Bar Extensions for Mountain Bikes

Video Transcript

"There are lots of different ways of perfecting the proper weight shift for climbing. The thing that has become a lot more popular in the last ten years or so is wider handlebars. A lot of older bikes have handlebars that as you can see are considerably narrower than the handlebars I have on my bike right now. With the narrower handlebars the one thing that really helps are what are called handle bearings or climbing extensions. The total width of this bar with these bar extensions about twenty-one inches. Which is pretty narrow considering this other bar is twenty seven and half inches. So what the climbing extensions add is a second more ergonomic climbing position that gives you more leverage. Because your hands are stronger like this than they are like this you recruit more muscle when you're climbing on these handle bar extensions. They also really reinforce the notion that I was talking about of pulling down and back on the handlebars. With one of these wider handle bars that I have currently instead of the down and back coming this way you really forced on you by the handle bar extensions you create that same sort of leverage by dropping your chest more dropping your elbows pulling down and back on the handle bars almost twisting the grips right off the bike. That's the real way to create suction cup like traction on your rear wheel by dropping your chest, dropping your elbows pulling down and allow you to climb anything pretty darn efficiently. That's what happened to bearings they died with the advent of wider handlebars on all sorts amount of bikes."