[OHPV-list] Need advice - handlebar/shifter setup

[Pat Franz]

I've found that a good consistent way to determine a comfortable handlebar 
setup is to:

1. Sit in a chair that doesn't have arms.
2. Let your arms dangle down, and shake them out to loosen them.
3. Reach up as if to grab handlebars, but do so without rotating your hands 
or wrists. Just reach up relaxedly. It may take a few tries to do this 
without thinking too much.
4. A comfortable handlebar for you should fit right into where your hands 
are- where you reached most naturally.

That said, your most relaxed hand position is just a start.A few other notes 
on comfort and other considerations:

1. In general, the distance between centers of the grips should be about the 
same as the width of your shoulders.
2. Your hands may not both want the same angle. If they are within 10 
degrees or so, you probably will be fine with a bar that's the same on both 
sides. More than 15 degrees or so, you should consider a custom bar.
3. Ideally, you should be able to lay a ruler from up the top of your arm, 
over your hand, and along the top of your middle finger. That is to say, 
there should be pretty much a straight line down the back of your middle 
finger, across your hand, and down your arm. If not, you are bending things 
that take sustained muscular/tendon effort to keep in that position, and 
that will hurt after a while.
4. Gripshifts are usually associated with wrist pain, not elbow pain. If you 
have wrist mobility/strength issues, Gripshifts could be problematic. You 
can soften the detent springs, which reduces the operating force (and shock) 
quite a bit. If you have elbow pain, I'd suspect the width/angle of the bars 
first, particularly since your bars are in the flattish range. Many people 
find wider/steeper bars than yours to be more comfortable.
5. Many ergonomic and other issues come into play with handlebars, including 
forward/back position, knee interference, leg/chest interference on sharp 
turns, height, forward visibility, ability to mount things, and 
aerodynamics.

In practice, the "best" bar is a complicated compromise between a lot of 
things. Since everyone is different, and bikes vary widely, the best you can 
hope for is a bar/hand position that works well for you after only 2 or 3 
tries. It's quite possible to get things much better in one try, but only if 
things like knee interference don't crop up.

One of the reasons manufacturers go for flatter bars is so that people won't 
have knee interference. Most people won't be as comfortable as they could 
be, but they can ride away without bonking their legs on the bars as they 
learn the bike. Setup is easier, too.

Here's an idea- an OHPV handlebar "library"! I'll bet if we pooled our 
various odd handlebars we've got laying around, we'd have quite a 
selection.... but perhaps, the selection might then be slanted towards 
things that don't work 8-(

If the lawyers didn't scare me so much, I'd have made fully adjustable bars 
years ago. They'd be great on a recumbent, but I wouldn't want them used 
(and abused) on mountain bikes.

--Pat Franz
                         TerraCycle, Inc.
 Recumbent Bicycle Upgrades & Accessories
www.terracycle.com info at terracycle.com 800-371-5871/503-231-9798(USA)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Pedersen" <j_n_l_pedersen at hotmail.com>
Subject: [OHPV-list] Need advice - handlebar/shifter setup


> Hello, all:
>
> I'm having some elbow tendinitis problems, and have isolated some of the
> cause to handlebar ergonomics on my bike.  In general, I find that 
> rotating
> grip-shift shifters aggravates it....
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