mr,grumpy 

Recently I got a bug up my arse to get a proper "road bike". Currently, I have a comfortable but heavy drop bar bike (Specialized Tricross) and a light weight flat bar bike (Trek FX S 4). Honestly, the "comfy" drop bar bike is not that comfy at all. With that in mind, I wanted to simulate exactly how bad a "real" roadbike would be so i flipped the stem so that it was pointing down instead of up and i noticed right away that the bike looked better. SO, I took it for a ride and you know what? I thought that it was MORE comfortable than it had been with the bars sticking up in the air. I'm not young. I'm definitely not fit. This was not at all the result that I expected.

SO, if you ahve ever wanted to try flipping your stem for whatever reason, I suggest that you do it. It took very little time, it's easily reversed and you might actually like or even prefer it.

Tomm Willians

Nothing wrong at all with experimenting with one’s bike fit. I would be interested to know though, have you ridden it like that a long distance? (Or long for you). My neck just cannot tolerate an aero position like that for very long. I do much better on aero bars than slamming my handlebars. I do see a great number of riders whose saddles are MUCH higher than their bars so obviously it works for them.

mr,grumpy 

Yes. Easily in fact. I haven't been riding a lot this year but my first ride out on the Tricross was as long as my longest ride so far this season. I don't think that, even at it's most slammed and flipped, a real road rider would find the Tricrposs's position to be terribly "aero". What surprised me most wasn't that I found the new position comfortable but that I found itt MORE comfortable than the "normal" way.

Maelochs

Same here .... i can ride the long-and-low aero position for 45-minutes or an hour and it feels great .... and then the pain starts, mostly in my neck and trapezius muscles, and then spreading in all directions.

If all my rides were 45 minutes or less (or if I were more fit and flexible) I could set up my race-geometry road bike with a pretty extreme, aggressive stance. However, at the speeds I ride, aero is hardly a concern.

Glad it is working for you, though.

indyfabz

Thanks. Now that song is stuck in my head.

mr,grumpy 

mr,grumpy 

That was the plan.

genejockey 

One sometimes gets paradoxical results in bikefitting. A couple years ago, I bought a new bike, a Canyon, direct from the manufacturer. (It was early in the Pandemic). When I received it, it had the stem set at the highest point, on top of a full stack of spacers. I adjusted the saddle height and setback to match my other bikes, and left all the spacers in place. First ride, my hands kept going numb. Conventional wisdom would say the bars were too low so I was putting too much pressure on them, but it turned out the bar was an inch HIGHER than all my other bikes. I moved 25mm of spacers to above the stem, and that bike is now comfortable for any distance I can manage.

So, discomfort on the bike related to bar height or reach is NOT always about the bars being too low or too far away. Sometimes, it's the opposite.

delbiker1 

The real test, IMO, would be to ride the new position for a while, long enough to get used to it. Then, go back to the original set up and ride that to see how it now feels. There are times I have done that, and found that I liked the original set up better. I think it is a mental thing where the change feels good just because it is different.

Maelochs

What if .... both positions felt okay?

tomato coupe

I ran into that issue -- turns out I had a 0° stem.

t2p

post of the day

we can close it down and resume tomorrow

Germany_chris

Did it taste like cherry chapstick

VegasJen

I'm the same with my neck. All that much more frustrating because I do triathlon and I have two TT bikes, which makes them look awfully peculiar with how high bars are and how low my seat is.

DaveSSS 

I'm a small 5'-6" rider, just turning 70. I still use an 11cm saddle to bar drop.

roadsnakes

I have a Very bad back.
Changed my stem , raised it as far as I could, and eventually flipped it. Really worked for me.



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Polaris OBark

My wife had this identical experience. But if you think about it, it does make sense. If the bars are higher up, you will be leaning on them more. If you are balanced correctly on the saddle, there will be a point where you lower them where almost no weight is on them.

mr,grumpy 

YES! That's how it feels but I never would have been eloquent enough to describe it that way. My body feels more balance on the bike. More part of it instead of just sitting on top of it and leaning forward.

mr,grumpy 

That seems like a super novel solution. Your dedication to not only keep riding but to keep THAT bike and make it work for you is admirable.

anduin z

Maybe it doesn't reach enough

rsbob 

Then you flip the bars over. Sheesh

indyfabz

I am going to ask the mods to edit the title of this thread because ot gives me an ear worm every time I see it.

indyfabz

Not sure if you don't believe in this, but it was a thing in Philly back in the 70s. Some people would flip drop bars up on their ten speeds so they couple pop wheelies easier.

And dig this. One of the people in my cross country tour group had a bad back and neck and rode with his drop bars flipped up. He sat virtually vertically. Made his very unstable. The second day of the trip we had to cross a floating bridge on Puget Sound. The strong crosswind blew him over. But the guy survived 2.5 years in a Nazi P.O.W. camp during WWII as a member of the R.C.A.F., so he was allowed to do anything he wanted as far as I was concerned. He turned 77 during the tour. Lived to be 90.

seypat

OP probably kissed a girl, then flipped his stem. Then flipped it again and again. Now he's having some vision issues.

veganbikes

People generally do it around here as their D.U.I. set up since they aren't able to drive a car they get an old road bike and flip the bars because they aren't really riders and they aren't ready to go sober or anything. I see it less and less as time goes on but used to be a bit more common. I guess hybrids keep becoming easier to find?