My riding style has always included more out-of-saddle riding than average, and I’ll pretty much always be standing on short climbs and alternating standing and seated on longer ones. While I’ve embraced the current trend towards narrower bars to some extent, I do find very narrow bars a little unstable when standing, due to the reduced leverage counteracting the lateral pedalling forces.
As when climbing you’re usually on the hoods, extremely flared bars don’t help at all.
Wondering if anyone else has pondered this compromise and what solutions they have landed on for performance. In my case, I find 38mm at the hoods is as narrow as I want to go on a general purpose road bike. I’m 175cm, 64kg.
What were you riding before 38? Honestly, I don’t notice much difference with 2 cm except for comfort over long rides. (I do notice a difference switching between bikes with 4 cm of difference in bar width.)
I was probably running 40 and 42 for years in the dim and distant, but in the last couple of years I’ve experimented in the 36 - 40 range. For me, 38 seems to be the sweet spot, largely because 36 is just a little too unstable when powering out of the saddle.
I kinda notice? I have 40s on my gravel bike and 38s on the road bike (so not a perfect comparison) and it’s maybe a little easier on my gravel bike. But I think I mostly just end up pulling a little more with the other hand on the 38s and then don’t really notice a whole lot. But I also don’t do a ton of out of the saddle climbing except for attacks or just to mix up my position for a moment.
But I also don’t really have a problem with this feeling when I go from my 750mm MTB bars to my 380mm road bars. It’s obviously different but not really in a way that makes a difference.
Getting used to sprinting and climbing out of the saddle on 165mm cranks going from 170’ proved to be challenging however
This is one reason I’ve stuck with 172.5 mm. I’m pretty sure that for me personally, I’d miss the leverage when climbing out of the saddle. I’m sure I’d quickly adapt to seated pedalling though and might even prefer the shorter length.
But this also relates to why I brought up the handlebar width topic. Most of these choices are compromises, and more importantly, ones for which the optimal solution depends a lot on riding style. Discussions of crank length and efficiency generally assume a seated riding position. I’ve hardly seen any discussion of how shorter cranks imapct on climbing out of the saddle. As someone who spends a greater proportion of my time out of the saddle than average, my own ideal solutions may be different.
I suppose this is as good a place as any to mention something else I’ve pondered about crank length. We know that shorter cranks mean a more open hip angle, which is obviously going to be beneficial to people with limited hip flexibility. But let’s assume you have very good hip flexibility and crank length isn’t limiting for power transfer and position on the bike. Especially as you get older, might it actually be beneficial to long-term flexibility to keep using the full range of motion of your hips while pedalling, rather than restricting it..? Obviously this assumes you are efficient and pain-free with a greater range of motion.
I must be like you in that I stand on climbs a lot. However, my question is, why go to narrow bars just because the pros do? IMHO it makes a lot more sense to ride what works for you and not something that you are not comfortable with.
That’s sort of my point, except it’s more nuanced. There are obvious advantages to narrower bars - up to a point. But where that point is will vary.
The pros are riding narrower bars because they’re demonstrably faster when tucked in and going in a straight line. But there are trade-offs in other situations, and what the ideal is for any individual is a pretty complex problem. For me personally I reckon it’s 38 mm.
I had my first ride on 36cm bars (down from 40cm) yesterday (one that included sprinting up short ultra steep climbs) and I definitely noticed it… For this ride I also switched back to 165mm cranks from 170mm (as my 170mm crank broke), all in all it was a very strange feeling Even sitting down and spinning felt a bit weird (on 15%+ climbs), out of the saddle I could not produce the power I wanted (but that was maybe the crankset)
I am 6ft tall and probably would be better off with 38cm bars, but I wanted to upgrade to stem/bar combo and find 36cm one for 1/3 of the full price, so thought why not try it…
Just to emphasize how any gains one gets from changing crank length, bar width, etc is entirely dependent on the person, I went to 165mm cranks from 172.5mm, and my power went up.
Not telling you what is right or wrong from a bar width or crank length standpoint, but perhaps consider that even if you spend a greater proportion of your time out of the saddle than average, that time is still probably a minimal proportion of your total ride time. It’s ok to decide to optimize for that, but worth keeping in mind.
Personally, I just got a new road bike for the first time in a decade, and it came stock with 170s as compared to the 172.5s I had traditionally run for over 20 years. Not an extreme change, nor was the downsize to 38 bars from the 40s I had run for the same period of time. I noticed the bars more than the cranks, but both have now faded into the background.
Unless you are blessed enough to have access to >1h long climbs - which I’m not - you will spend a long part of you ride on rolling terrain, downhills and mild climbs that can be done on the big ring at speeds where aero matters.
But performance aside, I am very skinny and always felt that steering handlebars over 40cm was a comparable experience to turning a boat’s wheel. I tried 36cm bars with a flare to 40cm on the drops and it instantly clicked.
And to expand on that further, your power may have gone up, likely due to better biomechanics, but for that to have happened your cadence will have increased. At slow cadence, where you are having to really push the pedals, you will likely find your power has dropped due to the reduced leverage on the crank (very noticeable if you’ve run out of gears to compensate). It’s this low cadence scenario that those commenting about noticing shorter cranks being harder when standing are referring to.
And bars will be similarly dependant on individual and scenario. There will be a right width for comfort, which may or may not be the right width for minimum drag, which may or may not be right for how you want the bike to handle. Too narrow, and you may actually increase drag (chicken wing elbows), reduce handling confidence, or become too scrunched to be comfortable. Too wide and you’ll have the same but opposite.
The trick is to find the right size (crank or bar width) that works for you, and your riding, not anyone else. A really good bike fitter can help with that.
Just remember that if you change one thing, you may have to also change something else; changing your bar changes your reach so you may need to change the stem to balance things out, or for cranks you may need to change the saddle and stem height.
That’s generally true, but whether someone takes a hit with shorter cranks while climbing really depends on their own biomechanics and any issues that may have driven those changes. Unfortunately how a person interacts with a bike isn’t a physics 101 plug and chug mechanics problem.
The simplified physics problem doesn’t account for the non-linearities or confounding factors. A good example is the friction force. In intro physics courses that friction is a linear function, independent of contact area and temperature. Yet, every F1 or MotoGP fan knows that “grip” is dependent on temperature and the tire contact patch size.
Similarly, the intro physics courses teach that power output is a product of torque and angular speed. When it comes to applying that to humans, you have to throw in Josh Poertner’s favorite phrase, “That depends”. After all, how power is delivered from a human to pedal, for example, depends on so many other factors like impingement, range of motion, previous injury, “efficiency”, and other factors. As a result someone might see an increase in power going to a shorter crank without seeing a significant or any increase in cadence. Likewise a tall rider might not see any changes to how they perform out of the saddle when climbing after switching to narrower bars.
My change to 165mm cranks from the 172.5 flavor (which itself was change from 175) was the result of a hip broken in a bike crash years ago. In 2+ months on the 165s, power has gone up ( as mentioned), but my cadence is the same. Weirdly, I can pedal longer at a higher power. I’m guessing the reason for all that is that the accumulated effects from the injury just prevented me from getting power to the pedals efficiently.
Anyway, I’m not disagreeing at all with what you said. I’m just adding a bit of nuance I guess.
If anyone is able to come with a closed form solution for the three body problem in physics, they’ll deserve the Nobel Prize. However if someone comes up with a physical model of a human that can accurately and precisely calculate exactly what bike fit is best for them and what component sizes they need…well, they should give that person all the Nobel prizes for that year, as well as free pizza and beer after every ride for life.
True that time out of the saddle is a small proportion, but for me it’s frequent and significant. I do notice the change from 38 to 36 more than 40 to 38 in terms of stability, and the advantages of 36 over 38 th erest of the time are probably fairly small.
I would say no to the hip aspect of this question. My $0.02 on this is that I feel like we have seen enough evidence now with the prevalence of external iliac artery flow limitation issues to conclude that an extreme hip angle, utilized as often as we do during cycling, is not good for us. I’m 5’10, love 172.5mm cranks, on my road and TT bikes—but I’ve forced myself to switch to 165mm out of an abundance of caution here as I’ve watched this become a commonplace issue. And I only ride between say 10-15K miles depending on the year!
Even sitting down and spinning felt a bit weird (on 15%+ climbs), out of the saddle I could not produce the power I wanted (but that was maybe the crankset)