LOWER BACK PAIN

Back pain is a common consequence of having too much drop between your saddle and your handlebars. A good start would be to see an LBS about getting a bike fit done. Of course the pain could be from a different cause, but getting a fit done is a good first step.

I cant get bike fits around here.

Are there no bike shops around you? It would be worth traveling a couple of hours to get a fit done. In the interim, you might google "bike fit" as there are quite a few sites that describe various bike fit "theories" and techniques. You might also start by raising your handlebars.

Sam123 said:

When riding i have lower back pain. It may be my coccyx but once the pain comes it goes into the lower back one side then it would hurt whole of my lower back feels like a burning feel, inflammation. My seat is the correct height and its tilted up and still i got pain even when it was level. Back pain runs in the family but i get this pain when riding and im 16 and it needs to be sorted. No where around here, i cant get a proper fit. After a while my neck feels ached and my hands feel so uncomfortably.

This is my saddle http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_7TMKKRIsL48/SouR91_HRmI/AAAAAAAAAFY/Im6KeKsGY3o/s400/san+marco+ponza.jpg

Great. A picture of a saddle. Now, how do you think we're gonna fix your back pain woes by looking at a saddle?

See if you can get someone to take a picture of you on the bike and post that.

I had the same problem. I can't really say what fixed it, but it was probably a combination of :

1. I was originally spending ALL my time on the drops..., which was wayy too much. Spend more time on the hoods or tops.

2. I got a 90mm stem (original was 110mm) doesn’t seem to be much but it helped.

3. My father is currently letting me try his Wright's leather saddle for a few weeks. Much, much better than the stock saddle. (san marco ponza)

4. If it's a new bike, it will take awhile to get used to. For me, with all the other changes mentioned above it was around 600mi / 966km.

5. I leveled out the seat. However, you already did that.

6. Lastly, the seat could be too high, to the point where you have to tilt side to side to reach the pedals.

It's good to see some other teens out on road bikes...there's only two that I know of in my small city. 🙁 Good luck!

What sort of riding are you doing Sam?
Long easy rides? hill reps? hard sessions with sprints?
Do you always ride as hard as you can?
How many months or years have you been riding or training?
Have you just come back from some time out?

A little bit of history may reveal the problem.

Quick and dirty - level and lower saddle.

Cycling for any length of time must involve some "endurance" - and that means enduring some discomfort due to being in the same position doing the same repetitve movement for relatively long periods of time. Your body parts (especially your mind) will build up endurance to the initial discomfort.

That said, cycling really shouldn't be painful, unless you're racing or doing some intense training. And never painful to the extent that you're sustaining injuries.

Do some research online as suggested concerning bike fit and you should be able to sort yourself out fairly well and fairly quickly...

Yonni said:

What sort of riding are you doing Sam?
Long easy rides? hill reps? hard sessions with sprints?
Do you always ride as hard as you can?
How many months or years have you been riding or training?
Have you just come back from some time out?

A little bit of history may reveal the problem.

What sort of riding are you doing Sam? Road Cycling and 1 hour track racing on tuesday nights

Long easy rides? hill reps? hard sessions with sprints? long, few hills, 70% hard some sprints.

Do you always ride as hard as you can? Yes
How many months or years have you been riding or training? 2, but about 10 months with my new road bike.

Have you just come back from some time out? No
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I've had people look at me on the bike and they say i look right on it.

Sam123 said:

I've had people look at me on the bike and they say i look right on it.

But Sam, it must be pointed out that if those people were correct and you actually were "right on it" with regard to your bike fit, you wouldn't be complaining now of the pains you're experiencing - right?

Lower your saddle and raise your bars. Ride that way for awhile and get back to us...

Do you do any stretches before you ride? That was another thing that helped me out...

Sam123 said:

Do you always ride as hard as you can? Yes

That could be a bit of an issue - every ride is not meant to put strain on your system, some should be almost too easy e.g. recovery rides and long distance should not be hard rides. This is especially true if you have pain. When I had been riding about as long as you have I was in the habit of making sure that by the end of each ride I was worn out. I got a lot of lower back and hip pain from crunching big gears and spending a long time on the drops with a poor bike fit. I ended up taking months out, setting up the bike properly and learning how to construct a well balanced training program.

It's not track specific but Joe Friel's The Cyclist Training Bible is a well respected starting point.

I got lower back pain on a 34 km back country ride last week real bad so I this week I tried lifting my butt out of the seat and or changing postion on seat at regular intervals and especially on stretches of coarse seal and this time I had no problems.

Derek
2008 Giant CRX4
2010 Giant Defy 1

tonyzackery said:

But Sam, it must be pointed out that if those people were correct and you actually were "right on it" with regard to your bike fit, you wouldn't be complaining now of the pains you're experiencing - right?

Lower your saddle and raise your bars. Ride that way for awhile and get back to us...

How can i raise my handlebars? Without the Stem?

Sam123 said:

How can i raise my handlebars? Without the Stem?

It depends:

• If there's room (i.e., the fork steerer protrudes enough above the stem, it can be raised with spacers underneath the stem (assuming you have a threadless headset).
• It's possible that you could also flip the stem over so that it points more in the up direction. Of course, this requires that before the flipping, it was pointing not so more upper.
• You can try a different stem with more rise. Any decent LBS will let you try a few stems to get the right handlebar position. They may have spares that they can loan for test purposes.

Of course if you're bike has a threaded steerer, there's one easy way to raise the handlebars: loosen the bolt in the back top of the stem and raise the stem, being sure not to exceed the minimum insertion mark.

A picture of your bike would help greatly.

I will try get a picture of me on the bike tomorrow on the turbo will you sorta be able to see im on the bike correctly?

Sam123 said:

I will try get a picture of me on the bike tomorrow on the turbo will you sorta be able to see im on the bike correctly?

It'll give a broad idea of what adjustments you have available and if something is grossly out of whack.

Agree with yonni that you likely need to back off the intensity. Riding every ride "as hard as you can" certainly can lead to all kinds of problems for novice cyclists. Even pro's rarely go as hard as they can, because that kind of effort requires serious recovery time.

Recommend you start a daily stretch routine for the lower back, legs and hamstrings, as well as some core exercise (abs and lower back). Without some degree of flexibility and core strength, it's hard to be comfortable on a traditional road bike.

Until your back is better, suggest you limit the rides to spinning in an easy gear. You can still get a great workout using higher cadence, just avoid the big ring and steep climbs and give you back time to heal and get stronger.

Sorry alienator I have problems trying to get the pictures onto the computer from the phone, cant find the wire so will have to do it another way.