Shoulder and trapezius tension on the bike
Your trapezius muscles load up on the bike when you ride with your shoulders hunched to hold a torso that is putting too much weight on the hands. The usual causes are a saddle set too far forward or bars set too low. It is fixed by redistributing that weight and by matching bar width to your shoulders. Telling yourself to relax your shoulders works for about thirty seconds.
- How common
- CommonUsually arrives with neck pain
- Usually solved in
- 1 sessionWith follow-up afterwards
- What we measure
- Shoulder widthBiacromial, to set bar width
- Service
- €180Full bike fit
The area on the diagram
Which part of the fit this complaint belongs to
Every point links to its own complaint
Where it is decided
- Usual cause
- Too much weight on the hands, held up by the traps.
- What we adjust
- Saddle setback and angle, bar height and bar width.
- Related measurements
- reachelbow angle
Hunching your shoulders is a response, not a bad habit
Nobody decides to ride with their shoulders up around their ears. It is what the body does automatically when the load on the arms is greater than the position should be asking for: the traps step in to hold what the core and the legs ought to be holding.
That is why “relax your shoulders” never lasts more than thirty seconds. While the load is still there, the body will hunch again.
It also explains why the ache turns up the next day rather than during the ride. Holding a load without moving for four hours feels like very little at the time, and like a gym session you never did by the following morning.
And it rarely travels alone. Shoulders, neck and hands share one root cause, which is weight the position is putting somewhere it should not be. Fixing one of the three usually improves the other two.
Bar width, the most overlooked adjustment
Bars wider than your shoulders splay the arms, rotate the upper arms outwards and put the whole shoulder girdle under tension. Bars that are too narrow close the chest and get in the way of your breathing.
We measure your biacromial width and set the bars to that, rather than to whatever the bike came with.
Width is not the only thing that has moved in recent years. Flared bars, shallower drops and integrated cockpits all change where your hands sit relative to your shoulders, and a cockpit chosen off the shelf is a cockpit sized for somebody else.
- Saddle setback, to return weight to the back of the bike.
- Saddle angle, because a nose-down saddle pushes you into the bars constantly.
- Bar height and the angle of the stem.
- Bar rotation and lever height, so the support falls on the heel of the hand.
None of these are large moves. Most of what we change on this complaint fits inside a couple of centimetres, spread across three or four components rather than dumped on any one of them.
When to see a healthcare professional
If the shoulder hurts when you lift your arm off the bike, if there is impingement, or if it limits everyday movement, that is a shoulder problem rather than a position problem. Get it looked at first.
The same goes for anything that also bothers you in bed or when you reach behind you. Have it looked at, and bring the diagnosis with you to the fit.
Questions about this complaint
Could it be the weight of my hydration pack?
I ride very tense on descents. Does that count?
Can I just raise the bars and be done with it?
Only one side hurts. Does that mean anything?
Does this sound like your case?
Tell us when the pain shows up and on what kind of ride. We will tell you whether a fit solves it before you book anything.