, and grip are addressed on every bike fit I do.  In truth, some clients will NEVER see a complete resolution of their hand symptoms.  Some (somewhere in the vicinity of "many" or "most") will have 100% improvement and have no issues after a fitting, and the rest will experience a reduction in the problem but the numbness won't go away 100%.


The shape of your handlebars plays a huge role in the pressure on your hands.  Round bars ensure that your hand will always be resting on a pressure point where a large portion of weight is assumed through a very small surface area of the hand.  Remember "tangents" from geometry class?

 

The round profile of a bar profile a point where our hands will contact with greater force than the areas around it.  Which isn't to say that this HAS to cause problems, just that it can increase the likelihood of problems.

Some carbon bars address this problem with a new shape -- the ellipse.

The ellipse provides a blunted surface where we can more effectively distribute hand pressure.  But the ellipse needs to be oriented at a very specific angle in order to help and so this limits how you can orient your handlebar -- depending on how you prefer your drops or hood positions this may require you to orient the ellipse at an angle that isn't taking advantage of its ergonomic shape.  We run into this problem many times when setting up shaped carbon handlebars -- the kinds you commonly see out there with flat surfaces on top by the stem or at the bend of the bar before you reach the hoods.

Add that to the fact that you can easily spend $300-$400 on a set of carbon handlebars, and you get the reason I've been looking for a way to take a normal round bar and add some material to it to shape it into an ellipsoid or custom surface.

I have in the past used a few different materials to accomplish this.  I've tried the commercially available pads like the Fizik gel pads and and the foam wrap from Aztec, but neither seemed to tick all  the boxes.  The gel pads could only be laid over the bar and so did little to change the shape of the bar and often the gel padding ended up in places where it wasn't doing nearly enough good.  The Aztec foam compresses down over time too much and it doesn't provide a lot in the way of options in order to orient the padding in a user-specific way.

I've also meticulously taken extra bar tape and cut it into strips, and taped and taped and taped it into varying thicknesses over the contour of the bar so that it exhibited something close to the shape I wanted.  But this takes so much time and it's still limited in the shapes I can get out of it.

So I was really excited when I found a product that I could take and mold onto a client's handlebars in a way that allowed me to fully customize how their hands attach to their bars.  It doesn't cost a fortune and I've been able to come up with some custom treatments for our handlebars, some of which are:

• median and/or ulnar nerve decompression
• arthritic CMC joint(s) (base of the thumb)
• global hand/wrist arthritis issues
• riders with exceptionally small hands reaching the brake levers or finding comfortable positions
• riders with large hands finding comfortable positions on the hoods
• providing a proper platform so that we can place a gel pad in such a way that we get the full benefit of the padding

It's pretty exciting because the sky is the limit with this....I can take nearly any hand-handlebar interface problem and come up with a way to in some way improve it.

Here are a few pictures of one really basic preparation I did from start to finish:

Plain Ritchey Pro bar wrapped in tape

Added the blue to provide digit rests when on tops; red flattens and widens the bends; yellow provides a rest for the palm when on the drops.

Another view

Added more black, blue, and red to further flatten and deepen the entire top of the bar.

~3 cm wide at bend.  Areas close to the hoods like this, I can make a recess for the brake and shifter housing so that you don't get that annoying bump right where your hands rest when on the hood.

Almost 4 cm deep on the flats

Once wrapped, the bar has a much different shape than when we started.

 All told it adds about 35 grams per side or about 2 ounces total.  This material adheres exceptionally well to anodized aluminum.

This was a very generic example, but the great thing is this "clay" allows me to make nearly any shape or contour I want. 

Of course, my clients that come in for bike fittings can just have this done right here in the Studio, but those out of town (or country) can ship me their handlebar with the hoods installed.  That way I can make the additions you'll need and leave channels for the shifter housings.

Cost runs $75 to $150 depending on what's required, so if you're having hand or wrist problems on the bike there is undoubtedly something we can do about it.

Do as your mother says and sit straight!

Bicycles are symmetric, carefully designed objects......sometimes as meticulously crafted as aerospace parts.  It is this symmetry that ensures they handle well and are balanced.    Most carbon bikes are made from moulds and so the integrity and alignment of the rear dropouts, the seat tube, and the head tube is maintained at all costs with these clamshell-like devices.  Welded metal bikes are assembled on expensive jigs that ensure the same alignment.  From there, fork steerer tubes, stems, and handlebars are equally symmetric.

All of this is done to make sure that a rider's weight is draped evenly over the bike.  That way the left hand is the same distance from the frame as the right, as are the knees, hips, and shoulders.

Balanced body makes for a balanced rider.  Makes sense, right?  It stands to reason that your body is bisected by the bike itself.  It sounds logical, but unfortunately, for the vast majority of us, it's not true.

The truth is that while our hands and feet are placed symmetrically on the bike (the right and left foot are situated on the pedals in nearly exactly the same spot on opposite sides of the center-line of the bike and same goes for the hands), roughly 75% of the population does not sit square on their saddle -- meaning we are shifted off to one side of the saddle, so effectively our hips, knees, and likely our shoulders are skewed to one side.  On-the-bike infrared measurements (Retul) make discovering this fairly easy as long as you know what you're looking at.

To further complicate the matter, a large portion of riders sit with one hip further forward, but that's another article for another time.

[I know there are some of you out there asking "a leg length discrepancy can cause that, right?...can't that be the culprit of this skewed sitting posture?"  Sometimes, but not as often as you'd think.  You see often (I don't have firm numbers on this one, but in my experience about 50% of the time) a rider's leg length discrepancy doesn't come through on the bike as you'd expect it to -- i.e. a longer right leg should "push" the rider to the left so that the shorter left leg can more easily reach the pedals.   Chalk this up to not being able to rely on simple mechanics when you're talking about pedaling a bike since no other task involves being attached to a machine in five spots as well as the more complicated neurological process mentioned below.]

How to remedy the derriere shift?

Since the bike won't accommodate us by having the saddle placed off to the side (moving the seat off-center so that it's under the skewed hips) we have to find a way to bring the rider back closer to being aligned with the bike.

In order to come up with a proper fix, we need to know why most of us can't keep our butt on the saddle squarely.  The answer lies deep within our brain, where our most basic motor impulses come from.  You see most of us, despite whether we're right or left handed are "wired" to favor our right side.  So most (in the ballpark of 60%-70%) of those riders shifted off to one side of their saddle are shifted to the right.

First inclination would be to just force yourself to sit towards the center -- if the infrared shows you're in fact sitting to the right then you could just consciously sit further to the left.  And off you go, right?  Well, no.  Problem is that conscious corrections really don't get you very far because you can't "attend" to this left-sitting posture for an entire ride and you'll end up gravitating back to the right especially as you work harder on challenging terrain.  You've done very little to change the motor plan and so the problem will persist.

No, the best and lasting way to fix this is to get the weak side engaged more.  Again, more of us are wired right-dominant and we're likely to never fully change this but if we can make a small improvement in the weak side's proprioception, strength, and/or coordination we'll make a dent in the problem.

Most of my client's leave their bike fit appointment with a combination of fixes to work on the problem.   Often these include some drills (on and off the bike) to improve the weak side's coordination -- even some dry land balance exercises can occasionally make an impact.  Flexibility work may help improve the ease of  the pedal stroke and make a small impact.  Most often, and in my experience most effective, are cleat position changes to improve the weak side's proprioception -- literally how that side senses and feels the pedal and pedal-stroke.

In all these ways we can engage that weak side and the result is then the rider begins to gravitate more toward the center of the bike.  The rider won't just pop right back to dead center on that first bike fit, nor should we shoot for that.  I usually shoot for a 30%-40% shift back toward center that first day -- getting more than that increases the chances of us over-correcting and creating a problem elsewhere.

A recent bike fit showed that the client was shifted to the right so their overall deviation from the center was in the 72-74 mm range (meaning that their right side was measured roughly 36 mm further from their centerline and the left side was around 36 mm towards their centerline.  After a few changes on the bike, including some cleat changes that 72-74 mm deviation was down to 47-49 mm.  Not perfect but better.  From there I can instruct the rider on exercises that are tailored to their particular deficits in order to keep the rider working on their imbalances.

Once the client leaves and does their first 10-12 rides in this position their affected soft tissues (muscles, tendons, fascia, etc.) will have an easier time progressively adjusting to this new posture because we didn't try to over-correct them the first time.

When client's follow up after about a dozen rides it's most common to see that they are now about 70% improved in their alignment.  Usually if they didn't make any progress from here they would still be in good shape....it's unlikely we'd make someone 100% symmetric on the bike anyway but negative stresses on the body are limited long before the 70% threshold.

If you have aches and pains on the bike and you're not sure where they come from or if you just want to make sure you're not losing any efficiency being off kilter, then come in to get checked out.

Sometimes you can see some of this shift just from looking at a rider's hips from behind.  Have any pictures that show you or a riding buddy sitting off-center?  Send them in here.

Wilier Cento1 SR

Wilier Zero.9

More "women's specific" mythologizing

So it seems the women's specific myth isn't going away any time soon, unfortunately.  It doesn't seem to be discriminating between road or mountain bikes either, as a few more femme bikes have been released for the dirt.

I certainly have nothing against bikes made specifically for women....certainly my years spent fitting bikes and building custom rides has made me acutely aware that a bespoke bike (and all it's parts) makes for the most enjoyable ride possible.  I can appreciate wanting a bike a certain color -- not every woman is going to want the black or red or black/red bikes that predominate the industry.

Much of the bike market's marketing for women's specific bikes talks of ladies' special body measurements that require a bike made differently from a man's.  I have seen the different manufacturers reference frequently, and contradictorily, that women have:

•  longer torsos relative to their height, 
•  sometimes shorter torsos as well ;-)
•  shorter arm reach
•  longer reach relative to their torso length (??)
•  longer inseam 
•  surprise!  shorter inseam as well!

Confused yet?  Me too.

Let's look at some facts:

There have been thousands of studies going back hundreds of years, in the field of anthropometrics ( the science dealing with measurement of the size, weight, and proportions of the human body).  Many of the studies will have an "N" value (meaning how many participants were studied -- generally more is better) in the thousands or tens of thousands.  We have really good data on this, and you could (and people do) write thousands of pages on all the comparisons.  

I pulled some data from a University of Rhode Island study back in 2009 that was updated just in the spring of 2012.  To keep it simple, we'll just look at the data from one main table that measures:  Stature (overall height), eye height, mid-shoulder height, waist height, sitting height, buttocks height, eye height (sitting), upper arm length, lower arm + hand length, upper leg length, and lower leg length.  They're broken down into male and female groups with percentiles from the 5th to the 95th -- 95th represents the tallest while the 5th percentile represents the shorties.

Keep in mind that when you're study includes thousands of test subjects you're going to find the best way to measure them so that it's simple, clinically applicable and simple/fast.  So these measurements weren't taken off X-rays, MRI or other super-accurate (and expensive method).  Rather these were taken with simple measuring rigs and tape measures and so the dimensions measured are different sometimes than you would expect....for example torso length is measured with the subject sitting on a flat surface, and the measurement is taken from the seat of the "chair" up to the top of their sternum, so it includes the pelvis and thorax.

Still, we can get a  good idea of what the data shows.

So without belaboring this too much this is what their findings say:

(As a percentage of their overall body height)

Torso length

5th% percentile
males -- 35.5%  - so their torso makes up roughly 35% of their total height
females -- 34.2% 

95th%
males -- 34.5%
females -- 35.3%

Buttocks height

5th%
males -- 46.2%
females -- 45.5%

95th%
males -- 49.1%
females -- 48.3%

Upper Arm length

5th%
males -- 33.8%
females -- 35.0%

95th%
males -- 35.3%
females -- 36.4%

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the measurements they took -- they had many more.  I just grabbed a smattering of them as a representative sample.

So let's put some of this into perspective....when considering any of these measurements, while there are differences, I'm not seeing any earth-shattering differences that would make me think you could, in any sort of reliable or useful way, manipulate a stock bicycle's frame geometry to match a certain rider, male or female, even if everyone followed the averages expressed in this study, which of course almost no one will (more on this later)

As an example, for upper arm length we see one of the larger differences between the male and female measurements -- 1.2%.  This represents an actual difference of around half a centimeter, or about the thickness of two nickels.

Furthermore the differences are a mixed bag -- when a leg measurement favors on gender in the 5th percentile, that same measurement may be greater (again, slightly) for the other gender in the 95th percentile.....or vice versa.

I looked at the tallest and shortest of the gender, but the results were the same in the middle heights -- consistently close and inconsistently favoring one side then the other.

And as I mentioned before, these are averages and small deviations on any measurement are blended in but will be minimized.  A female may fall into the 50th percentile for height and leg length but have arm lengths that fall into the 65th percentile. 

I recently had a male client, with moderate flexibility, who stood about 6'4" tall (193 cm) with a 37.5" inseam.  I've had a few clients built like this and most of them really did better on a custom geometry bike because their relatively short torso and middling flexibility restricted their handlebar position.  What differed about this client was his arm reach.  He had arm lengths of a man many inches taller, which made it much easier for him to reach his handlebars even if they were in a longer or lower position than we normally see with someone with his torso length. 

Something to consider is that these deviations from the norm -- like his extended arm reach -- aren't uncommon.  Not when you consider that 66% of people fall outside of one-half standard deviation from the average (while 32% fall greater than one full standard deviation away).

So now......given these small variations in the "averages" and the vast potential for deviations from these averages, how useful do you think it would be to alter the geometry of bike in order to fit one sex or the other better?

Add to that all the natural variations we see outside of body segment lengths, like flexibility and strength, and you have a nearly impossible task.  I know this makes it seem like it would be impossible to create a stock bike that fits ANYONE, when in fact standard sizes tend to work out okay for many (but not most) riders out there.  Those riders that they work well for are fortunate to have been born into close proximity of the average measurements.  This fortunate phenomenon is less common if your overall height is on the high or low end of the charts -- bike designs for the very big and very little are still lacking.

So how well do stock bikes fit the masses? 

In my experience about 25% of the population fits them with little or no changes to the bike. 

A full 50% require changes to bike parts that I would consider "significant" in nature. 

What's "significant"? An example would be requiring a stem with a rise above 15 degrees.  Often riders require multiple changes -- bar reach and height accommodations AND cleat and saddle adaptations as well. A simpler definition would be any change that's likely to affect the overall balance or handling adversely.  Now,  a 20 degree rise stem wouldn't render a bike unrideable, but it will be a compromise....the bike won't steer or handle the way the geometry was designed for, and the rider's overall balance and weight distribution will be "off" which can lead to many small issues (for instance, not being able to settle comfortably on a saddle, incomplete engagement of some of the more powerful leg muscles, or more weight on one or more contact points).

End of Summer Discounts: Wilier-Triestina, BMC, Lenz Sport

Moving last year's bikes; Retul bike fitting still included with every bike

I have a couple of DEMO BIKES left that will be going at even steeper discounts (even a 29er or two -- actually 6).

Call or email with any questions :

BMC Road Racer, bare gloss carbon finish; I have two of these left, both "54"s (55cm effective top tube [TT])

BMC Speedfox 29, X.0, Easton carbon, Fox fork -- sizes S and M available

BMC Road Racer, full Ultegra, size 57 (normally $3600, now $3059)

BMC Street Racer - Shimano 105 group, sizes 48 and 51 available for you vertically challenged folks.  (not $1799, that's full retail)

Our most popular bike this year, the Wilier-Triestina Gran Toursimo.  We've cycled thru a lot of these and I have 2 left, a 55 (nominally a Large) and a 52 (Small)

One white Wilier Gran Tourismo left, a 57/58 (X-Large)

BMC RaceMachine - size "53" (has a 55 cm effective TT) - this was a demo bike and will be discounted further than some of the others

Lenz Sport Leviathan; 4.0; Sun Ringle (Stan's) wheels, SRAM X.9 drivetrain, Hayes Stroker disc brakes; full retail $5200, now $4200

BMC Team Elite 29; probably one of the best entry level 29er deals out there; solid Shimano SLX build, Rock Shox Recon fork; Hate going over the handlebars? this race ready bike has better geometry than most 29ers out there -- look it up; no 29er should have a head angle steeper than 70 degrees (IMHO)

I have 3 of these left, two Mediums and a Small