I'm not sure I can be helpful to you, but I do have relevant experience. I've had back pain for most of my life, since at least when I was 15 years old. It was bad enough to get me a nick name in high school because I occasionally walked around bent forward at the hip like a chicken.
Later in life I found that lower-back pain correlated with times when I did not ride my bicycle. As long as I bike a few times a week, back pain is rare and transient. I started riding to work year-round in part because of this, and it's worked out well for this issue. As in, I mostly don't think about it, and haven't had real problems for fifteen or so years. My handlebar is at saddle height, a couple, three inches higher than when I was young. Much higher and I feel awkward, but I do have long arms. The angle of my back is more upright than bent over, maybe 35, 40 degrees off vertical. That is comfortable for many hours. I don't stretch, and I don't do any other regular workouts. There are some exercises I learned to do to help with acute back pain but I rarely need them now. I expect but don't know for sure that walking would more or less have the same effect. People gotta move, is my takeaway. On Friday, January 3, 2025 at 9:44:48 AM UTC-5 Adam wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm curious to hear any comments thoughts, etc on back issues and riding. > > The context is that this fall I've had some nasty lower back/hip pain. > Rest and some stretching & PT has "solved" the issue, but I'm still having > trouble getting back on the bike without a little stiffness in the lower > back. > > I have thought about swapping out my drops for alt bars and have an old > bosco setup ready to go. My issue is that I've tried sweptback bars before > and always end up back on HIGH drops. I really like my current setups and > have ridden many long stretches on these configurations, so I'm not > excited to change what's taken a lot of tweaking to accomplish. > > My current strategy is to raise my current bar height a bit (already above > saddle height) and to do shortish (under 1hr) rides indoors on rollers > being mindful of core muscles, etc. That seems to be working, but I still > have a bit of stiffness post ride. > > I'm curious to hear anyone else's experiences. Not really looking for > advice, but curious to hear what other folks have tried, etc. > > Thanks! > > Adam > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/11a8a700-b8a4-43e0-9b7b-a8eb23e284d9n%40googlegroups.com.
