Bar Width

06/12/22 21:35 Filed in: Gear

How wide should your handlebars be?
I don't think there is a definitive answer to this.

I've seen it suggested that one’s ideal hand spacing for push-ups is also ones ideal bar width. For me then, my actual bar width is pretty close to perfect.

I moved to Vancouver when narrow bars were all the rage. I remember seeing guys riding flash (for the time) MTBs around on the road with ultra-narrow bars and thinking they had to ride offroad to justify those narrow controls. This was a time when a 58cm wide bar was normal, and the bars I am talking about where sub-50. This was all predicated from the tree spacing on the trails being built in those days - minimal tree cutting meant narrow was necessary.
There is a trail in Whistler on the edge of the village down to one of the primary schools. That trail is called "cut yer bars" and back when it was built in about 1991, it challenged people with 58cm bars to navigate the narrow-set trees. You can clearly see where an entire row of trees has been cut out to widen the way for more modern bars, but not so far as to get away from the spirit of the track. The first time I rode it I had 75cm bars and they just fit. The last time I rode it was with 82cm bars and that's considerably more challenging.

Between the 58cm bars I used when I started on a MTB and the 82cm bars I use now was a whole series of small progressions: 64, 68, 70, 72, 75 and 78 before 82cm. Each step felt better. No step felt like I'd gone too far. And before anyone tells me I'm "over barred" let me tell you I have a 2.1m wingspan. As I wrote above, I have tried push-ups at different hand widths and 82cm is perfectly fine (I can do just as many at a narrower width, but max reps at 82cm and 74cm are the same). I haven't specifically tried wider, but I think I'm at (or very close to) my perfect max.

I like the longer lever that the wider bars provide.

I've also seen many shorter people stuck with bars too wide for them. Many will be through ignorance and the fact that many bike companies specify one bar across the size range - not suitable to anyone riding a small but possibly not wide enough for those on the extra-large. I had a student recently who was clearly struggling with her bar width. She took it back to her bike shop and they shortened the bars to a much better length.
If there is a take-away message here it is that experimenting with bar width is important to find the optimum.

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

Bar Width