Hi @Abhijit_Rao, I apologies, for I may have misspoken. Could you quote the bit that I wrote that
?
I generally use a forward tilted saddle and can’t tolerate NOT having my saddle tilted forward, if I’ll be riding in even a semi-aggressive / aero position.
I meant this one above…I guess you meant you are in an aero position…I thought you meant your bad saddle was also forward tilted…
Oh! Yes, sorry. I meant to say:
Mine only returns if I really abuse my pudendal nerve region by allowing my body to be in a very forward-tilted position (aero) while using a saddle that doesn’t agree with me.
As far as I can tell, having a steeply forward-tilted saddle has been helpful because it raises the rear of the saddle to cause greater surface area contact with my glutes.
Hi all,
Anyone on here try a Manta saddle? Can’t seem to work out whether it is a beneficial saddle like the infinity or just a gimmick for PN?
Thank you to all who have contributed to this post.
After over 12 months of having constant lower abdominal pain, burning/tingling sensation in the penis, pain in the rectal area, pain in the scrotum, I am now on my way to recovery, all thanks to this post!
I have visited Doctors, specialists, Urologist, all of whom were unable to give me a diagnosis.
I have spent the last 3 years on the exercise bike, 6 days per week, 1 hour at a time, which has seemingly resulted in me damaging the pudendal nerve.
I never made the connection between exercising on my bike and my condition until I came across this post. Thank you all.
I have now discontinued using my bike completely and have replaced the exercise with running. I am so pleased to say, my symptoms have vastly improved within 3 weeks. I have a way to go to full recovery, but i am getting there.
Good luck to everyone who has and is recovering from this unpleasant condition.
Best wishes all,
Reece.
I’ve been meaning to post an update here for a while.
After 2 long years of suffering with this, including taking 6 months off the bike entirely, I have finally fixed it all. Looking back it was 2 parallel issues: Firstly massive work stress caused some kind of spasm in my pelvic floor muscles which took months and an infinite ton of stretching and relaxation and time to dissipate. Secondly having old, cheap crap saddles with no cutout that compressed on my perineum caused a lot of pain and radiating discomfort. This took the purchase of a decent seat with a big cutout and many many months to allow the nerves to calm down before i could get back to riding again.
After all of this though I was still left with constant background pain. This was about 5 or 6 out of 10 on my wimp scale (I kept a spreadsheet for over a year and noted anything that might have helped or hindered and rarely saw any pattern). I then read a book on Neuroplastic pain : How the Brain Causes Chronic Pain & How to Stop It
and seriously the pain stopped super quick and went to 1 or zero on my scale and i stopped using the spreadsheet altogether and haven’t given it a thought for months now.
So, if you have done everything you can think of doing and you’re still stuck in the endless pain of this pudendal problem then take a look at this and hopefully it might help you out.
@RCC, it’s great to hear you have recovered from this! What technique in PRT helped the most? And the stretches you mention, are they the ones recommended by Aidplan?
I got the book (The Way Out) as an Audible and just lay on my office floor listening to it and pretty much the pain evaporated over a couple of days.
The stretches were a generic load of stretches from many sources. Nothing magic just stretches and relaxation.
Hey guys,
Any updates on this ?
Been having these weird symptoms for 2 months in the nether regions as well, mine are more focused on the perineum and anus (oh joy) when I sit down for too long, the glute and sitbone tend to get messed up too and feel tense and/or sore. Feels like the anrea is inflamed or something, symtoms slowly go away when walking or laying down and are not present or minimal when waking up.
Developed sciatica like symptoms as well but this seems to have resolved after 2 weeks, been seeing different docs and specialist including a proctologist but still no clear diagnosis and I suspect it might be related to the pudendal nerve.
Found a good PT that is working on the pelvic muscles as they seem abit tense and this can create several problems with the nerves in funland down there, symtoms seem to be getting worse however and it sucks to not know what is going on.
That’s great news !
I am reading the book you mentioned and wonder how you can rule out a problem with the pudendal nerve as there is no clear diagnosis to be 100 % sure ?
stop riding , read all the threads above 3 times over
good luck
this can be a life ruiner
Thanks and off course I allready did read through the entire forum, the only one that does nt seem to be filled with doom and gloom besides the TMS ones, I think mine might be largely psychological but who knows right.
How are you doing now, any improvement ?
2 years on I am about 40% better but will never ride again and am in constant discomfort
it is a bad injury
i tried to carry on riding and ruined my life - stupid
if you’re lucky you got it early
i am not any of the treatments work and it’s more the time
good luck
Yea it royally sucks ,
But at least it has gotten better and not worse, be confident that with time it can improve more.
I might have caught it early, almost 3 months in but it seems to get steadily worse, it was only some minor discomfort at first but I had a colonoscopy and one week later a rectal exam to rule out any problems with the bowels or hemorroids and that has made it 10 times worse ! Hoping it’s just a flare.
Ah well, it is what it is I guess. Let’s hope we can ride again one day and this will all be a bad dream.
I spent a long time with this and had plenty of time to panic, read, learn, think and try things. I also went through all the medical checks to rule out anything serious. As I describe in my previous post it was stress & a bad saddle. I can’t “rule out a problem with my pudendal nerve” necessarily, but what sort of problem could it have been and what could i do about a problem with a nerve anyway? If you can stop what is irritating your nerve (like banging it on a saddle 1000’s of times) then eventually it’ll just calm itself down. Medical science (especially in the US, where medicalisation of problems is a multi-billion dollar industry) might tell you that sticking needles in things or doing something drastic with a scalpel is the way to go, or failing that take lots of pills for the next few years but often the way out of health problems is more nuanced.
If you take as the starting point that Everything should work ok, because that’s the result of millions of years of evolution averaged across billions of human lives, if it’s not then there is a reason why not… and work from there. I eventually resolved that there was no physical problem anymore so the problem was my body & mind misinterpreting signals as pain when it wasn’t really there anymore.
Ok, this might all sound hippy dippy and it might not be the same for everyone unlucky enough to suffer this really crap situation but after 2 years of this i was very quickly able to just stop being in pain.
So my N=1 is that it was possible to cure this. I hope this might give hope to at least one other person. It’s got to be worth a try and reading a book and doing some mind exercises has to be worth a go before you let someone pop you up on their operating table, bend you over and come at you with a scalpel or stick a great big needle up your ring…
Thanks man,
I have small anal fissures apparently that can also cause some problems down there.
Or levator ani syndrome.
What you say makes alot of sense to me mate, it started after a period of heavy stress and anxiety followed by obsessive checkin of my symptoms, it’s a huge mind fuck in any case, I am delving into TMS and the mind body connection as well.
Never even knew there could be so much nerves and muscles in the pelvic region that can get angry.
I am in Europe so I don’t have to sell my house and a kidney to pay the medical bills but doctors so far are not sure, they think it’s stress and anxiety compounding my symptoms, but again, who knows right, it’s like living in the dark ages with this stuff, my PT seems more knowledgeable of the anatomy than the docs in any case.
I ready need help with this. I stopped biking for bit , started swimming , but I miss the outdoors so bought an indoor recumbent bike, used it for a month or so and the pain is now soo bad. A lot of you on here have posted about PT session working. I’ve been sent around the houses with doctors and here in the Uk for chronic pain they give antidepressants which I do not want to take as it’s just covering up the issue. I know I have it, all my symptoms tick the boxes of this evil issue. Can someone message me
some exercise tips that have worked. I’m so annoyed with myself with making it worse. I just want to exercise and get back outdoors and enjoy life.
Hey @InConstantPain99,
I think there are several of us in the UK here on the forum…I started having these symptoms over Xmas 2020…almost 3 years on, I have possibly learnt to live with it and sometimes also get on to my bike again but I am not the rider I used to be…I am now mostly riding an upright hardtail with thick tyres following kids on gravel paths…
I have tried 3 pain meds, 2 pelvic physios, been privately to 2 spinal surgeons and a hip surgeon to rule out any scalpel based interventions…I have also been to 2 TMS coaches, tried DCT, stretches from the headache in the pelvis book, read whatever has been written on the topic of chronic pain by Monty Lyman, Lorimer and Moseley, Alan Gordon…seen talks on YouTube by Schubiner and David Handscom
I even did all the stuff Stuart McGill wrote for DDD on the off chance that this may be something disc related…
I am still in pain but the intensity and disability is much much lower…
When I first got this, I kept thinking of this as an injury and tried desperately to heal often making things flare up and become worse…
Now I tend to think of this as the body demanding TLC…if I have taken a long haul flight or been sitting at work in front of a screen, the small flare up of symptoms is my body’s way of reminding me to back off a bit…
I also tend to think of this similar to wearing glasses …all (including me) needing correction to our eyes don’t consider this an injury or disability…we get glasses (a modification to get on with our life)…
I think a similar approach to these symptoms finally got me beyond catastrophising and scouring the internet for that silver bullet that eluded me for years or that elsuive expert who knows what no one else does about this condition…
I did breathwork, stress management, stretches, still use doughnut pillows, read about chronic pain science, buy saddles with cutouts…use pain meds ( antidepressants) when symptoms are flaring.
For me, it is a problem that needs a combination of interventions to see what works at that point in time to enable me to get on with life, family and all other things that are important and provide joy and meaning…
Life is too short to spend it searching for fix…the fix is to modify lifestyle to get on with life…
Hope my tuppence helps… apologies to anyone who vehemently disagrees with this but these are my opinions formed from my personal experience and this is not advice given in any capacity…
For those of you on this thread. I encourage you to look back on my posts from last year. I got relief after 10 years of trying. I am still good to this day. Here’s some more info from above 
And this
Hi @tfelds can I please DM you about the institute you recommend I’m based in UK so I just want to know how it worked for you?