9 Helpful Tips To Ensure A Pain-Free Ride

As healthy as cycling can be, there are ways to hurt yourself if you're not cycling right. Here's a list of discomforts you could experience and how to fix them.

Problem: You're experiencing neck and shoulder pain while riding -
This usually occurs when you're reaching too far and you're bending over too much to reach the handlebar.

Solution:Move saddle forward or reduce your stem length. This reduces the distance you need to bend over

Problem: Your fingers become numb while cycling-
This is normally because there is too much pressure on your hands caused by the handlebar and your bodyweight

Solution:Raise your handlebars or get padded handlebar grips. Gloves will also help

Problem: Your seat is hurting your butt while riding
This happens when there isn't enough weight split&between your 3 points of contact on your bicycle (handlebars, seat and pedals)

Solution: Multiple ways to fix this; Use a wider saddle, or raise your seat or lower Handlebars (one depends on the other)

Problem: Your Achilles tendon starts to hurt when cycling
You are overstretching your legs too much because the seat is too high

Solution: Lower your seat height

Problem: You feel discomfort in your groin because of the tip of the saddle
This is because of uneven weight distribution on the saddle.

Solution: Bring down the nose of the saddle, or make sure the saddle is level.

Problem: Knee pain while riding
This happens purely because of the seat height -
a) If you feel pain on the front of your knee, you're streching too much
b) If the back of your knee is hurting it's because there isn't enough range of motion

Solution: a) Lower seat height so your knee isn't streching

b) Increase seat height so your range of motion is not constrained

Problem: You have a burning sensation on the balls of your feet
Wearing tight shoes can cause increased pressure while pedaling causing burning sensation on the ball of your feet

Solution: Wear appropriate socks to create enough cushioning. Moving cleats closer to your heel will help as well.

Problem: Your wrists ache while cycling
When there's too much weight on your handlebars, you can cause a lot of unnecessary strain on your wrists

Solution:Reduce the pressure on wrists by increasing handlebar height or using handlebar padding

Problem: Your lower back hurts on slopes or when pedalling hard
This is normally when the bike frame isn't the right size for you.

Solution: Time to switch to a new frame. One that's your size

By Satish Narayanan