How wide are your bars on your trail bike?

800mm on both my Pace RC627 and Orange Stage 5, both feel ace (especially the Orange). Think they were on 740mm on my XC bike and also felt just the job for that bike.

Tried loads of widths on my gravel bike but couldn’t get comfy. Reckon the hight of the front is more of a factor for me.

780 I think. I’m 175cm.

800mm

5’10 fairly broad shouldered

50mm stem on a bike originally set up with 70mm stem (120mm travel 29r FS).  It just takes the twitch off the steering Vs a narrowed bar while keeping my weight back a touch.

I think the stock bar was about 740, which was also fine.

780mm on both bikes, I’m 181cm and have average width shoulders I’d say. Tried 800mm on the FS, thought they felt too wide.

790 mm on the bouncy bike, 820mm on the rigid stooge.  Both feel right on the bike in question.  BMX bars are currently 730 but I’ll be cutting them down to about 700 as they feel too wide and I want to learn barspins

Oneup 800mm, really comfy, didn’t want/need to cut them

730 and I’m 6’2, perhaps the edge of my hand hanging slightly over the ends when I’m cruising

Trails are pretty tight round here and I don’t feel short of leverage in any way. 65 degree h/a bike which I also feel is fine.

Bars cut to 750 so with grips on 760. I’m 188cm tall and feel that puts my hands in the right place in front of me to not work to hard to keep off the front when it gets rough. Think it’s my natural push up position

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 183cm and run 800mm and that feels fine to me. Trail bike has 12deg sweep and anything less now feels like torture. HT gets used for gravel and big days and I use Kyotes with 24 deg.

780 on both my HT and FS. 5’9″ on a tall day, medium chest, +5cm ape index.

Bar width is a very subjective.

175 and 780…. serendipitously….v comfortable

Is there a similar equation for road bars?

780. I arrived at this by the officially mandated process of getting some 780mm bars, thinking they were too wide, and cutting 10mm off each end which made me realise that 760 was too narrow.

I am thinking though that I might try shorter again, now that all my mountain bikes are massively long and slack… I reckon it’s possible that the long bars were partly compensating for short reach and lack of stability.

Just using the bars that came with Ebike ‘A’ which are 800mm and seem pretty good width for me. But Ebike ‘B’ is getting a 720mm, so I’ll be interested to see how that feels.

Thankfully i got a spare 800mm bar from the crc sale, so if 720mm proves too much of a difference, I’ll swop back to 800mm

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

I have the same issue and find wide flat bars bad for that.  Anything over 600mm is bad for me but realise nobody these days would use bars like that.  Luckily I still think it is 1996 with my old MTB with 550mm bars on it which look quite fitting.

I still wonder how much wide bars were a remedy for poor geometry (along with short stems). Bikes are much more stable than they were when wide bars started getting trendy so perhaps it’s easier to spec slightly narrower bars now with less of a negative impact.

FWIW, I’m 195cm and run 780mm bars. Partly because I’m limited to that width with my preferred 12° backsweep but I’ve not felt the need for anything wider.

187cm tall and I run 780mm wide on everything.

Cut to 760, so 770ish with grips. I’ve got some old open-ended lock-on grips so moved back and forth over a few rides to settle on that. Hardtail I think is 740.

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?

I’m relentlessly medium, 5’9″ / 175cm tall but with wider/broader shoulders than I should have for my height.

I run… 44cm mildly-flared bars on the cross/grovel bike, but with the hoods angled in. If I don’t do that, I get neck pain, presumably because my wrists cock slightly to compensate and throw my shoulders off in turn. I should probably try 42cm with a normal hood set-up. On the road bike, 42cm bars.

On the mountain bikes, 780mm. I find 800mm too wide. I tried them for a few weeks, but they felt unnaturally wide and uncomfortable, so I carefully removed 1cm from each end and tried again.

I do wonder about 760mm, but I’m not about to wreck a pair of perfectly good risers to find out and, in honesty, 780mm feels ‘right’ bar the very occasional narrow gap.  I might sacrifice my cheapo spare bars as an experiment though. Obviously the wider the bar, the further forward you’re pulled to reach it, so it’s not just about wrist and shoulder position.

I’m intrigued by the odd drop bar that angles the tops forward slightly so that your wrists sit in a more natural position there, it seems logical on paper, but they’re uniformly expensive – IQlabs and the like – so maybe not for a while yet.

I’m pretty much 780 on everything, which nets at 800 with grips.

Apart from one with a set of 800mm carbon bars which I couldn’t be bothered to cut down.

185cm tall for reference.

800 and I’m 6’5″

This is worth a watch especially towards the end where they talk about moving your controls first and see how it goes as the grips are generally wide enough to give you 40mm difference in hand placement without cutting the bars so you can work out what feels best then cut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMXlKED32uo

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

An important point there.

I run 760mm bars with over the ends grips (usually Deathgrips) on the hardtail, and 800mm bars with grips that clamp on the ends on the full sus… the narrower bar is up only slightly narrower hand to hand than the wide bar because of how the grips mount.

780 on trail bike, 760 on XC hardtail.

Note as per poster above, I think the grips make a difference – I now use push on elastomer grips, and thus my hands are narrower on a 780 bar than they would be on a 780 bar with deathrips (or similar) that ‘hang’ off the end of the bar a little.

775mm for me.

I’ve tried everything from 670 to 810 (including grips) over the last 15 years, covering most 10mm increments. Have settled on 770 as the best compromise for my size (5’10.5” with 6’2” arm span), my bikes’ geometry and the tight twisty local trails but also the fast rough stuff elsewhere.

I don’t like lots of backsweep, use Renthal bars as they’re straighter than most (7 deg back?). I don’t like v short stems either, 50mm on both bikes.

I’ve had some 800s on my anthem for a while and despite meaning to cut them down, because they’re unwieldy, I’ve found them fine for just general riding comfort. Never get shoulder or neck issues – don’t think it’s all that important a variable for me.

I guess if you ride all day, touring or bikepacking style, then these small measurements become more important.

the narrower bar is up only slightly narrower hand to hand than the wide bar because of how the grips mount.

This.

We always quote overall end to end distance, where the more comparable measurement would be across the inner collars.  Different grips mount at different points and can be different lengths.

800mm including grips, but I am just over 6’2″ with fairly wide shoulders and long arms.

Just ridden post chopping 15mm off either end. Game changer!

Up felt loads stronger out the saddle (needed to be as my AXS battery was flat and left me in 30/12) for the up home! Anyone who knows Sheffield, bottom of wyming Brook up!

Down was loads better, weight felt fat more central and just less stretched

Reckon I could knock another 10mm off to take them to 760!!

But 770 stays for a few weeks

780mm on my bike. It’s what the Renthals came as and I’ve never felt the need to cut them shorter. I’m 181cm tall with a 183cm wingspan if that makes any help.