I keep skimming or hitting things with the handlebars on my new bike, and they feel too wide anyway, so I want to cut them down.

Are there any general guidelines for how wide they should be, perhaps related to shoulder width? I think I have relatively narrow shoulders, like 38 or 40 I seem to remember, or is that a chest size?

Old 100mm 26er FS bike: 580mm wide flat bar, 120mm stem.
New 120mm 29er FS bike: 730mm wide riser bar, 90mm stem.

Cheers.

Wide bars are for stability at the expense of controlability. Frankly I don’t go along with the trend and feel comfortable with bars in the 660-700 region, depending on bike type. If you don’t like them wide just bite the bullet and trim them down until you are comfortable but make sure you have enough room for the brakes/shifters etc. try 10mm a side until you are more comfortable. Guidelines and trends are crap, just do what you are comfortable with. Going from 580 flat to 710 riser is a bit of a jump that would take a bit of getting used to.

I am old school and chop my down.

I’d advise sticking with it for a while before trimming them down. I put some 760mm bars on my 29er, intending to trim them but now they feel spot-on and anything much less feels weird.

I do knock them very occasionally and you do need to give a bit more input in the tight and twisty stuff but they really help with holding a line when things get steep, fast and bumpy.

Give it a month or two and if you still don’t like them, cut them down a little at a time till they suit.

Can I recommend simply moving controls inboard 10mm at a time. The old adage of measure twice cut once comes to mind…if you decide you preferred your last setting it’s a bit late once you made the cut.

+1 above. Move grips/brakes/shifters in 10mm, try it, and keep moving until you find the spot you like, then cut.

There’s no rules – I ride 750mm bars most of the time, thinking of going 800 on the DH bike, have 711s on the Soul which feel too narrow for me now.

Just measured my bars out of curiosity: 620mm (ish).
Feel perfect for me but then I have no shoulders.

Can I recommend simply moving controls inboard 10mm at a time. The old adage of measure twice cut once comes to mind…if you decide you preferred your last setting it’s a bit late once you made the cut.

+1 best bit of advice so far.

I’d also say look at your whole body position on the bike and consider how the the controls affects this, not just the width of the bars but the overall reach (Stem length) and height relative to the rest of your body.

Do you still have your old bike to measure up / make comparisons with?

Stop riding into stuff…or cut them down. Either is fine.

Mine are 780mm to compensate for elsewhere 😉

I but a hardtail with 720mm bars on them, and can’t imagine riding anything less now. I’m wondering about going even larger, but that seems overkill. 660 or 680 bars seem all wrong to me now.

725 on the HT, 780 on the 6″ bike and 860 on the DH. I is big.

Hmm, I was hoping to get there a bit quicker than incrementally, but moving the controls in further first is a good idea. I’ll still be hitting stuff that way though. Sometimes I’m having to straighten up a bit through turns just to thread the bars through the gap between the trees.

I can’t help thinking that there must be some relationship to your shoulder width, and arm and stem length as well, because I can’t imagine you’d want an unbent arm on the outside of the turn.

I used a 700mm bar and 90mm stem for Alpine DH on my old bike and that still felt wide after 2 weeks of riding, so I reckon I’ll cut down to 700mm first since I’m riding trails and go from there.

I’ve also been bending my mind trying to work out the dynamics between bar width, stem length, and steering speed and control. As I remember it wide bars and short stems came about on DH bikes to counteract the slow steering of long forks and slack head angles.

I’m a stumpy one and even I like 720 min on my trail/playbike 760 on my am and dh bikes. Awesome improvement in control and stability.

90mm stem?

Yes, I’ve still got my old bike, and the 90mm stem on my new bike is stock.

Interestingly Pinkbike’s bar width video mentions 1cm longer on the stem is worth 2cm shorter on the bar to maintain the same handling. This could make sense of the old school set up on my old bike, but by the same rule my new 730mm bar would theoretically need a 55 stem to speed the handling up.

From googling around I believe the following is true, but I’m willing to be educated! The last point I’ve called input relates to needing to turn the bars further and thus faster to steer the same amount even though it’s easier.

Slower steering Faster steering
Wider bar Narrower bar
Longer stem Shorter stem
More leverage Less leverage
Less effort More effort
Less deflection More deflection
More control Less control
More input Less input