BMW R1200R R1150R/T F800 K1200R R1100R/T R1250R RnineT Message Board

Hi guys i have had my R1200R for 2 years ,been on 2800 km trip to Motogp Mmelbourne ect.fit new WILBER 30MM shorter shocks ,new Corbin seat ,25mm handlebar risers.Love the bike and found it handles much better in the bends with the shorter shocks .Only one complaint is my hands go numb after riding for 30min or so,not so much the clutch side,i tried grip puppies but did not like them.Filled my handle bars up with sillicon which made it much better but ,it is still an issue any ideas out there?

I filled my bars with sand, helped a little in the type of vibe. I find that some days are worse than others. I some times get numb hands on my ride to work(9 miles), and may never feel any numbness during a 400 mile day. Just make sure you have a good tune on your engine, as in valve adjustment and throttle body synch, it does make a difference.

The numbness is usually caused by pressure on the median nerve. Lots of things can affect this. Things like padded gloves (bicycle gloves can be good) and soft grips are fairly obvious things to try. The bar angle is less obvious but i have found that rotating the bars so the pressure isn't concentrated on the heel of your hand. You can also try altering your riding posture so that your weight is more supported by your feet and back than your hands.

zackvis wrote:...Only one complaint is my hands go numb after riding for 30min or so,not so much the clutch side...

That would suggest to me that the rigorous squeezing motion you do with your clutch hand is an exercise you might want to try doing with either hand while on the bike. It's easy with the left as you can take that off the handle bars any time. With the right, assuming you're doing lots of out of town riding in Australia, maybe an o-ring (search for Caterpillar on this forum) on the throttle as cruise control would help. That would allow you to take off the right hand also.
And yes, I think this is related to weight on the hands, not vibration. I get the worst numbness on my vibration-less mountain bike.

You may want to try some bar backs/risers. Others in the forum, myself included, have found relief this way, by unweighting wrists and hands..

Bruce

Your grip might be too tight and/or your gloves might be too small.

This could be 'Carpal tunnel syndrome' caused by pressure on the nerve as it passes through carpal tunnel at the wrist. Not an unusual condition as we get older. Had mine treated a couple of years back and no trouble since.

2wheels wrote:This could be 'Carpal tunnel syndrome' caused by pressure on the nerve as it passes through carpal tunnel at the wrist. Not an unusual condition as we get older. Had mine treated a couple of years back and no trouble since.

What was the treatment? not surgery? Thanks, Hank.

In my case, minor day case surgery. In and out in a couple of hours. Involves a small incision at base of thumb and a certain amount of fiddling about! Done under local and not traumatic atall(subjective).

Post op no driving for 2 weeks as I recall. Riding a bit longer so something for the winter months. A shorter term remedy is hydrocortisone injection.

Hope this helps...

Reading the various experiences shared above, it looks like numb hands can be caused by several factors i.e. too tight gloves, squeezing the handle bar too tight while riding, bar handles being too low hence requiring bar risers, etc.

I had the same numb hands whenever riding inter city of a few hours. Since I've made sure that it wasn't my gloves being too tight nor me gripping my handle bars too tightly nor tensing up my body unnecessarily, I tried on a pair of Beemer Buddies aka Grip buddies last week.

From my own experience I really can feel the difference although the much enlarged grip takes some getting used to.

Just sharing my own experience.