What is handlebar sweep

With the extreme stopping power that modern disc brakes have, one finger provides more than enough leverage to fully lock up your wheel, if needed. The more fingers you have on your bar, the more control you will have over your bike. Proper brake lever reach is important, and can reduce "arm pump".

This is the exhausted feeling that develops in your wrists and forearms during extended downhills. It can be minimized greatly by moving your brake lever inward toward your bar. It is called this because it changes how far your finger has to reach to engage the lever.

This adjustment is available on most brakes, and it is usually in the form of a dial or knob somewhere on or around the lever. If you're unsure, you can always reference your manual. Why does this help? Picture doing a pull-up with an open hand grip vs a closed grip. Your hand and forearm will tire much more quickly doing a pull-up with your fingers open. Same thing when you are hanging onto your handlebar for dear life. How close to the bar should your levers engage?

I like to run my lever so that the brake engages almost on the grip. This is closer than most people are comfortable with, but since it is so easy to change this on most brakes, you can experiment with it on trail.

This determines the distance you have to pull the lever before it engages as opposed to reach, which determines how far away the lever sits from the bar.

Sports medics recommend a stronger backwards bend in order to achieve a straighter transition from lower arm to hand. The so-called back sweep, the backward bend, ensures the wrist is not overstretched, the carpal tunnel is no longer constricted and the supply to hand is improved.

The risk of sleepy and numb fingers is minimised. Especially discomfort in index and middle fingers is reduced. We have a handlebar for each discipline of riding with the respective correct amount of back sweep.

This chain needs to be observed as a whole. The hand position determines the elbow position. Bike fitting is a science to some , an art to others, and a fashion statement to many. That said, however, there are some serious benefits to understanding how the proper handlebar height and rise can seriously affect ride quality and potentially solve issues riders may not even realize are related to where their hands connect to the bike.

This is the angle at which the bar bends back from the stem to provide a comfortable angle for your hands to hold. There are two different measurements of sweep: upsweep and backsweep. Naturally, upsweep measures the angle at which the bars bend up from the stem, and backsweep measures how far the bars bend back. Typically, upsweep measurements are roughly 5degrees and only vary slightly between bars. Backsweep measurements are typically between 5 degrees and 9 degrees, with most makes and models falling right in the middle.

This is the width of the handlebar as measured from end to end in a straight line. Most modern handlebars measure between 27 and 31 inches wide, with the more aggressive bikes using the wider bars and the lighter trail and cross-country bikes opting for the narrower ones. Bar width not only adjusts how wide and stable your grip feels, but also how low your torso and overall center of gravity are distributed on the bike. Bar rise is largely personal preference but has its roots in intended use.

Historically, aggressive trail and gravity bikes have been best served with slightly more rise, while cross-country bikes and lightweight trail bikes tend to use less.

This largely has to do with the desired position on the bike. Since more aggressive riders tend to prefer a rear-biased weight distribution and cross-country riders tend to prefer a forward weight bias, selecting the correct rise seems easy; however, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, and many riders choose to break it. For that reason, this is the variable we chose to test for this Mountain Bike Action experiment. The bar achieves this wide range of intended uses with an ultra-lightweight construction paired with a very adequate The bar is available with a 7-degree backsweep and 5-degree upsweep in four different rises ranging from 10 millimeters to 40 millimeters.

The Renthal Fatbar Lite Carbon test bars weighed between 6. Field Test Results:. Renthal recently released its Fatbar Light carbon bar after the huge success of the Fatbar aluminum, which quickly became a favorite of gravity, enduro, and dirt jump riders.

The Fatbar Light seeks to strike a balance between trail and enduro durability and cross-country weight savings. For the test, we experimented with all four handlebar heights on a trail that features everything from long paved sections and fire road ascents to steep and loose technical descents. We chose to use our tried-and-true Intense Tracer for the duration of the test.

The bike sports 6. On the scale, all four bars weighed an impressively light 6. On the bike, the