How To Set Your Handlebar Height - With Expert Bike Fitter

how can you tell if they're too high or too low Oh look The general rule of thumb is to just slam them and hope for the best Crag just as low as you can go 200 millimeters a drop is a good rule of thumb for everyone um yeah for sure just like the price just only Adam Hanson uh so look this is a good question um how to know if they're too high or too light you could for example measure the number you could measure the drop and then come up with a figure but I actually wouldn't bother because a normal amount of drop if you're an abnormal person like you've got shorter arms or a long torso or a low seat height or something the the measurement of the drop will be a bit uh spurious you won't know what to do with the number so don't don't worry about measuring it but how what can you feel in your position if the bars are too high or too low is probably the best the best kind of question to ask now this presupposes of course that the back end of the bike is set up well if the if the the seat height the seat setback the reach is you know everything is roughly right in the backhand plate position is good you should be able to start sensing things in the front end better once your pelvis is set up in the right spot so always before you go about messing with the front end always try and set the back end of the bike properly correcting the seat height correcting the seat setback correcting the cleat position follow the videos we've got on this topic first and then once the backhand feels stable then start feeling out what to do with the front end you must always do it in this sequence so how do you know if the bars are too high or too low if they're too high then these are rules of some but they're pretty good these are these carry across large groups of people pretty well if the bars are too high what you'll find is that you'll tend to prop more weight onto them which seems counter-intuitive people always have this idea that the higher the bars are the easier the front end will be to deal with but what happens is when the bars are too high people tend to prop their weight up on them they will sit more upright than they naturally than the Torso angle that they naturally want to to gravitate towards they will also therefore find more weight on the hands neck discomfort from loading the hands that sort of thing you might notice if you take a photo of yourself on a trainer for example that your torso if the bars are too high your torso is trying to sort of drop down between your shoulder blades so instead of your shoulders being in a nice neutral position your scapulas will be almost getting pushed back around your chest wall and it'll almost look as if you're trying to drop your chest down between your shoulders and that's pretty much always a sign that the bars are too high so that's a good one an increasing weight in their hands bit of neck discomfort from that weight maybe hand numbness if the bars are too high and a sense that you're trying to drop your torso between your scapulas that's the sort of thing you'll find in the front end of the bike if the bars are too high in the back end you might notice that you you rotate your pelvis back away from the front of the seat and and The Sensation of pressure under the two points of the sit bones as as people call them start to become a bit more harsh if the bars are too high so people will naturally a lot of people rotate their pelvis back to kind of help lift the front end up if the bars are too high so a sense of being too harshly pressurized under the two sit lines under the two points of the issue of pubic ramus is another sign often that the bars are are too high so look for those things to be too high if you find that you ride in the drops almost preferentially or more than 50 percent of the time when you're out on the road the bars are too high so what you're what you're telling yourself there is that I sub consciously want to be lower and the best way of getting me lower apart from just dropping my elbows right down is to actually be in the drops so if you find yourself riding in the drops preferentially because it's more comfortable the bars are probably too high so that's another one to look for almost forgot now how to know if they're too low if they're too low most people will start to rotate their pelvis forward to meet the lower bar height in an attempt to get their shoulders and head down forward and lower towards the lower bar height often that will be accompanied with an increase in pressure on the front of the seat so an unresolvable kind of perineum pressure issue where you've tried a lot of different saddles on a little a lot of different angles and you're still getting too much perineum pressure it sometimes means that the bars are too low so look for frontal saddle discomfort if the bars are too low projecting your scapulas around your chest wall to reach down and then locking the elbows out into full extension to get down to the turn to the hoods if you see this really rounded posture it probably means the bars are too low some people are kind of built like that anyway but if you find yourself adopting that and with it comes discomfort in the middle fibers of your trapezius here between your shoulder blades or your rhomboid musculature that will often be accompanied by this scapular protraction around the chest well often that means the bars are too low having said that you do get that if the bars are too far away as well but that's one of the things to look for if you never gravitate towards the drops so the polar opposite of what we spoke about before if you never gravitate towards the drops if you can I always say to my Riders if you can ride in the drops for three to five minutes without any major problems that's that's ex that's that that's okay that's that's enough but if you find that you can't ride there for more than 20 or 30 seconds without really wanting to get out of that position the bars May well be too low so you know another good thing to look for is when you go into the drops if that sense of frontal perineum pressure on the front of the seat gets just too strong the bars May well be too low it can mean that the seat needs to be changed in angle or designed but often it means the bars are too low so look for discomfort in the middle of the back a sense of protracting the scapulas around the chest while locking the elbows out to get down to the bars and frontal saddle discomfort those are the sort of big indicators that your bars May well be too low another weird Oddball one you may sometimes come across a person where their only symptom of the bars being too low is lower back pain and of course what's usually happening there is as they Flex forward the hip is starting to run out of range or they or they're not capable of stabilizing their torso on that low angle and they will rock and they will get lower back pain it's people have this idea that you get the back pain from being too stretched out but it's usually not the case it's the rock that's induced in the pelvis from the reach being untenable you know so the person is stretched out beyond their ability to stabilize themselves so they Rock uncontrollably on the seat and they get lower back pain I have also seen quite a few clients over the years with upper hamstring discomfort from the bars being too low so if their pelvis is rotated far too far forward outside of their their natural kind of range of motion they might get upper hamstring discomfort from the hamstring having to operate in a really lengthened position across the bottom of the stroke so those are the things to look for as as with all these things you can get all of these symptoms from other problems as well but that'll give you a bit of an idea if they're too low and one of the best ways of doing this is actually to film yourself get yourself on a trainer and and try and ride and and and get someone to film you from the side and ride at multiple intensities a light intensity an FTP style intensity and then a VO2 max intensity and just watch your shoulder posture and what check what actually is happening because it may be very obvious to you what's going on when you look at an image of yourself but you may not be able to feel it very well on the bike and um you might look at the image and go oh gee yeah look at my shoulder posture no wonder I'm getting trouble but you can't really feel it that that what's what's happening that accurately on the bike so some footage of yourself to look at your shoulder posture not a bad move in that case [Music] thank you

Channel: Road Cycling Academy

Views: 67,809

Keywords: Cycling, Training, Bike, Fit, Bikefit, Roadcycling

Id: 4nGxc1iniuA

Length: 7min 50sec (470 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022