Stop Back Pain When Cycling With Expert Bike Fit Tips

Back pain is one of the most common causes of discomfort when cycling. 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 expert's expert, Phil Burt, formerly the physio to British Cycling and Team Sky. He's now applying all that knowledge and experience into bike fit and ergonomics. Firstly, let's cover some basic essentials. 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. That's only important to work out in that you could be blaming cycling and all your position equipment. Actually, it's nothing to do with that. 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. Then you can maybe go and see a physio, doctor, get that worked out. If the back pain is coming from the cycling position, it's normally something to do with your position or the equipment that you're using, if you ask me. The one thing about cycling is it has, as I always say, no eccentric forces. It's a lot less dangerous than, for example, running. There's not much shock going for your back, but there is a positional loading. Your lumbar spine is generally in flexion for a long period of time. 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'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. There's a postural endurance issue there. Basically, I think if you have back pain, my rule is if you have back pain for four or two hours, I think there's something not right, you or the bike. I think you should be able to cycle for two hours relatively, enjoying it and not uncomfortable. You might be a bit stiff when you get off it, but that stiffness should go away very quickly. If I'm like you, if I ride for four or five hours, I fully expect to be a bit stiff and sore. 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 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. 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. 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 the vid. How do we alleviate back pain then? Well, in Phil's experience, most issues arise from muscular pain in the lumbar spine. That's your lower back here. In the simplest terms, it's as a result of bending it for long periods of time. The first port 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. 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. 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 blue and uncomfortable. 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, and specifically lower back pain, is stretching too far forwards and too far down, potentially both at the same time. Now, at this point, we've got to say that on many top-end new bikes, you might find that adjustment at the front end is anything from hard to impossible. That in and 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 your optimal cycling position on whatever you're buying. On this Canyon Aeroad, I have got some fine tuning I can do to the bar height and also the bar width, but to demonstrate more dramatic changes, I'm going to swap to a static bike. Firstly, if you are suffering from lower back pain when cycling, try moving your stem up, not just a little bit, but quite a sizable amount, like maybe four centimeters 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. You take the handlebars off and 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. 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 end. Some are taller than others, although, of course, that would necessitate a new bike, or at the very least, a new frame. There is one other option, which is significantly less expensive. We'll get onto 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. The size of them can vary dramatically between models, both in terms of the reach, so the distance between this bit here and your controls, and also the drop as well. Now, what you're looking for is compact handlebars. 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. Wider handlebars effectively increase your reach to them, making your lower back bend more. Phil also said that if your handlebars are too wide, having your hands splayed apart can put pressure on your upper back, causing that to hurt after long periods of time in the saddle. 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. One of the most beautiful things in any bike fit is to realize that someone's on too narrow a saddle because it's the easiest thing in the world to sort out. Saddle width is important. What I 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 out because they're just doing so much movement at the sitting point on the bike. 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 will correlate to you not being on the right width support saddle, so the right width. That's really easy to understand. If you haven't got the right width, if your pelvis is not being supported by the saddle, then the lower back is going to get out of pain. That's quite an easy one to check. The general rule is women have wider hips than men, so they tend to like wider saddles, but there's more variation within gender. It's an easy thing to check. There's some nice online methods of doing it with cardboard and tinfoil. We have a fancy digital thing here, but it's worth checking out. A brand with a big range of saddles like Sellitalia, who we work with, will typically have different width options. There's a 130 on my bike currently, and I choose to run a 145. I'm going to swap that over now. What else? I need to start a crank length company, but I cannot tell you how many people I've seen whose back pain has been directly related to running two longer cranks, but here's the good news with this. I think we should look at the crank levels are more positive. It's because they're trying to do some amazing things on the bike, have a 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 here, your hip flexes come off here and here, so the bottom free lumbar vertebrae come through to there. If you're closing up your hip too much, that's what, when you get off the bike and you feel like, oh, for 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 they're a bit jammed up. I think manipulating crank length, 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, drop your crank length because instead of opening you up from the front, let's open you up from underneath. What does that look like in reality then? Potentially, dropping five millimeters 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 five mil off your cranks, put your seat up by five mil. That will reduce that hip angle and still give you the optimal pedaling position for power output. Final point on 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 because you won't then know what has actually solved your back pain. Plus, it'd be really expensive if you suddenly started swapping out all that equipment. 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. Have a plan and stick to it. Begin with saddle position, then look at bar position, then other factors like saddle width, crank length, et cetera, et cetera. One last word from me now, there is also a training effect here as well. Phil's words, muscular endurance and lack of adaptation. 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 riding, something that most of us completely ignore until it's too late and something happens. 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. 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? If so, what was it that you changed that helped that problem out? Get involved in the comment section down below. Also, give this video a big thumbs up if you have appreciated Phil's time and knowledge.