
Learn how to adjust brakes to suit your riding style and ergonomics in this free online video on cycling maintenance.
All Videos In The Series, "Cycling Maintenance for Mountain Bikes"
"On different types of bikes, like different disciplines and uses of bikes. You see that some people sometimes set up their handle bars differently. Both the tilt of their handle bars and the angle of their brakes. If you look here at this bike, my handle bars are rolled back from straight up. The axis if they were straight up would be right here, and here they are rolled back because I am usually riding farther back on the bike so it just makes the angles of the handle bars and the bends the most comfortable on my wrist. This bike over here is a down hill bike, it pretty much only get ridden down crazy steep hill, really fast in a controlled environment. Because this back is a lot slacker, this angle here is considerably slacker. The front axle is so much farther ahead of my handle bars these bars are rolled forward a lot more, almost straight up and down verses rolled back. The angle that I have my brake levers at changes to coincide with how I am riding considerably further forward. So you can see my wrist is almost pointing straight down in the riding position that I usually ride this bike at and it is still is a nice even, clean ergonomic bend. Same sort of thing, I am only using the very end of the grip so my levers are pretty far to the outside. You know different people grow up riding different types of bikes. Some people who ride motorcycles are middle finger breakers so they obviously need to move their lever reach farther out so they don't crush their ringers. It's one of these personal things, it's still ergonomics there is still science behind it, they are still really good rules, but it really all depends on what type of rider you are what your preferences are and all that other stuff. Have fun out there and use your brakes carefully."
Expert Village: Mickey Denoncourt
Video Series: Sports & Fitness
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