Originally Posted by
topflightpro
PoorInRichfield is correct. Those shifters are not installed properly. They are on the tops of the bars. They should be about two inches down from where they are with the bar rotated back up.
That's what I thought the first time I looked. Looking more closely, these bars definitely have aero tops and this is their intended installation angle, weird as it may seem. These seem to me to be very odd bars - I can't imagine what their intended use is.
The OP's position and hand use on the hoods is the trad hand position, except that back then the hoods weren't nearly so comfortable. Nonetheless, racers managed fine. The deal was that back then frames were larger and to get our now natural hip angle when on the hoods, the hoods had to be way down where his are. Back then, drop bars had a lot more drop than they have now that frames are smaller with shorter head tubes and we use the hoods much more than the drops
He's riding what's a fairly modern carbon racing frame, just 30 years old. It's a little too small for him. He needs new bars, compact bars because of the frame size, and a longer stem - that's an incredibly short stem he's got on there. And it does NOT matter what the bar ends point to. Bars have all sorts of different bends now.