I’ve found that getting your saddle sufficiently behind the bottom bracket, so that there’s a minimally sufficient bend between hips and torso, takes strain off the shoulders + arms + hands, is more comfortable for the neck, and perhaps takes pressure off the lower back too. The odd thing is that this seems to help relax the neck as well as shoulders, etc. This despite the fact that my bars are, for my road bikes, 3-4 cm below saddle nose, and on the dirt road bike, ~1 cm below ditto.
I haven’t worked out the mechanics of why this is so, but empirical evidence proves it sufficiently for my own case. But bar above or below saddle: I think that the principle works in either case. On Mon, Jun 1, 2026 at 6:39 PM stephen cowdrey <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey bunchers > I find that the most upright with no pressure on hands puts a lot of > strain on the lower back… what’s the balance because I also suffer with bad > neck pain. > > Stephen Cowdrey > Tallahassee Fl. > -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgsrQiTtQ%2BOJabHkz18OHxMkoTD57HetgD4jJaBvuT9nZg%40mail.gmail.com.
