Notice the high elbows and shrugged shoulders? If you are most comfortable on your bars in this position, it’s quite possible they are too wide. Optimal shoulder mechanics will be present with a more externally rotated humerus (elbows down slightly).

If you change your handlebar’s width, then you’ll also change how your bike rides. Making the switch to a narrower handlebar will wake up the front end of your bike making it more twitchy and easier to maneuver; while a wider bar will increase the stability of your front end and provide a calmer feel than before.

Mountain bikes have wider handlebars because the wider the riders grip is on the handlebars, the easier it is to transfer input from the hands to the wheel. Maintaining control while going downhill on a rocky trail is a matter of safety for the rider which is exactly what wider handlebars are designed for.

The standard fitting advice is to get a handlebar as wide as the measurement between your AC joints. Those are the bumps atop your shoulders where the collarbone attaches just inboard of your deltoid muscle. But many riders prefer a handlebar slightly wider than their shoulders. A wide bar opens the chest.

The sitting surface on road seats will flex & bend to conform to your body. It’s for these reasons that new riders are often uncomfortable on road bikes. If I always used my bike to ride to the park & back or on the bike path with my wife, I’d never own a road bike. They’re uncomfortable when used like that.

Handlebar width should purely depend on the size of the rider and more importantly the width of their shoulders. The most common mountain bike handlebar widths range from around 710mm to 780mm. However, shorter riders may require much narrower bars, and very tall riders may require a full 800mm handlebar.

The rule of thumb when selecting the correct handlebar width is to measure the distance between the two bony bits on your shoulders – in more scientific terms the distance between your two acromioclavicular (AC) joints. This measurement gives you a baseline – if it’s 38cm, look for 38cm bars – and so on.

One of the most disheartening things I’ve seen over the last few years is the popularity of wide handlebars. Almost every rider I see is on bars in the 800 mm range, with few if any using bars in the 700-725 mm range.

He said: “My personal opinion is that the standard handlebars width 40–44cm is too wide. There are many people who say if you go smaller you can’t expand your lungs enough and your power will drop off but it’s an absolute myth.

The larger rider is likely to fit a wider 760- or 780-millimeter bar, while the smaller rider would probably fit more naturally on a 720- or 740-millimeter bar. Making it easy: Some handlebars, such as the Renthal Fatbar Carbon, provide riders with markings that make cutting their bars to size quick and easy.

Monika Hrastnik, 2018 IXS European DH champion, demonstrates how wide bars keep a rider low and forward. Not so long ago, frame geometry encouraged riders to stay well back over the bike while descending and cornering. Both downhill and trail bikes had shorter reaches, steeper head tube angles, and more compact wheelbases.