Road Bike Position Angles
9 top tips for setting up your new road bike.
Road bike position angles. Changing the stem length not only impacts your fit and comfort it affects the handling dynamics of a road bike. The most comfortable position for most road bike cyclists is where the angle between the torso and the upper arm is around 90 degrees see illustration below. Generally your hands should be placed in whatever position you most frequently ride. Proper body position on a road bike how to ride with proper body position on a road bike.
Get your hands on our early bird christmas. A professional bike fit can be pretty expensive so here james and dan run you through 6 positional tweaks you can make to perfect your riding position. Our cycling position guide should help you get it right. Stem angles sloping upward are recorded as positive numbers while stem angles sloping downward should be recorded as negative numbers.
Often the rider will need to increase their hip angle to improve comfort or minimise power losses and move forwards to the tip of the saddle. Sporting more traditional bike geometry a road bike will place you in a better position for climbing turning sprinting and riding in a peloton. A good fit can also help prevent overuse. Road bikes are ideal for both the smooth and rough pavements and are comfortable over long distances.
You should have a slight bend in the elbows to maximize comfort and control. The set up for a road bike will be different for each person as each individual has different sizes for our arms legs torsos and any other part of the body. This means the headtube angle as the bike sits is 72 degrees the angle from horizontal is 25 degrees. Whereas on my road bike i have a little bit of a flatter position.
The correct riding position. For example a bike is measured and the angle from vertical is 18 degrees. A shorter stem will result in snappier steering a longer stem will produce slower steering. Stem length affects handling.
Proper bike fit means you have a position on the bike that lets you ride as long as you want as hard as you want and stay comfortable the entire time. This is not always the case on a tt tri bike. There is no such thing as the correct position only the correct position for you. On a road bike the riders fore aft location is largely defined by the saddle position.