00:00Do you need flared handlebars on your road bike? They've been widely adopted in the gravel market
00:06because they give you greater control over technical terrain and you can squish a bag
00:10in between the drops that bit easier. But are we missing a trick not riding them on a road bike?
00:16Today I'm going to tell you all about it. Before we get into it though we should really talk about
00:22what effect handlebars have on our aerodynamic efficiency as riders. You see I'm not talking
00:27about aero bars here, ones which have prioritised being easy to go through the air with their thick
00:33flat tops. No I'm talking about round flared bars and surprisingly they don't actually have that
00:39bigger impact on our CDA, that's our coefficient of aerodynamic drag. For a rider in a fairly
00:45average position on a bike, so not too aggressive, not too relaxed, 85% of aerodynamic drag is going
00:52to come from that rider. It was only 15% coming from the bike itself. So it goes without saying
00:58that really the best way to optimise any aerodynamic position on the bike is to optimise the rider's
01:04position and the handlebar is the first port of call when you want to do that. It's pretty well
01:10adopted now that the aero hoods position is the most aerodynamic for riding on the road. Now this
01:15position is the one where you sit holding onto the hoods here, like in this position with your arm
01:22at 90 degrees to where you're holding onto the bars and this lowers your frontal section that's
01:27being hit by the wind and allows your forearm to come in line behind your wrist. You'll see racers
01:32doing this more now at races rather than sitting straight on the drops because it gives them that
01:37lower frontal area to be impacted by the oncoming wind. Now a narrower handlebar can reduce your CDA
01:46even further and where once 42cm bars were common you now see 38cm bars and 36cm bars in the pro peloton
01:55as those racers try and reduce their frontal area and their CDA that bit more. But of course it would
02:01be amiss to not mention that bar widths obviously plays a massive part in how a bike handles. The
02:07narrower your handlebar the twitchier the bike is going to feel and that's because the handlebar is
02:12simply a lever through which you apply pressure to turn the bike and if you apply pressure through
02:16a narrower space it's going to happen that bit quicker. Now it is possible to adapt to twitchy
02:21steering but not all riders are going to want to do that. It's very very common that riders want to
02:26ride a nice stable bike and only the pros are going to want the fastest handling possible. So why am I
02:32talking about all of this? Well that's exactly where flared handlebars come in. The principle is you get the
02:37narrower top section so you can sit on the hoods in a nice aerodynamic position but then the flare out
02:43at the drops puts you in that nice controlling position for descending. Now it's worth mentioning
02:50that a standard flared gravel bar isn't going to cut the mustard here because they're simply too wide to
02:56put you in an aerodynamic position. You don't really get gravel handlebars narrower than a 44 or a 42
03:03whereas on the road you're really looking for a 40 or a 38 to make the most of that aerodynamic
03:09position. Now for demonstration purposes I've equipped this bike with a salsa cowbell bars which
03:14are 38 centimeters wide hood to hood but then have 12 degrees of flare and hopefully you can see from the
03:21camera angle you can see that coming out at the back. Now one thing to consider with flared bars is the
03:28reach and drop and how that might affect your position because some riders do like to ride with
03:33handlebars which have a bigger drop to the drops than these shallow ones do here so bear that in
03:39mind. Now the downside is it's not exactly like the road market is teeming with flared handlebar options
03:46available for people to buy. There are a few notable options including Envy's SES aero handlebar that
03:53measures 35 centimeters at the hood which is seriously narrow but flares out to 40 centimeters down on the
04:01drops giving the rider the best of both worlds. A more avant-garde option would be the Spiko ABB which
04:09stands for Aero Breakaway Bar and this takes the principle of flared bars to its logical conclusion
04:15which is it builds in an armrest to make sitting in that aero hoods position that bit easier. And the
04:21hoods are just 32 centimeters wide flaring out to 37 centimeters in the drops. Now you may have seen
04:29these bars used in the pro peloton because they were designed in collaboration with and then used by
04:34Jan-Willem van Schiep and astonishingly UCI actually haven't banned them yet they're still UCI legal
04:40but at 1500 euros we wouldn't expect take up to happen that quickly. Of course there are those that
04:48argue that flared bars on the road are not the way to go and Zip are one of these they say that flared
04:54bars can mess with the brake lever alignment which is supposed to be in a vertical plane and you can
05:00see here that the brake lever is not on that plane it does flare out in the same way that the drops do.
05:07They also say that having your hands in that position on the hoods is more likely to cause injury
05:13and it's not going to be for all riders who might try and force themselves to ride in that position and suffer
05:19from discomfort. That's not to say that Zip haven't explored down this route at all and they have but
05:25they called it outsweep rather than flare and this is a bit different because the hoods and the brake
05:31levers sit in a vertical alignment and instead the drops at the end sweep outwards to give a rider a bit
05:37more of a controlling position. And Zip has done lots of testing around this and they've landed on
05:43five degrees of flare and 11 degrees of outsweep being the optimum orientation of relationship
05:49between the drop and the hood before the ergonomics of the handlebars start getting messed up.
05:56So are flared handlebars worth it for your road bike? Well if you're trying to optimize your
06:02aerodynamic position without really affecting the handling of your bike they could be worthy of your
06:08consideration. However bear in mind there aren't that many options to buy right now so you could be
06:13short suited in the exact spec you're looking for. However we would expect this trend to increase as
06:20the lines have blurred between the road cycling world and the all-road gravel world as we've seen
06:25pretty much in every other part of the bike so really it's a watch this space type of debate.
06:33So there you go a little introduction to the world of flared handlebars on the road. If you have enjoyed
06:39this video do give us a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to the cycling weekly channel and if
06:44you have any of the questions leave them in the comment section below. Now I'll be back soon with
06:49some more great tech content and I'll see you then. Should I stop the cameras or are you going to be ready to go?
06:55I'm going to go I'm going to go shut your mouth I'm going to go. Am I? Or are you or not? Yeah! See this is what
07:03takes up space on the server. No pause it then. Can't work in these conditions.
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