Handlebar width: A cool experiment

This comes from Dwight Rudder, the expert offroad moto rider who moderates the Off-Road Riding Technique forum on www.thumpertalk.com.

Get down and do 10 pushups. Measure from the outsides of your hands. That’s your position of optimum strength. I get 28 inches. Maybe I should stop cutting my bars from 28 to 26 inches …

NOTE: Wider bars enhance leverage, and shorter bars increase maneuverability — to a point.

NOTE NOTE: Consistency is key. Pick a width and run it on all your bikes. Mark Weir runs ’em at 28 inches. Brian Lopes runs ’em at 27.

8 replies
  1. leelikesbikes says:

    leelikesbikes — of course!

    I dig that site. I’m still learning about this whole moto thing.

  2. Ben says:

    Cool, glad to see another person getting into riding! I’m lucky enough to have been riding since I was 6, which at the moment, is only 8 years.

  3. stacy kohut says:

    finally someone advocating the use of ‘wider’ bars………………

    far too many peeps these days running bars far to small for them………….

  4. Richard says:

    I’ve just upgraded bikes, and my new one has wider bars. It’s making my riding interesting as I ride a lot of narrow, winding singletrack through closely packed trees.
    I can see that for fire-roads and DH it could be an improvement.

  5. Col says:

    Hmmm, that makes my oprimum handlebar width 33 inches! I’ve always preferred ’em wide but that’s just bonkers. I must be some sort of freak 🙂

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