How wide are your bars on your trail bike?

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

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.

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.