Annoying Hand Issues

I used to get this where my hand was rubbing on the outer lock ring. Switching to push on grips and grips with just the inner lock ring resolved the issue for me.

So like, between your finger and the grip is there your gloves bunch? It seems most riders prefer a thin grip, but I’ve found a thicker grip to be beneficial. Might help if that’s your issue. odi rogues have been good for me. 

2 things. So I used to use lock ons and tried slips on and I cant get back. Theyre muuuch better. I prefer the Renthal Kevlars personally. 

The other thing is backsweep and upsweep can make a huge difference. Renthal is one of the few companies with a 7° backsweep and if I go to 8° or more I get severe wrist pain and pain in my pink knuckle region. I just have hands that want to be pointing straight on. 

May need to try different setups. 

Looking at my hands, I have some large callouses in those areas.  So part of it may just be more time on the bike.  

That said I am very picket about gloves.  They have to almost be too small so they don’t bunch up at all.  This leads to them blowing out at the finger tips quicker than they should but that’s the trade off.  I use gloves that don’t have any padding in them as that tends to bunch and cause rubbing. 

Also I like larger grips.  It means I have to close my fist less, which makes the skin in those pressure point areas bunch up less as well.  

If you can, try doing a ride without gloves.  That will quickly resolve if it’s a glove issue or something else.

Thinnest gloves possible that are preformed to the curve of your hand.  I've had good luck with Fox Flexairs (the ones with perforated palm - they also make ones without holes that use a thicker material), Leatt 1.0s, & Outdoor Research Freewheel.  That and just ride a lot to build up calluses.

see if you can have some smartie or fast person watch you ride. I’ll bet the culprit is your suspension. 

Is your bike too big? Weird stem? Bars too far out there? Mess around with your bars and your body position, there may be something there…cool thing about that stuff is you can always go back  

Concentrate on heavy feet, light hands. 

And / or lay off the brakes! 

I’ve been lucky to have ridden with good riders who can hear my gripe and suggest “more air in your fork” or whatever. Suspension can be counterintuitive, and nothing’s more important. 

They are kind of expensive.  But handup pro performance gloves have a very tight fit on my hands and tend to last a pretty long time.

Blisters turn to callouses and then you won’t feel it anymore. Just keep riding.

You might be gripping the bar too hard, Should be loose and relaxed, fluid like playing a piano

100% Celium are great too

If you're running into blistering that part of your palm, give us some real info here.  What grips are you running? Got a pic?
Show us a side angle shot of your bike with how your bars are rolled forward, back & a separate pic of the grips. 
Only thing that really causes bunching is glove fit & a grip that is too big for your hands.  What size hands/gloves do you wear?

I can run a half dozen different gloves (and do) but only time they bunch in my palm is if it's raining or I have my winter gloves on. 
If you've ever seen an MX Outdoors racer peel off their gloves after a podium, that's how they should fit.

Only other thing that would cause you to have blisters & bunching there is if you're really far back on the bike & having to reach too far forward w/ grip at the base of your fingers. Gotta let the grip sit in the "GI Joe Kung Fu" grip location neutral in your palm. With fingers curled but grip relaxed, you should be able to let the bar "float" in your palm & not really grab the bars at all. They can almost bounce around in your slightly rested grip.

All good tips so far, and I agree that playing with different diameters of grips might help with the bunching problem you have.

You also mentioned that you're experiencing pain "on the pinky area of my palm, on the part that is opposite of my knuckle. It starts to blister which sucks, so far it hasn't gotten bad enough to stop me from riding but on a really long day I think it would..." which I take to mean pain on your hand in this location (please let me know if I'm wrong):

Any sort of "hotspot" pain in your hands, feet, butt on the saddle, etc is typically a result of unequal pressure. Think of a bed of nails vs. a single nail- a bed of nails distributes pressure in a way that the human body can tolerate, whereas a single nail localizes pressure in a way that the body can't.

If you have disproportionate pain on just the outside of your hand, I would bet dollars to donuts that your hand position is not well-matched to your handlebar sweep, and as a result your bar position is creating unequal pressure on the outside of your palms (the pinky side). I would recommend playing with bar roll to see if you can find a position where the upsweep and backsweep of the bars matches your hand and palm position better, with more evenly distributed contact and forces across your whole palm and hand.

The good news is... this solution is free! All you have to do is loosen your stem face plate bolts, rotate your bars a little forward or back, then ride around the block and see how it feels. Better? Worse? Keep doing that until it feels good. This has worked wonders for me and for others, and I've ended up running my bars rolled pretty far forward, aka "The Goldstone" setup. Has been a game changer for me in reducing hand pain, even if it looks a little weird. Others have had life-changing effects from doing the opposite and rolling their bars back, some riders even moving to handlebars with extreme amounts of backsweep (12 degrees or more). I can't say which will work for you, so you'll have to try it yourself to find out. I'm a big fan of exhausting the free solutions before trying to buy my way out of a problem.

One last note: you'll want to rotate your brake lever position to match your new handlebar roll. You'd be surprised how much it can throw off your hand and wrist position and your brake lever feel to rotate your bar just a few degrees in the stem clamp.

After years of dealing with hand pain, carpel tunnel and forearm fatigue the ultimate solution was an office job. I had previously worked as an arborist and a carpenter. The constant vibration and hand clenching/squeezing followed by riding never gave enough recovery time. I tried lots of things, ultimately it was an over use issue, poor internal structure (lots of tight tendons, muscle in a small area). I stretched, iced, iboprofein, acupuncture, taped, everything but enough rest. 
The push button of electric shifting helped as cable throw on a mechanical shifter engages your thumb quite a bit. 
I am really picky about gloves. Really thin tight leather palms. And find a good grip. Everybody will say what they ride is the best, and that’s true for them. I’ve found the odi elite pro very good. 
If you are getting hit spots it can be an over gripping issue. 
All above mentioned things help, it takes time to nail down. 
Stretch and do push ups. 

I found I had to size down on gloves to avoid them bunching up like you mention. This might just be a hand anatomy thing, but I use fairly thin gloves and size down until I find a size where it's not an issue. You don't want them so tight they are putting pressure or compressing your hand, but if they are bunching up I'd argue you are probably on gloves too large. You can also try to put them in the dryer to shrink them somewhat, I do this every so often just to wash them and bring them back to normal form. They will stretch a little over time. 

I eventually developed a few callouses on the outside of my hands, but the above is right that if it's excessive pressure then it can be caused by handlebar sweep. You can try a lower sweep bar or rotate them forward as discussed. 

More powerful brakes will also help you reduce and lighten your grip on the bars. If you find you have to clench the bars to apply enough power then moving to something more powerful will help a lot.

If the pain is significant enough and causes you grip issues, causes tingling, crushing pain, etc then you may have a nerve problem. If it lasts off the bike then that's especially likely to be the case, outer fingers being ulnar nerve. Mine stemmed from compression in my elbow ultimately requiring surgery to reduce to the point I can ride again but it is never truly gone, not for me anyway. It can also be due to compression, either from bike fit, injury, or overuse. Things like bar sweep, brake lever angle, lever reach, etc will all play a role in how your hands engage with the bar while riding.

If you have not- go get fit to the bike.  It does not to be an expensive fit- just a basic make sure you are close fit.  After that, knowing that your fit is close- you can play with other things to make it even better.  Grips, bars, psi and suspension are best tinkered with after having a solid base to work from instead of throwing cash and time at it.  

Also get some Captains of Crush grippers and never let them out of your sight. (Actually wait a couple days in between grip sessions bro)

Strength and stretching are both really important for bike handling and long-term durability as a rider. Duh. But sometimes trying to just be more tough isn't the best answer.

I think a great test for whether it's a strength problem or an ergonomic problem has been "does it hurt all over, or does it hurt in one very specific place?"

If it hurts all over, it probably means I'm too weak, and the pain I'm feeling is just part of the process of getting tougher, i.e. callouses, grip strength, sinew and soft tissue getting more resilient, etc. Lord knows I had to pay my dues on this front when I was younger, and I have to stay on top of it year to year. I remember having the most mind-bending claw hand at the bottom of Whistler Bike Park as a kid, in part because I was riding on a hardtail. Where did it hurt on my hand? Literally everywhere. The OP listed two sorts of pain, and I suspect the pain that was spread evenly across the pads of all four fingers in his palm is one of these types of "everywhere" pain (although maybe sorted out gloves and grips will solve the problem).

But if I have a pain that hurts in one very specific spot, especially if it hurts there over and over again on multiple different rides, and gets worse and worse and worse the longer the ride is, that's a good indication that it could very well be an ergonomic problem instead of a strength problem. It could mean I need to make bike fit or body position adjustments, or tweak my bar roll, saddle position, etc.

The one caveat is that general weakness on one side of a bodily structure (like a knee, hip, neck, etc) can produce very pointed pain and hot spots on the other side of the structure. For instance, I had this crazy back pain one time in a very specific vertebrae joint during a casual bike path ride with my lady friend, and the cause was actually a weak core causing bad form and muscle imbalance.

When buying gloves buy something that feels a bit too tight when you try them on in the shop as they stretch out to fit your hand and not bunch up. 

I used to struggle with hand pain for a long time; over my many attempts to find a solution for my problems, I believe I've arrived at a pretty good setup. For one, I don't wear gloves anymore. I can't say I've had my gloves bunch up, but I did find that I gripped harder when I wore them, which contributed to my hand fatigue. Going gloveless meant I had to find a nice pair of grips that didn't get too slippery when my hands started to sweat. As opposed to thick grips, I found that thin mushroom-style grips like the ODI Longneck tend to work the best. I'd also avoid the diamond pattern if you're not wearing any gloves.

An overly high tire pressure could contribute to hand fatigue. FWIW, I find Loic Bruni's tire pressures (23 PSI F, 27.5 PSI R) to work pretty well, even without tire inserts. Tire pressures are super personal, but you could try scaling those numbers to your body weight to see if you like them.

Running powerful brakes with a light free stroke is the second most important thing when alleviating hand fatigue, since you don't have to pull your levers as hard or as frequently. It also helps to run your lever reach closer to your bars. What's not talked about as often is brake angle - I found it super helpful to run my brakes closer to parallel with the ground, angled just slightly downwards. When my brakes were angled too far down, I found myself way over the front of the bike, which put a ton of force through my hands. However, after making this change, I felt I had to roll my bars forward to prevent my elbows from angling too far down.

Most importantly, I found it crucial to soften up your suspension. I used to get blisters on my hand in the same spot you do, but that stopped once I started running lower air pressures in my fork and shock. This does mean you won't have as much support on bigger hits or steep sections, but you can offset the suspension diving in the latter situation with more damping and higher bars. Higher bars also means less force through your hands, which further helps to alleviate fatigue. 

TL;DR: Tips to alleviate hand pain (in my opinion)

• Go gloveless
• Thin mushroom grips
• Tire pressures (try 23F, 27.5R - YMMV)
• Brake angle - more parallel to ground (may necessitate rolling your bars forward)
• Powerful brakes w/ light free stroke
• Softer suspension (add damping if you're blowing thru travel)
• Higher bars 

Good luck! If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them. 

I found that smaller diameter grips work better in almost every way - although thicker grips are cushier, I find myself gripping on them harder because they feel vague; moreover, I can hold on more securely and relaxedly on thinner grips since I can wrap more of my hand around the bar. That said, grips are pretty cheap so you can easily try out both thick and thin to see which one you like better. You might also consider push-on grips - super thin but softer and absorbs more vibration than even the thickest lock-ons.

As for adjusting cockpit, one thing to look out for is your elbows. IMO, you don't want your elbows to collapse into the bike; you want them to be pointing outward so you're in a strong position to resist forces in big compressions / move the bike underneath you. You can achieve this body position by either rolling your bars forward or angling you brakes down. I prefer the former, along with a flatter brake angle.

Since you're a newer rider, I think the most important thing is to not overthink and get lost in the sauce, which can kinda take the enjoyment out of the sport if you do it too much. After a certain point, you should just go out and have fun on your bike! 😁

A pic might also help. Echoing everything other old-head calloused-handed members have said. For me it’s softer grips, bars not crazy wide, toughened up hands, gloves that fit well/sturdier.

Lots of really good advice in here. 

I just want to chime in with some notes on mentality with this sort of issue. I don’t and have never earnt money with my hands, which over time makes you weak and flabby. When you take that weak and flabby body and subject it to a new very physical hobby, especially one that you want to do loads cause it’s awesome like mtb that’s going to require adaptation and it’s just not realistic to expect that to be without issue. You can do things to help that process along like work in the gym, healthy habits like good sleep and good food but to a certain degree it just needs time and persistence.

So all I’d warn against is the mentality that this is like a bug or something that x grip will solve or your bike fit is just wrong and you need to buy a new frame etc etc. The body is pretty adaptable it just needs time. Where you’ll end up is likely in a years time you will have made a couple of setup changes and gotten stronger and you’ll realise oh I don’t have that issue any more. And it might flare up when you pack on volume or come back after a break. And then you’ll have a new niggle that you’ll have to rehab separately and likely will always be working through a few minor issues and occasionally a major one. Such is life!

Lowering your bars will put more force through your hands, especially in steep sections. I would also suggest you to only change one variable at a time; this way you can know which change actually had what effect. 

What works for me:

Thin gloves with absolutely zero seams in the grip and they should be challenging to get on (tight)

I like the diety cush grips. Experiment with the fatter ones these reduce contact pressure.

Set bar roll by loosening the stem bolts and pulling back on the bars when in attack position so the back sweep is towards your forearms.  Also raise your stack height more than you need to.

Get good front suspension and set it up so you can run 15-20% fork sag and not bottom too often.  Too much air pressure will beat you up.  I drop a Mrp lift damper into grip or grip 2 fox forks and can run them with less air much more comfortably.

Get strong brakes for any category bike.

This has been true for me. And every old dude I know. 

this dude’s getting BLISTERS though…that seems rare.