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Thumb Pain!!

60K views 46 replies 30 participants last post by  Twan 
#1 ·
I ride a singlespeed with a RF XC carbon low rise bar. During and after each ride, both of my thumb joints hurt like hell. When I climb, I put my thumbs over the bar to avoid the pain. After the ride, the pain will follow me for about 3 to 4 days. Feels like my thumbs are sprained. It hurts the most when I try to curl out my thumbs with my index finger (from the same hand) pushing down on the back of my thumb nail. The pain is at the joints. Anyone has any idea as to why this is happening. Should the riser be installed flat, facing up or down? Thanks.
 
#22 · (Edited)
I feel your pain

I struggled with thumb joint pain over the past couple years with it finally getting so bad last fall that I had to cut back on my riding and avoid using my right thumb for anything, even turning the car keys in the ignition and using the space bar on the keyboard! This was quite the stealth injury and snuck up slowly over time. My riding is probably about 50% Downhill and 50% XC. The conclusion that I came to after much investigation, reflection, and experimentation, was that the majority of my injury was caused by 2 years of downhilling with full finger gloves that were too small. The glove material was too short in the web of my hand and every impact I took there, the glove would pull back on my thumb in a jamming fashion (the end if the glove is against the end of the thumb and pulling back every impact). A couple other contributing factors were grips that were slightly too big that caused the thumb to be stretched away from the hand ever so slightly (ODI Rogue), and brake lever position. I don't think these would have been as big of a deal if my thumb wasn't already injured from the glove problem. They merely kept aggravating it. After getting different gloves, modifying my grips, and babying my thumb for the past 6-8 months (riding with thumbs on top of bar, minimal DH), my thumb is ALMOST back to normal. Yes, expect your thumb to take a LONG time to heal, and expect a lot of things in your daily life to keep it aggravated unless you pay attention.

Here is my recommendation on things to check:

1. Full finger gloves that are too small, causing a jamming of the thumb as I explained above.

2. Grips that are too big and cause "tweaking" of your thumb, esp. when climbing. I did one DH run with small diameter grips and my thumbs felt great, but palms felt battered. I ended up keeping my large diameter ODI Rogues since I need the palm padding for DH, but I shaved down an area under the thumb all the way down to the plastic (~4mm removed). This provided all the relief I needed, and I kept the padding for my palms. It also made a big difference when climing during XC rides, although I still climb with my thumbs on top of the bar sometimes. If you only ride XC, you could probably just use smaller grips and be fine.

3. Brake lever and hand position. If your levers are pointed too far down, your thumb will be in a bad position and will be taking direct impacts rather than the palm of your hand. The effect here is similar to grips that are too large: a tweaking of the thumb in a unnatural direction. I will also add that I highly doubt that shifters are causing anybody problems. Even when my thumbs were still hurting, shifting didn't cause much aggravation even when I was expecting it to. Examine the direction of force on your thumb from using the shifter and then from handlebar push/impact and you'll see what I'm talking about. The shifter pushes back in a straight direction with respect to the thumb while the bar pushens the thumb at an unnatural 90 degree angle.

If you have thumb pain and are reading this, don't expect any of these changes to drastically improve your pain right away. Troubleshooting my problem was difficult because my injured thumb was irritated by just about ANYTHING, including riding with what I now know is a properly tuned setup. Keep babying it and get your setup dialed as best as you can, and it will start feeling better eventually.
 
#31 ·
1. Full finger gloves that are too small, causing a jamming of the thumb as I explained above.
Yup! This is how it started for me, I rode just twice with gloves that were too small and now, months later I'm still trying to get my thumbs to heal up. Using the ESI chunky grips at the moment, going to try shaving down a spot for my thumb on the underside as you suggest and see if it helps.
 
#3 ·
Young 34

I'm a young 34 yr dude. I'm pretty fit for my age. I bike, run and I lift weights. I am starting to worry about my hands though. For the past year, my hands have started to give me problems. I lost a good amount of strength on my fingers. I'm guessing from the roughing it took from moving heavy objects. Then I endoed and landed on my hand, and now I have a slight bulge on my right palm. It's there and hurts when I push down on it. Now this... Gotta take better care of my hands... Thanks for your feedback.
 
#37 ·
I'm a young 34 yr dude. I'm pretty fit for my age. I bike, run and I lift weights. I am starting to worry about my hands though. For the past year, my hands have started to give me problems. I lost a good amount of strength on my fingers. I'm guessing from the roughing it took from moving heavy objects. Then I endoed and landed on my hand, and now I have a slight bulge on my right palm. It's there and hurts when I push down on it. Now this... Gotta take better care of my hands... Thanks for your feedback.
So now you're a 45 year old dude, and I find myself at 34. What have you learned in the decade since making this post? Dropper levers weren't a thing then, but using mine (with a wolftooth remote) has REALLY flared up my left thumb. Ice and Ibuprofen seem no help.
 
#4 ·
Yeah I get thumb joint pain, but its more stiffness and a bit sore, not really as bad as you describe.
I had double jointed thumbs as a kid, I'm sure it wasn't good for them. Like you I rest my thumbs on the top of the grip a lot of the time for a bit of relief.
I also find riding with thinner grips is a lot better as it's just easier on my hands to hold something that's not as big around. I also find more backsweep puts my wrists in a more neutral position, I'm thinking about trying some OnOne Mary bars at some point.
Maybe you should see a doc, I haven't yet.
 
#5 ·
If you ride with the brake levers pointing down too much this could be a problem. Your hands will have to rotate forwards too much when you brake and you can't support yourself with your palms. Basically, the bars end up trying to rip your thumbs off as you slam through the rough stuff.
 
#7 ·
ET.....I had the same issues:( It wasn't until I switched to Ergon grips that the problem vanished. I actually put them on all my rides and couldn't be happier! They don't look the greatest but they do work. Since I have small hands I opted for the lady version...Here is the link with more info. Hope this helps and your back to enjoying the ride!

http://www.ergon-bike.com/us/grips/gp1.html

P.S.-
If you ride bar ends they have them in that version also.
 
#8 ·
chopperguth said:
ET.....I had the same issues:( It wasn't until I switched to Ergon grips that the problem vanished. I actually put them on all my rides and couldn't be happier! They don't look the greatest but they do work. Since I have small hands I opted for the lady version...Here is the link with more info. Hope this helps and your back to enjoying the ride!

http://www.ergon-bike.com/us/grips/gp1.html

P.S.-
If you ride bar ends they have them in that version also.
Has anyone tried Ergon's with low rise carbon bars? How did it work out?
 
#9 ·
I also had thumb pain after riding. I blamed it on the thumb shifters but after riding single speed, I still had the resulting pain. I tried the post's suggestion and repositioned the brake levers upward putting more support on my palms and it has really helped. Thanks
 
#10 ·
Thanks for the Input

Hey everyone, thanks for the input. I've adjusted my brake levers as mentioned, and riser bar position so it points upward. This has helped alot, but my thumbs are still slightly sore afterwards. I think I'm going to try out the ergo grips and see how it goes. Seems like sore thumbs are pretty common around here...
 
#15 ·
I am having the exact same pain that ETETET is having. I have messed with some brake lever adjustments and shifter adjustments, but nothing has helped yet. Mine is only my right thumb though. I was thinking it was because I use it much more than the left thumb for shifting. I have even kicked the idea around of buying a twist shifter set and only installing the right side to try to prevent the thumb pain. I hate twist shifters though. I am riding with OURY grips right now and may switch to something different. Have you fixed the problem or had any luck with any of the suggestions??
Thanks,
 
#16 ·
Same here Im not quite sure where it is hurting my thumb but I think it is on the joint. I am very young and did a long ride requiring lots of hard braking and I am not sure that is why. But I will try angling the brake levers up more especially because I am small. I am pretty sure it is not from shifting because I dont shift that much I stay in the chain ring 2 most of the time. It hurts when I even land a wheelie.
 
#18 ·
I too am not very old (29) and think arthritis would be out of the question. I installed some smaller diameter grips, repositioned my shifters, and adjusted the angle of my brake levers. I am running mechanical disc and am thinking that maybe having to use two fingers and squeeze fairly hard to keep the bike at a controllable pace while encountering rough downhill sections may be causing me to support too much weight on my thumbs. Maybe some nice hydro brakes would help too? Or am I just looking for an excuse to drop some more cash on my bike.... I haven't got a chance to ride again since the grip change. I will post up if they make any difference.
 
#19 ·
I went for a ride last night and I'm not sure which change helped the most or if it was a combination of all three, but the thumb is considerably better after riding than it was previously. There is still a slight bit of stiffness when I use my index and middle finger to push my thumb into my palm, but other than that, all is good. I guess I just need to fine tune the brake and shifter location to see if I can get it a little better. Apparently the huge soft grips weren't helping me any.
 
#21 ·
It's not your bars- it is the brake lever position. If your brake levers are hanging straight down......there is your problem. When we ride- we often keep one or two fingers on the brakes. If the levers are nearly vertical, that means your thumbs are the ONLY things keeping both hands on the bars. Your entire body is supported by two thumbs draped over your bars.....NOT GOOD. If you ever collided with something at full speed- both thumbs will be popped out of their sockets, and busted. Re-position both brake levers, so more of your palms are in contact with the bars. Just turn both brake levers more horizontally, and see more comfort, without putting all the burden on the thumbs.
 
#23 ·
thumb pain sucks !!!!
While I can see you were riding SS and is obviously not your issue, I got it from SRAM shifters. The throw was way too long from my creepy small chick hands. Add too that much more tension vs the XTR shifter click (I needed to press way harder) ... and a couple of 24s.... I had months of pain. Took months to go away too - but swapping back to XTRs solved the problem for me.
New bike - I'm trying grip shifts....
 
#24 ·
singer said:
thumb pain sucks !!!!
While I can see you were riding SS and is obviously not your issue, I got it from SRAM shifters. The throw was way too long from my creepy small chick hands. Add too that much more tension vs the XTR shifter click (I needed to press way harder) ... and a couple of 24s.... I had months of pain. Took months to go away too - but swapping back to XTRs solved the problem for me.
New bike - I'm trying grip shifts....
I'm glad you got your problem fixed! I guess I shouldn't have been so quick to discount shifters as a possible problem for others.

I run SRAM X7shifters and derailleurs on both my DH and XC bikes, and it was my right thumb that was injured. No problems in my situation. SRAM does feature quite a long throw, so I can see how that would be a problem for small hands. I have regular size man-hands and I have to rotate my wrist sometimes to get a full push.
 
#25 ·
bump for this thread. I've been suffering from the same thing on my left hand. It's an older thing, mostly from basketball, but I noticed that after I used the Ergon All-Mountain grips, my thumb felt much worse. Stopped using those guys.

I'll also try the brake lever position.
 
#26 ·
Thread bump...

For the first time ever, I started noticing mild thumb basal joint pain the past few months that appeared to occur no matter which of 3 bikes I rode. After reading through this thread I decided to rotate my brake levers clockwise (maybe 10 degrees or so) and it worked.
 
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