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
00:21what 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
00:39big an 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 arms
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
01:54peloton
01:55as those racers try and reduce their frontal area and their CDA that bit more. But of course it would
02:01be a miss 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
02:22steering but not all riders are going to want to do that. It's very very common that riders want to
02:27ride a nice stable bike and only the pros are going to want the fastest handling possible. So why am
02:32I
02:32talking about all of this? Well that's exactly where flared handlebars come in. The principle is
02:36you get the narrower top section so you can sit on the hoods in a nice aerodynamic position but then
02:42the flare out at the drops puts you in that nice controlling position for descending. Now it's worth
02:49mentioning that a standard flared gravel bar isn't going to cut the mustard here because they're simply
02:55too wide to put you in an aerodynamic position. You don't really get gravel handlebars narrower than a
03:0144 or a 42 whereas on the road you're really looking for a 40 or a 38 to make the
03:07most of that
03:08aerodynamic position. Now for demonstration purposes I've equipped this bike with a Salsa cowbell bars
03:14which are 38 centimeters wide hood to hood but then have 12 degrees of flare and hopefully you can see
03:21from the camera angle you can see that coming out at the back. Now one thing to consider with flared
03:27bars
03:27handlebars is the reach and drop and how that might affect your position because some riders do like
03:32to ride with handlebars which have a bigger drop to the drops than these shallow ones do here so bear
03:39that in mind. Now the downside is it's not exactly like the road market is teeming with flared handlebar
03:45options available 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
04:00down on the drops giving the rider the best of both worlds. A more avant-garde option would be the
04:07Spiko ABB which stands for Aero Breakaway Bar and this takes the principle of flared bars to its
04:14logical conclusion which is it builds in an armrest to make sitting in that aero hood's position that bit
04:20easier and the hoods are just 32 centimeters wide flaring out to 37 centimeters in the drops. Now
04:28you may have seen these bars used in the pro peloton because they were designed in collaboration with
04:33and then used by Jan-Willem van Schieb and astonishingly UCI actually haven't banned them yet they're still
04:39UCI legal but at 1500 euros we wouldn't expect take up to happen that quickly. Of course there are those
04:48that argue that flared bars on the road are not the way to go and Zip are one of these
04:53they say that
04:54flared bars can mess with the brake lever alignment which is supposed to be in a vertical plane and you
05:00can see here that the brake lever is not on that plane it does flare out in the same way
05:05that the
05:06drops do. They also say that having your hands in that position on the hoods is more likely to cause
05:12injury and it's not going to be for all riders who might try and force themselves to ride in that
05:17position and suffer from discomfort. That's not to say that Zip haven't explored down this route at
05:23all and they have but they called it outsweep rather than flare and this is a bit different
05:29because the hoods and the brake levers sit in a vertical alignment and instead the drops at the
05:35end sweep outwards to give a rider a bit more of a controlling position and Zip has done lots of
05:41testing around this and they've landed on five degrees of flare and 11 degrees of outsweep being
05:47the optimum orientation of relationship between the drop and the hood before the ergonomics of the
05:53handlebars start getting messed up. So are flared handlebars worth it for your road bike? Well if
06:01you're trying to optimize your aerodynamic position without really affecting the handling of your bike
06:06they could be worthy of your consideration. However bear in mind there aren't that many options to buy
06:12right now so you could be short suited in the exact spec you're looking for. However we would expect
06:18this trend to increase as the lines have blurred between the road cycling world and the all-road gravel
06:24world as we've seen pretty much in every other part of the bike so really it's a watch this space
06:30type of debate. So there you go a little introduction to the world of flared handlebars on the road. If
06:38you
06:38have enjoyed this video do give us a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to the cycling weekly channel
06:43and if you have any of the questions leave them in the comments section below. Now I'll be back soon
06:48with some more great tech content and I'll see you then.
06:53Should I stop the cameras or are you going to be ready to go?
06:55I'm gonna go I'm gonna go shut your mouth I'm gonna go. Am I? Or are you or not?
07:01Yeah! See this is what takes up space on the server.
07:04No pause it then. I can't work in these conditions.
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