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 prioritized 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. There's only 15% coming from the bike itself. So it goes without saying
00:58that really the best way to optimize any aerodynamic position on the bike is to optimize 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 on to 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 narrower
02:07your handlebar the twitchier the bike is going to feel and that's because a handlebar is simply a lever
02:12through which you apply pressure to turn the bike and if you apply pressure through a narrower space
02:17it's going to happen that bit quicker. Now it is possible to adapt to twitchy steering but not all
02:23riders are going to want to do that. It's very very common that riders want to ride a nice stable bike
02:28and only the pros are going to want the fastest handling possible. So why am I talking about all of
02:33this? Well that's exactly where flared handlebars come in. The principle is you get the narrower top
02:38section so you can sit on the hoods in a nice aerodynamic position but then the flare out at
02:43the drops puts you in that nice controlling position for descending. Now it's worth mentioning that a
02:50standard flared gravel bar isn't going to cut the mustard here because they're simply too wide to put
02:56you in an aerodynamic position. You don't really get gravel handlebars narrower than a 44 or a 42 whereas
03:04on the road you're really looking for a 40 or a 38 to make the most of that aerodynamic position.
03:11Now for demonstration purposes I've equipped this bike with a salsa cowbell bars which are 38 centimeters
03:16wide hood to hood but then have 12 degrees of flare and hopefully you can see from the camera angle you
03:22can see that coming out at the back. Now one thing to consider with flared bars is the reach and drop and
03:29how that might affect your position because some riders do like to ride with handlebars which have
03:34a bigger drop to the drops than these shallow ones do here so bear that in mind. Now the downside is it's
03:41not exactly like the road market is teeming with flared handlebar options available for people to buy.
03:47There are a few notable options including Envy's SES aero handlebar that measures 35 centimeters at the hood
03:56which is seriously narrow but flares out to 40 centimeters down on the drops giving the rider
04:03the best of both worlds. A more avant-garde option would be the Spiko ABB which stands for Aero
04:10Breakaway Bar and this takes the principle of flared bars to its logical conclusion which is it builds in
04:17an armrest to make sitting in that aero hood's position that bit easier. And the hoods are just 32
04:23centimeters wide flaring out to 37 centimeters in the drops. Now you may have seen these bars used
04:30in the pro peloton because they were designed in collaboration with and then used by Jan Willem
04:35van Schieb and astonishingly UCI actually haven't banned them yet they're still UCI legal but at 1500
04:42euros we wouldn't expect take up to happen that quickly. Of course there are those that argue that
04:49flared bars on the road are not the way to go and Zip are one of these they say that flared bars can mess
04:56with the brake lever alignment which is supposed to be in a vertical plane and you can see here that
05:01the brake lever is not on that plane it does flare out in the same way that the drops do. They also say
05:08that having your hands in that position on the hoods is more likely to cause injury and it's not going to
05:14be for all riders who might try and force themselves to ride in that position and suffer from discomfort.
05:21That's not to say that Zip haven't explored down this route at all and they have but they called it
05:26outsweep rather than flare and this is a bit different because the hoods and the brake levers
05:31sit in a vertical alignment and instead the drops at the end sweep outwards to give a rider a bit more
05:38of a controlling position and Zip has done lots of testing around this and they've landed on 5 degrees
05:44of flare and 11 degrees of outsweep being the optimum orientation of relationship between the drop and the
05:51hood before the ergonomics of the handlebars start getting messed up. So are flared handlebars worth it
05:59for your road bike? Well if you're trying to optimize your aerodynamic position without really affecting
06:05the handling of your bike they could be worthy of your consideration however bear in mind there aren't
06:10that many options to buy right now so you could be short suited in the exact spec you're looking for
06:16however we would expect this trend to increase as the lines have blurred between the road cycling world
06:22and the all-road gravel world as we've seen pretty much in every other part of the bike so really it's a
06:29watch this space type of debate so there you go a little introduction to the world of flared handlebars
06:37on the road if you have enjoyed this video do give us a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to the
06:42cycling weekly channel and if you have any of the questions leave them in the comment section below
06:47now i'll be back soon with some more great tech content and i'll see you then should i stop the
06:54cameras or are you going to be ready to go i'm going to go i'm going to go shut your mouth i'm going to go
06:59am i or are you or not yeah see this is what takes up space on the server no pause it then can't work in
07:08these conditions
Comments