Wrist and Elbow Pain From Cycling: Causes and Fixes

Rather than guessing, measure your actual position with your own camera.

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The straight-wrist principle

Your wrist is strongest and least irritated when it is roughly in line with your forearm. Bend it back, forward or sideways under load and the tendons that run through it work at an angle for hours at a time.

That is the whole principle. Almost every wrist complaint on a bike comes down to a wrist that is kinked rather than straight while carrying weight.

Cause 1: brake levers positioned wrong

On drop bars, the levers should sit so the hood and the top of the bar form a roughly flat platform. Mount them too low and your wrist bends backwards every time you ride on the hoods.

• The check: rest your hands on the hoods and look down. Your forearm, wrist and hand should form a fairly straight line, not a kink.
• The fix: rotate the bars slightly, or move the levers up or down the curve. Both are free and take ten minutes.

Cause 2: bar angle and grip angle

On flat bars, a bar swept straight across forces your wrists into an unnatural inward rotation. Your hands do not naturally hang palm-down and square, they sit at a slight angle.

• The fix: a bar with more backsweep, or rotating the grips slightly, lets the wrist sit neutral. Ergonomic grips with a wing-shaped support spread pressure across the palm instead of concentrating it.

Cause 3: locked, straight arms

Straight arms turn your elbow into a rigid strut with no shock absorption. Every road impact travels through the joint, and the elbow tendons take it.

• The fix: ride with a slight, permanent bend in the elbows. It sounds trivial and it changes everything.
• If your elbows keep straightening on their own, the reach is too long, that is a stem problem, not a habit problem.

Cause 4: too much weight on the hands in the first place

The deepest cause. If your saddle is tipped nose-down, or your bars are too low or too far away, you are bracing against the bars rather than resting on them. No grip or glove fixes a position that puts your body weight through your wrists.

• The check: riding on flat ground, briefly lift your hands a few centimetres off the bars. If you lurch forward, too much weight was resting there.

The order to fix it

1. Level the saddle. A nose-down saddle slides you forward onto your arms, and it is the most commonly overlooked cause. 2. Check lever or grip angle so the wrist sits in line with the forearm. 3. Raise the bars or shorten the reach if weight is still landing on the hands. 4. Ride with bent elbows, and change hand position every few minutes. 5. Then consider padded gloves, thicker bar tape or ergonomic grips for what remains, they help with vibration, but they cannot fix a position.

Elbow pain specifically

Pain on the outside of the elbow, similar to tennis elbow, often comes from gripping too tightly combined with locked arms and road vibration. The grip is often unconscious, riders tense up in traffic, on descents or when tired.

Consciously relaxing your hands every few minutes helps more than any component. If it persists, thicker bar tape or grips reduce the vibration reaching the joint.

When it is not the bike

Numbness in specific fingers is a nerve issue rather than a joint issue and points somewhere else. Wrist pain that persists after correcting position, occurs off the bike, or comes with weakness or swelling should be assessed by a doctor or physiotherapist.

Measuring what puts weight on your hands

How much load reaches your wrists follows from your saddle tilt, torso angle and reach. A BikeFit/LAB analysis reports your torso lean and elbow angle against the target range for your riding goal, elbow angle shows directly whether you are riding with locked arms, so you can see whether your position is the reason your wrists are carrying you.

Rather than guessing, measure your actual position with your own camera.

€5 for one fit, or 10 fits for €25. See pricing →