tension in sholders?

[alci4]

ok so i am mostly talking to the road bike riders here as i don't get it on the mountain bike

does anyone get tension in their shoulders when they are riding a while I.E. 20+ miles

I am wondering if i am riding in the wrong stance i tend to have my arms straight and i tend to lean and tense up.

just wondering if i should be putting any weight on the bars at all or just holding them.

i find that if i bend my arms while cycling my shoulders automatically untense.

sorry if this does not make much sense

 

[albion]

Happens to me occasionally.

But what I do recall, is that when I moved my seat forwards a lot of weight went off my arms making for much less tension.

 

[cyberknight]

Assuming your saddle height / set back is right its liable to be that your stem is too long or too low, i used to get similar after 40 miles or so untill i went for a 10mm shorter stem .

Check these out .

http://www.bikefit.com/s-13-road-bikes.aspx
http://bikedynamics.co.uk/achesandpains.htm[/QUOTE]

 

[albion]

I normally ride a road bike converted to flat bar c/w a granny gear system.
My stem/reach seems low which I like with it becoming overall, comfortable.

I often do very long rides and before the seat move I did have the feeling of my arms being 'very straight'. So straight that I would often adjust my hands/wrists to add arm length. I still do that , just very rarely now that I have a naturally lower weight on the bars..

 

[migrantwing]

As @cyberknight mentions, it may be your reach. It's amazing what as little as a few millimetres difference can do.

I had a very good deal on my bike, which I got at the beginning of 2012. It was the previous years model so there was a good 25% off the RRP and paid around £800 instead of £1200+. In hindsight, I always wondered if I should have gone for the next frame size down (54cm as opposed to 56cm) which I believe would have been better for me...but this would have meant that the headtube and steerer tube would have been shorter, meaning that I wouldn't have much room for tweaking my position on the bike regards comfort. This made me realise that I did indeed get the right size frame, I just fixed my problem by fitting a shorter stem (from 100mm to 90mm) and then my neck and shoulder pain eased up a lot. I still get it occasionally, but that's because I've slammed my stem. If I had gone for the next frame size up (58cm) it would have been too big and any standover height at all, even with a sloping top tube, would have been non existent. The basics of buying a bike is that you buy a frame that suits you, then tweak it with stems, bars, adding spacers, taking away spacers until it feels right. You could call it a custom fit in theory.