Re: Still trying to understand comfort.
Posted: 20 Dec 2018, 7:28pm
pjclinch wrote:mjr wrote:The use of neck muscles to look up and consequent tiredness/ache is rather unavoidable when crouched, but pain in the wrists when crouched and bum when upright sound like classic symptoms of imperfect setup, of too much weight going through those parts. As for anecdotal aches and pains, as some here may know, I've ridden tours and centuries on both road bike and more upright roadster with only muscular tiredness, not pressure pains.
And the news here is that not everyone is the same! I have issues sitting on the ground without a back support for any length of time, is that because the ground is "imperfectly set up?" I doubt it!
Doubt it all you like, but the ground is not an optimal seat, else we'd all sit on it!
As for incorrect setup on an opafiets... well there's not much to do, is there? Saddle up and down, saddle back and forwards a bit. I've always been happy to fettle these and do so until pedalling is as comfortable as possible, and still after a while I get a numb bum.
If you put a set of scales by a table and stand on them and lean some weight on your arms then the weight on the scales will, of course, go down. So there is more push on the arms than usual. If there is more push on the arms than usual they'll start to protest after a while, because they're used to supporting pretty much no weight. There is a popular misapprehension that somehow by wiggling the seat and bars around you'll not have any weight on your arms, but the only way to do that in a crouch is take it on your core muscles, and again they'd be doing work they're not used to. I have no interest in working out just so I can be comfortable on a bike, and my joints may well be a bit stiffer than yours.
No need to work out, for most people. Building up the distances on that type of bike will build up the core muscles. Far better to do that than wreck arms or bum IMO but it's your body. Don't pretend it has to be that way, though.
I did have something in the previous message acknowledging that core and leg muscles are needed more or less, but cut it in an edit.