After an hour my bottom side gets real sore. I wear bicycle shorts and even have used one of those flatfish saddles…Nothing seems to work. Anyone have any suggestions?
Mike A.
Suggestions:
- All of the best unicyclists' bottoms get sore. Be proud.
- Stop after 59 minutes.
- Lean back and think of England.
Meanwhile… Try different things and see what works better for you. Trying any different kind of saddle than the one you’ve got will tell you a lot that you didn’t know before. See if a different seat angle or seat height or handlebar position changes anything. Try different options of shorts/padding/underwear. Definitely try taking breaks every so often, getting off the seat and letting more blood flow down there. And there are different kinds of soreness. Is it just the pressure all over the area? Are you getting pinched somewhere? Do you get bruising or chafing that needs to heal first and then be prevented in the future?
We’re all individuals and there are anatomical differences more subtle than just male vs. female. Some riders say that padded bike shorts fix everything, for example, but I’ve tried them a number of times and they weren’t the ticket, holding things very securely in precisely the wrong place. I think you’ll mostly have to solve it for yourself. I’m OK past an hour but still working on it for me.
Hope something there helps…
Congratulations, you’re a normal human!
England makes your butt hurt?
Without getting too wordy, I will recommend riding for two hours. If you do this often enough, that first hour will feel just fine every time. 
No, really. If you do ride more, your body will get used to things more. There are some weekends when I get worn out after 10 miles, but when I train a lot, I can go for a very long time, with decent speed and minimal discomfort.
Thank you for the responses. Some good info to think about. I think because i am a true bicycle rider and go 5-6 hrs on my bike with no problems I thought the unicycle would be similar…
Ever tried Chamois Creme?
I use Xenofit Second Skin and it really halps preventing saddle soreness.
I can also recommend BodyGlide and ilon Protect, but Xenofit is the best so far and also the chaepest of theese three.
There are many reviews of different products on the web:
http://lovelybike.blogspot.de/2012/06/chamois-creams-comparative-review.html
http://www.nomeatathlete.com/chamois-cream-reviews/
https://cycletechreview.com/2016/reviews/chamois-cream-test/
Shorter cranks, steeper hills and faster speeds.
These all cause the rider to put more force on the pedals, taking the weight off the more sensitive areas.
If you a bicycling a lot I guess you are used to modern bike saddles, where you mainly sit on your sitbones. If that is correct, I would recon to try one of the newer flatish uni saddles like KH one, Nimbus Stadium or QX Eleven. They use the same concept as modern bike saddles (sit more on your sitbones). Remark: KH one uses a different seatpost.
Stand
Changing saddles might help or it may make things worse. I first tried every saddle option available. After 45-50 minutes things started getting sore and going numb.
Learn how to ride “standing” like you would on a 5-6 hour bike ride. Sports doctors say you need to stand one minute off the saddle for every ten minutes of ridding a bike. I prefer 40-50 seconds every five minutes. If the road has mile markers, I use them to remind me to get off the saddle, stand on the peddles, and let some blood flow.
If you work at developing a technique that works for your style of unicycling and train for it, you might not need handle bars, spin at a cadence of 90 to 120 out of the saddle, and ride 100k non-stop (only stopping to take a leak limiting your distance).
At some point your feet might go numb also. You will need to learn how to let the blood flow in you feet by reducing pressure on the peddles for one minute out of ten minutes of ridding.
If you let anything stay numb for very long it might cause temporary or permanent nerve damage. This damage might sting and/or burn for months after your ride.
Joe Myers
2 Likes
A lot of good insight…Thank you…
If you have handlebars then lower them so that you are riding in a more dropped position. This will spread your weight over three points thus reducing the pressure on your butt.
If you don’t have bars then buy a set. 
…take them off your unicycle and leave them at home. If you don’t own any don’t waste your money on some.
That should start a massive uproar among most of the “I need every gimmick” that anyone sells or custom makes to ride a mile or two.
Joe Myers
2 Likes
+1
Love it!
+1
For obvious bio-mechanical reasons, not for doing like others.
We are not in 1970 anymore, unicycle’s material has evolved, handlebars are a great improvement for many reasons.
I also agree with Joe. He has great advice.
When I regularly ride longer rides my butt stops hurting so much. It never totally goes away. Just hurts less. When it starts aching I put my hand on the bumper, press down and shift around a bit. Getting more on the back of the saddle sometimes helps.
My feet also go numb at the two hour mark if I don’t shift them every so often.
I have handle bars but prefer to ride without.
My longest rides are three hours.
Handle bars on unicycles are not necessarily a new fad. Court Edwards unicycled Fisco to NewYork on his unicycle with handle bars in the early 1900’s.
Jim
Very cool pic
JimT that is so cool. I love that stuff.
So, I had really never rode very far til recently. 6 to 8 mile rides seem to be my routine now. I usually ride an hour or so. Working up to considerably longer rides. I also was finding it difficult to get comfy in the beginning. Now, I ride more often and the saddle is just getting cozy. I’m sure it’s mostly just keep putting time in the saddle and its gets easier on your seat. I rode a couple 36ers the other night. The One with shorter 110 cranks was clearly easier on my seat area. The other was 150’s like I normally ride. There s a trade off in pedal power/performance. I also have bars. I really like to put weight on the bars and shift my tail/sit bones around. I think the more time in the saddle the more cozy it will get. Take breaks. Smell the roses. Jeff c
Definitely! And I’d lay better than even odds that that’s a Brooks B135 saddle on it, which are still in production, or else something uncannily like one. A search turns up a couple of mentions of Brooks saddles, mainly that folks like them on their bicycles–and I like the one on my bike too, but not anyone admitting to unicycling regularly on one. It seems as plausible as anything.
And “Use a ‘True-Tone’ Cornet” inside the wheel! Is there the Unicycling Cornet Reviews topic? 
[QUOTE=johnfoss;1687454]
England makes your butt hurt?
Large Eddie is referring to this…
Yup, nice catch newob!
I’m thinking that johnfoss most likely knew it too and that his reply was deadpan humor, which I appreciated.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if people are being sarcastic…
Once I learned to ride with handlebars, I started routinely riding with both hands pressing down on the seat handle on my unicycles without handlebars. I transfer a lot of my body weight onto the bars / seat when using both hands in this manner, reducing the weight on the seat, making long rides more comfortable. Similar to the weight a bicyclist shifts onto the handlebars.
bungeejoe, for the sake of the beginners on the forum whom need advice, can you be more specific about your issues with handlebars?
Hate to break the bad news, but unicycling is already “gimmicky”.