Choosing the best handlebar shape for you comes down to your riding style. If you're after fairly relaxed endurance rides, think compact. And the result? Well, here’s how my experience played out on the road (with the caveat that I am, as you might have gathered by now, someone who is interested in experimenting with this kind of thing). The good

Of course, this doesn’t mean buy the most expensive items, but it does mean to think about if the price tag has more to do with the bragging rights than the actual quality of the product. This handlebar sure does seem like a miss... The fact that they release it before you can even get the proper adapter to make it fit well onto the bike that 90% of them will end up on is mind boggling. I can't help but wonder if there were some delays in releasing an SL8 and they had this bar already done, so they launched it prior to the SL8 in which its designed around??? Force input accuracy is how precisely your steering inputs translate to the handlebar – how easy is it to make the exact steering adjustment you intended to. For fast road riding, I found the handlebar surprisingly easy to live with, and the riding position very fast. Russell Burton / Immediate MediaThe two main choices when choosing handlebars for your bike are drop handlebars and flat handlebars. Above, you can find our complete range of drop handlebars -most commonly used on road bikes and gravel bikes. So far nobody from any big mfgers has the balls to sell UCI minimum width handlebars, maybe someday it will change.

If you don’t want to, or aren’t allowed to, use aero bars, then our wind tunnel testing suggests body position is still the area to pay most attention to. Joseph Branston / Our Media Again, this is likely something that can be adapted to over time but, Koop says: “someone with less strength and motor skills is better off selecting a wider handlebar”. How narrow should you go? For example, a 40cm handlebar measured centre-to-centre is typically a 42cm handlebar if measured outside-to-outside. Notably, we found that simply adopting an aerodynamic riding position – in this case, the famed ‘aero hoods’ position so often seen in WorldTour racing – can save 22.38 watts at 35kph, compared to riding with your hands on the brake hoods.

Some Hanky Panky has forced Me to Ask again

Achieve a faster climb with a set of drop handlebars for road bikes from Chain Reaction. Our road bike handlebars are mainly constructed from alloy or carbon with popular drop-down handlebars focused on comfort. Aero bars are precision-engineered for an efficient race profile and help riders conserve energy by encouraging an aerodynamic position.

Sitting in the middle, if you want a fair drop and tend to hold the bar right at its centre point, look for ergo bars where doing so won't put pressure on your wrists.This makes sense once you remember that, on a road bike moving at speed, a lot of steering is performed by leaning and counter steering – you don’t actually need large steering inputs at the handlebar, except at slow speeds. If you need to mount a light, you might have to attach it to the underside of an out-front computer mount, for example. The ends of a wider handlebar, for example, have to travel further when turning, which slows down the speed of steering for a given force input. This should make it easier to steer the bike accurately and not over or understeer.