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A bike was given to me for a gift and I am a male with testicles and if I stand in front of my seat the bar touches me on my testicles. Do avoid this I have to stand on my tippy-toes.

Is the bike too big for me? I'm afraid I might have to stop suddenly and the bike frame will collide with my testicles.

James
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  • how tall are you? And which size is the bike? Bike size is the distance between seat post clamp and center of the crank. Usually the bike has a sticker with this info, but you can also measure if you do not find it. – calofr Nov 23 '21 at 11:52
  • On my previous bike my testicles also touched when standing (although very lightly). The two never met painfully. Note that, depending on much you flex your legs and feet when you dismout, this distance may change significantly. The bike was on the upper limit of my size recomendation. – calofr Nov 23 '21 at 12:05
  • I'm 5'9, 200 pounds. I actually don't know the size of the bike, I'll take a look later and see if I find the sticker that says the size. – James Nov 23 '21 at 13:52
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    Mine occasionally lightly caress my top bar, but it hasn't been a problem. As mine as made of pure steel, I worry that I might damage the frame in a sudden stop, but so far I haven't had a problem. I suppose you could simulate your concern under controlled circumstances and see if it seems realistic or not. If it is, the frame could be replaced with a smaller one, or your testicles could be replaced with prosthetics. – Andrew Nov 23 '21 at 16:49
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    I think the issue here is not the height of the frame, but rather your sizable testicles. – MaplePanda Nov 24 '21 at 07:12
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    The solution is to either ride in cool weather, or in warm weather go fast enough to generate some wind chill. – Useless Nov 25 '21 at 16:39

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It’s not possible to tell without seeing you on your bike. If you are on a bike with a sloping top tube (some picture examples here, and note that most modern drop bar bikes have sloping or compact top tubes, as well as all MTBs), then having your groin contact the top tube when standing normally is a potential sign that the bike is too big. If you have a road frame whose top tube is parallel to the ground (again, see link for examples), then having no stand over clearance is less informative. The lack of standover clearance per se is not necessarily the issue. The issue is that if the bike's vertical size (i.e. the seat tube length, related to stack, discussed at the link) is high enough to give you zero standover, chances are good that a compact bike will also be too long (formal terms: top tube or reach are too long).

If you didn’t mean your sentence literally, but you were trying to say that you have little stand over clearance, then that by itself is not an issue if the rest of the bike fits correctly. I have short legs relative to my torso, and all my bikes have little standover. While I would probably want more stand over clearance if I were MTBing, I don’t find it necessary for road, gravel, and cyclocross (the latter two are off-road disciplines but the terrain isn’t as rough as MTBs can handle). In normal riding conditions, most people don't get thrown off the saddle into the top tube. This could happen if you break your chain, but assuming proper assembly, non-professional riders shouldn't have the power output to do this.

Weiwen Ng
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    "If you didn’t mean your sentence literally" - if he did mean it literally, I hope he's thinking of the world naked bike ride, and not a daily habit – Chris H Nov 23 '21 at 14:47
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    @ChrisH Heh ... I choose not to go there. – Weiwen Ng Nov 23 '21 at 14:54
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    BTW a sudden stop can launch you forwards without going OTB, though when I did that, what I hit was the back of the stem (steel rims, in the wet - I stopped by hitting the kerb head-on). Slightly slower an the toptube would have been the target (but that frame was a little small for me – Chris H Nov 23 '21 at 16:34