Stop Back Pain When Cycling With Expert Bike Fit Tips

Sitting in the saddle for hours can leave you with a sore back. Is this due to muscular exhaustion or simply a consequence of a poor bike fit? Si speaks to an industry expert, to get to the bottom of why we can experience back pain when cycling. He also runs through key bike components you can adjust for a comfortable bike fit.

00:00 Intro
00:31 Phil Burt bike fit expert
02:57 Saddle position
03:33 Saddle angle
04:07 Position of bike controls
06:10 Handlebar width and position
07:30 Saddle width
08:53 Crank length
10:27 Tyre width
11:06 Don’t change your bike fit all at once
11:30 Increase endurance slowly

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Back pain is one of the most common causes of discomfort when cycling so in this video we’re going to cover some simple bike fit tips that are almost guaranteed to alleviate it to do this we’ve called in the services of the experts expert Phil Bert formerly the

Physio to British cycling in team Sky he’s now applying all that knowledge and experience into bike fit and ergonomics firstly let’s cover some basic potentials of course I think it’s important that people recognize whether they’re taking their back problem onto the bike and then experiencing on the bike or whether cycling itself is

Causing the back pain that makes sense and that that’s only important to work out in that you could be blaming cycling and all your position equipment and actually it’s nothing to do with that it’s you you have actually something going on with yourself and that’s easy

To recognize if you have your back pain in other areas of your life you know and then you can maybe go into a physio doctor get that worked out if it if the back pain is coming from the cycling position it’s normally something to do with um your position or the equipment

You’re using if you ask me so um the one thing about cycling is it has as I always say no Ecentric forces so it’s a lot less dangerous than for example running you know and there’s not much shot going for your back but there is a positional loading you know so your your

Lumber spine is generally in flection for a long period of time and that’s why for example even people who haven’t got back pathology or back pain normally if you cycle up a very very long Mountain climb even me or you you don’t you’re not surprised that your back’s a little

Bit sore by the end because it’s just been in one position for a very long time you know so there’s a postural endurance issue there basically I think if you have back pay my rule is you have back paint before two hours I think there’s something not right you or the

Bike I think you should be out of cycle for two hours relatively enjoying it and not uncomfortable yeah you might be a bit stiff when you get off it but that stiffness should go way very very quickly if I I’m like you if I ride for

Four or five hours I fully expect to be a bit stiff and sore right here’s the key thing it should be gone the next day so you can ride if it isn’t and it’s carrying on into the next day 24 hours or 48 hours I think that’s when that’s

Something that that back Pain’s a bit more involved than just riding the bike and what you experience potentially then a few of you could check out now because some back discomfort is normal when you’re pushing yourself but actually I think we would all benefit from paying attention to the next few points whether

You pass Phil’s test or not before we crack on a quick request from me please if you like videos about bike fit then hit the like button to show us and also we would really appreciate it if you could show your support for gcn by subscribing to the channel if you don’t

Do so already okay on with a vid so how do we alleviate back pain there well in Phil’s experience most issues arise from muscular pain in the lumber spine so that’s your lower back here and in the simplest terms it’s as a result of bending it for long periods of

Time the first P of call is as always to check your saddle position now this is the single most important thing to get right because all other bike fit elements are built around having the optimal pedaling position so is it the right height and is it too far back both

Of these factors could directly or indirectly cause back pain because they also affect the reach and the drop to the handlebars if you need help finding the optimal position then we have a video on that subject and we will link to it in the description now the third

And in Phil’s eyes most important adjustment you can make to your saddle is the saddle tilt this one really does directly cause back pain so a saddle should as a rule be either flat or pointing slightly nose down if the saddle is pointing up you’ll find

That your pelvis won’t be able to rotate forwards because it’s BL and uncomfortable and so that means that your lower back has to compensate by bending More with those dialed in now we can look towards the position of the controls as mentioned the primary cause of back pain when cycling specifically lower back pain is stretching too far forwards and too far down potentially both at the same time now at this point

I’ve got to say that on many top pend new bikes you might find the adjustment at the front end is anything from hard to Impossible now that end of itself is not a bad thing per se as long as you’ve got your optimal cycling position dialed

Before you buy a new bike and that you thoroughly check that you can get to your optimal cycling position on whatever you’re buying on this Canyon a road I have got some fine tuning I can do to the bar height and also the bar width but to demonstrate more dramatic

Chang es I’m going to swap to a static bike firstly if you are suffering from lower back pain R cycling try moving your stem up not just a little bit but quite a sizable amount like maybe 4 cm or something now you’ll probably find that on a normal bike and not a static

Bike that that adjustment is quite hard to make you may not be able to do it in fact so what you can try instead is flipping your stem so you take the handlebars off then you turn the stem the other way up and that will significantly raise your handlebars and

Also bring them closer to the saddle now some people might not like the look of this setup here but at least you’ll know if it sorts your issue and if it does brilliant if you still really don’t like the look of having a stem pointing up

The wrong way then bear in mind that Different Bikes naturally have different height front ends some are taller than others although of course that would necess itate a new bike or at the very least a new frame there is one other option which is significantly less

Expensive we’ll get on to that in just a moment you can also look at bringing your handlebars closer to you as well now this will necessitate buying a shorter stem you’ll need to swap that bit out but you can also at this point look at your handlebars too so the size

Of them can vary dramatically between models both in terms of the reach so the distance between this B here and your controls and also the drop as well now what you’re looking for is compact handlebars so that’s where the difference between your hand positions is much smaller I’d say that’s an

Essential for smaller Riders but actually compact handlebars are my go-to as well now while we’re talking handlebars one thing that Phil mentioned which really took me by surprise was handlebar width so wider handle bars effectively increase your reach to them so making your lower back bend more but

Phil also said that if your handlebars are too wide having your hand splay apart can put pressure on your upper back causing that to hurt after long periods of time in the saddle so it sounds like shoulder width handlebars are making a comeback there are other less obvious but potentially equally

Significant equipment choices that can potentially alleviate back pain and one of the most beautiful things in any bite fit is to realize that someone’s on too narrow a saddle because it’s the easiest thing in the world to S saddle you know so saddle width is important if what

Generally find where it’s too narrow people move around all the time feel really uncomfortable and it’s normally the lower back that feels like because they’re just doing so much movement at the at the sitting point on the bike um and my little really easy tip for that it’s not as straightforward as sometimes

But if you feel like you constantly push yourself backwards on the saddle and then move forwards and push back it normally quite normally will correlate to you not being on the right width support saddle so the right width and if that’s really easy to understand if you

Haven’t got the right you know W um if your pelvis is not being supported by the saddle then the lower back’s going to get you know you’re gonna have pain so that’s quite an easy one to check you know and yeah the general rule is women

Have wider hips than men so they tend to like wi the Saddles but that there’s more variation within gender you know so it’s an easy thing to check and there’s some nice online methods of doing it with cboard and Tim foil we have a fancy digital thing here but it’s worth

Checking out you know a brand with a big range of saddles like Calia who we work with Will typically have different width options so there’s a 130 on my bike currently and I choose to run a 145 so I’m going to swap that over now what else I need to start a crank

Blink company but um I cannot tell you how many people I’ve seen who whose back pain has been directly related to running two longer cranks but here’s the good news with this right I think we should look at the crank levels more positive it’s because they’re trying to

Do some amazing things on the bike either distance-wise or speed wise so they have a really good performance position which is normally lower at the front with a very good saddle height for producing power if your crank length is too long this is why the model here is

Is here your hit flexes come off here and here so the bottom three Lumber vertebrae and to come through to there if you’re closing up your hip too much that’s what you know you get off the bike and you feel like a few minutes it’s a bit stiff it’s because your Hip

Flex is grabbing on those bottom vertebrae and pulling them down into extension and that the lot and they’re bit jammed up um so I think manipulating crank length if you want if you’re in the category of I don’t want to raise my front end 20 mil because I like looking

Like I’m a pro cyclist but you have raging back pain my tip to you is okay you drop your crank length because instead of opening you up from the front let’s open you up from underneath so so what does that look like in reality then well potentially dropping 5 mm off your

Crank length will make a significant difference now you need to put your Saddle Up by the amount that the crank is shorter so if you lose 5 mil off your cranks put your seat up by 5 mil so that will reduce that hip angle and still give you the optimal pedaling position

For power output final point on a equipment choices is Tire width now this is another one that I hadn’t considered but makes a lot of sense effectively trying to make your bike as comfortable as possible by reducing the vibration coming from the road or the trail now seemingly there are few drawbacks to

Running wider tires in these more enlightened times so why not max out your tire clearance and see if that can help these ones here are super light super fast Road Tire in a 35 if that’s not going to be comfortable I don’t know what is now one last word

From Phil a word of warning in fact is not to change everything all at once cuz you won’t then know what has actually solved your back pain plus it’ be really expensive if you suddenly started swapping out all that equipment and also you might then end up compromising your

Position in other ways Comfort or performance other ways that you wouldn’t have needed to have done so have a plan and stick to it begin with saddle position then look at bar position then other factors like saddle width crank length etc etc one last word for me now

There is also a training effect here as well Phil’s words muscular endurance and lack of adaptation so if you have suddenly increased the length of your rides or swapped from road to gravel or perhaps flat roads to Alpine passes it might take a little bit of time for the

Muscles in your back to catch up with these increased demands it’s one of the reasons why people recommend a graduated increase either in training or run finding something that most of us completely ignore until it’s too late and something happens right then huge thanks to Phil for his time and his

Expert knowledge in today’s video his practice is up in Manchester here in the UK by the way for those of you lucky enough to live within reach but if you would like more of Phil’s Insight in addition to some videos we’ve already created here on gcn then do make sure

You check out his book that he’s written on the subject which is well worth a read now I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on this video is back pain something that plagues you on the bike have you managed to fix it prior to

Watching this video and if so what was it that you that you changed that helped that problem out get involved in the comment section down below and also give this video a big thumbs up if you have appreciated Phil’s time and knowledge