How wide are your bars on your trail bike?

The headache thread provoked this thread.

I suffer with a tight neck and upper back despite lots of stretching and foam rollering. This is way worse after mtb pm my trail bike with 810mm bars

On my gravel bike (440mm) bars I’m dead comfy.

I’m 186cm but have narrow shoulders.

How did you arrive at your current bar width?

The bollox metric of multiplying your height by .44 gives me a stupid width

800mm – that’s how they came. I planned ride a bit and cut them down if needed, they felt comfortable so I left them as they are. I am tall with ape like arms though.

By Eck ! 810mm is DH territory for quite wide width shoulders.

I’m quite wide tbh and run 780mm as sweet spot.

Even 800mm on my DH bike was too much though I was well ok still a novice.

About 178 tall here. 770-780 is the sweet spot for me.

Disclaimer: riding bikes gives me migraines, may not be the best person to ask.

760 I think. Six foot tall, but short limbed.

Oh, and I kept clipping trees and fences with longer bars.

I thought that 740mm to 760mm was about as wide as I could go.  I then got some bars with 9 degrees sweep thinking I’d end up cutting them down but so far I’ve not felt the need (they are 800mm).

I’m thinking about trying 12 degree sweep next. Or maybe 16.  I know 25 degrees is too much for trail riding though 🙂

800mm but I’m 6’2″ with long arms.

I tried going back down to 750-780 but preferred the full 800.

I’m 6″4
Tandem, hardtail and full suss are all 800mm

780mm. Feels fine.

I’m a shade under 6′ with longish arms.

I’m 6″4
Tandem, hardtail and full suss are all 800mm

Woah! You must have freakishly long arms.

😉

800 , I fitted them and found them comfy so left them alone

800mm. I bought some Prime XC carbon bars (for £15!) in the dying days of the CRC sale and installed them fairly recently, they replaced the original 780mm alloy bars, saving a significant chunk of weight in the process.

The carbon ones are WAY more comfortable. I was finishing rides with wrist pain previously, now I can ride all day with no issues. I suspect that’s more to do with the material than the width but they’re plenty comfortable enough.

bar width on its own won’t tell you much – you might want to consider ETT, reach, stem length etc etc.

but to answer your question 740mm on trail and enduro bikes. I’m 175cm and averagely proportioned.

i got to that point by lopping 10mm off my bars and having a few rides, then lopping off another 10mm. i found it easy to tell when i’d gone too far as it was dead uncomfortable, even after a period of allowing myself to get used to it.

750mm is also good for me.

i suspect that a lot of riders run their bars wider than they think they need to. but horses for courses and all that – i also prefer bikes with shorter reach so YMMV.

780 for me at 185. Never felt the need to go wider and getting the bikes in the cellar would become even more annoying.

720mm – bike came with them.

800 on everything (except the gravel obvs) shorter than you, but probably broader shoulders

6ft and 760 on the hardtail and 780 on my full suspension bike as that’s how they came. I do find the 760 comfier but the 780 feel a bit better on the rougher stuff.

680 – 740 on my bikes  I’m 5 ft 10  I have cut 800 mm bars down and tho they are 740 wide I run the grips and levers inboard so probably 700 equivalent

I think many folk run absurdly wide bars.  800 would be ridiculous for me putting hands and arms in a very poor position.  I am a bimbler tho

800mm.

I had every intention of cutting them down to some mythical perfect width, but y’know? Who has time for that sort of shit, so 800mm it is

Yet you have time to write about not doing it?? Weird

800mm

My lady is 5’2″ (I seem to have mentioned that a few times today, but it is relevant!) and her Trek came with 800mm bars. She has expressed no misgivings.

@TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR Peter crouch is more hench than me

760 IIRC. I’m 172cm and average proportions. I’ve tried wider and the bike felt like a barge. As someone already pointed out, sweep and angle play a role too.

Mine are all at 760mm

First full suss bike I bought (and only new full mtb I’ve ever bought) was a Bird Aeris. As you can spec them exactly as you want, I asked what the bar width on the large demo bike was, as that felt good.

760mm.

Not long after that I changed the 720mm on my hardtail to 760mm to match. (luckily, my GF bought a stumpy that came with 760 bars and being a narrow shouldered woman wanted narrower ones).

At some later point I got another set of 760mm bars with a higher rise to try.

Never felt the desire to go wider, my home turf is low speed wooded trails. I do have my hands close to the edge though, I prefer grips with only an inner clamp. So I guess with 780 and double clamp grips I would be in the same position.

800 on the big bike

780 on the trail bike

760 on the fun HT and the fattie

740 on the XC race bike, feels narrower as I have bar ends.

Big bike ones are alloy, the rest are carbon, big bike trail bike are risers, the rest are flat. I’m 5’11”. My preferred width varies with use.

I’m 172/3cm and my MTB bars are 750mm grip end – grip end, I think the bars are 720mm wide with my lock on grips 10mm wider and a bit of grip rubber making up the 750mm.

I remember 23″ bars being radically wide 🤣

173cm tall & 174cm wingspan

Both FS & HT are 770mm wide

Cut down bit by bit until it felt right

Mine were 800mm on both bikes (Orange Crush and Orbea Rise), mainly because that was the standard width of what I fitted.

I went down to 790 on the Rise and it felt better (handled better, less shoulder and neck pain) do I chopped another 5mm either side on Saturday. Rode Sunday with them a 780 and it’s a totally different bike. Much snappier. It’s going to take a few more rides to get used to it I think. I might go narrower still. It’s amazed me how such a small change has such a big impact on how it rides.

I found it much easier lifting the front wheel with them cut down and the pain I was getting between my shoulders has reduced significantly so I’m sold on narrower for the time being.

780 is the sweet spot for me. 178cm tall (5ft10 in old money) with slightly above average shoulder width and build. Happily run down to 760 though depending on the bike. Anything narrower starts to feel cramped, and anything over 780 starts to feel ponderous to turn and makes it hard to get through tighter tree sections.

Run flared 440’s on my Gravel bike (shoulders 44cm apart), yet am more comfortable on the 420’s on my road bike!

Where does the “0.44x your height” rule come from…? I’d not heard it before, although it does seem pretty accurate for me at least.

@mboy was discussed on the headache thread

I went all the way up to 780mm but gradually settled back to 750. Over time I realised that I had gone from always having my hands the lockring as I went up the sizes till they ended up at the inner end of the grips.

800 on everything (except the gravel obvs) shorter than you, but probably broader shoulders

Yeah, but if you flatten out all those wobbly bits, I’m sure you’ll get close.

685mm, and yet I still punch the occasional tree trunk.

6ft, with normal arms (not an orangutan!)

I run 780mm bars on my Ragley Blue Pig (but the DMR Deathgrips add about 10mm either side)

800mm on my Stooge.

820mm on my Surly Krampus.

Thing that’s helped most with back/shoulder issues is having plenty of rise and back sweep.

6ft (less 1cm) quite broad shoulders, normal to slightly long arms here.

760mm but prob 770mm with Deathgrip overhang.

It’s as narrow as I could be comfortable with whilst not being nervous about clipping trees etc. I run my hands slightly over the ends of the bars – the rationale being that I can feel where my hands are so don’t want more bar sticking out to catch on stuff.

0.44 x Ht. was spot on for me too.

Interesting thread, and timely for me.

I’ve got 740s on my Orbea Occam. I’ve had shoulder issues for the last few years (not just on this bike) and I fitted some new slide-on grips last week and since they’re open-ended set them inboard a bit to try a narrower bar, effectively 710. 250km in the Peak over the weekend and less shoulder pain than I was expecting, so may chop them. Didn’t noticed any lack of control on the tech – Jacob’s Ladder was fine, even with bivvy kit strapped to the bars.

However, I’ve also wondered about more backsweep. Currently 9deg. Run 15deg on my rigid bike which feels like the sweet spot for me – didn’t get on with more extreme sweeps. Wondering how it’ll affect handling though – this bike gets used for proper steep stuff too. Any experiences?

Edit: I’m 6’1″, so 185cm, which means I should be using 815mm bars, which is clearly, as noted, bollox.

I’m 177cm, all my bars are 750mm (760nm with grips) I really feel comfortable riding at this width. Spent to long trying 800mm and sticking to 780mm because that’s what everyone’s on! Experimented cutting down an old set and it worked for me.

They were 800 but I had them cut down to 780. Those 2 cm made a massive difference in my confidence in going through trees. I still don’t like to zigzag through traffic with them that wide and prefer my gravel bike which has very much narrower bars

760