This may help. When sitting on your bike with your hands on the bars, extend your fingers. You brake levers should be right under your fingers without curling down much over the bars. It would be like a straight line from the top of your shoulders to your finger tips.
I notice that some people have thier brake and shifter levers way dwon so they are reaching around the bar to get to them.

Well, you will almost always want to keep a good grip on the bar so that mean hand wrapped around like baseball bat (with at least your middle finger on the brake lever).

What part of your thumb hurts? A bruising? muscular fatigue? Could be a lot of things, like hand position (think width); brake lever angle (should at the same angle as the line from your shoulder to your bar) or the position of your shifters, lockout, etc.

Jack

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I switch my hands around all the time based on what I'm doing on the bike - riding downhill I grip like a baseball bat; riding uphill usually on my extensions; on flats I rest my hands on top. Haven't heard of this problem before but it sounds like maybe your are holding on for dear life so just try to loosen up a bit.

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Since I started mtb'ing a lot my left thumb hurts. For me its down at the knuckle near the webbed part of the hand. I figured its arthritis or something but it really only comes around after mtb'ing and stays about a week. For me I think that it is caused but having my other fingers over the bars and the thumb going under the bar but hanging on for dear life; also pushing the shifter to a bigger chainring puts some funky pressure on it and causes it to hurt. Does this sound similar to your pain / situation QM?

Sounds like you may have a slight sprain of the medial collateral lig. of the thumb. Just loosen your grip a little. I sprained mine once while I was flying over the handlebars. A little ice and thumb strengthening exercises will help.

E

could be a bunch of things, but try rotating the bars a bit to get a more neutral hand position & even contact across the width of your palm. You may need to swap bars for ones with a different amount of sweep. Could also be that you should have thinner / thicker grips to reduce hand fatigue.

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Not so much...grip the bar loosely, with a very relaxed grip. Loose is key, as if the bar was made out of eggshells and you don't want them to crack. A white knucked grip is a terrible thing for a mountain biker, and leades to injuries and fatigue.

Loose comfortable grip ("hold on loosely, but don't let go, if you cling too tightly, yer gonna lose control" ;-) is key. If you death-grip, you'll learn why it's called that.

Also, unless you are going uphill or on very smooth level ground, do NOT put your thumbs on top of the bar. That is an accident waiting to happen. My buddy (an accomplished Masters mtb racer) did that in a race, hit a benign trail bump, his hands slipped off the bars, and he went down hard, got an ambulance ride, the whole works.

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k, death grip seems to pretty much sum up my grip. I had this prob with the last handlebars, and eventually i loosened up, and it went away, then i got some new bars (more aggressive, narrower) and it came right back, as did my death grip. I guess ive just gotta get more comfortable.