Saddle pain when cycling
I suffer terribly from sitting pain, especially when cycling. It goes reasonably well until about 15 kilometers, but after that it is completely wrong. I already have a tempur saddle pad on my saddle, but nothing helps. I can’t sit on a chair for long periods of time. My sit bones in particular hurt.
Mrs Meurs
Joris Bartstra, journalist with medical diploma
I’m afraid you can’t say much about that other than what you can think of yourself. Everyone’s anatomy is different and so is the susceptibility to getting pain on pressure points.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of problems with long sitting on a bicycle saddle; the ’round’ saddles that support your buttocks will mainly absorb the weight on the glutes and the sit bones. The narrow racing saddles fall, as it were, between the sit bones, so that the leg and buttock muscles are less stressed; they can ‘way’ to the side. But the downside to this is that blood vessels and nerves can be imprinted on the inside of the sit bones. Especially in men can cause tingling in the genitals and can pose a risk to potency. In women you also hear that labia become irritated to the point of bleeding. Pain in the buttocks and complaints of the urinary tract and genitals are therefore actually the two sides of the not so beautiful coin.
Since you mainly suffer from the sit bones, the solution – if at all possible – would lie in a somewhat narrower saddle. I think you will only find the best solution by trying different saddles. If you really want to cycle long distances and are unable to use the available saddles, a recumbent bike could be the solution.
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