Getting Your Gravel Bike Cockpit Dialed

Our all-new line of gravel cockpit components is designed to help your gravel bike fit your body, riding style, and aesthetic perfectly. While many folks stick with their stock cockpit parts, upgrading to parts that fit and function can help you enjoy every ride a bit more.

Here are nine things to consider when picking out these touch points:

1. Handlebar Width – The conventional wisdom is to choose handlebar width that roughly corresponds with your shoulder width (measure the width between your acromion, the bony protrusions on the tops of your shoulders). This is a good starting point, but don’t feel locked in to that measurement. Some riders prefer wider bars for their added leverage and stability, while others prefer narrower bars for wrist position and a slightly more aerodynamic position.

2. Handlebar Flare – We’re firm believers in flare. Handlebars that flare outward at the hoods, drops, or both put your hands in a wider stance, giving you more stability, confidence, and comfort on challenging terrain. All drop bars in our lineup have some degree of flare, from our 6-degree Tropo road bike bar up to 24 degrees on our Radia 24 bikepacking bar.

3. Handlebar Shape – Our gravel and bikepacking handlebars feature a semi-compact drop to make it easier and smoother to switch to the drops section from the other bar positions. For added comfort, our Feldspar handlebar features flattened tops that help reduce vibrations and provide even pressure on your palms.

4. Hood Positioning – Ideally, your hoods are positioned to put your wrists in a neutral position, keeping your wrists aligned with your forearms. You can reduce your reach for a more upright position by angling the hoods upward slightly, or move them lower for a slightly, longer and lower position on the bike. Don’t overdo it — slight incremental changes are better than major overcorrections that can lead to ride-ruining discomfort. All of our drop bars feature lines in the hood clamp area to help you gauge their position and align them properly.

5. Stem Length & Angle – Stem length is all about putting your handlebar in the right spot. Ideally you’d get a bike fit before choosing stem length, but if you’re feeling too stretched out on your bike, a shorter stem will alleviate that, while a longer stem can help if you’re feeling to cramped.

Our Radia road and gravel stems come in a +/- 6-degree angle, meaning you can put your bars up at a 6-degree angle for a more upright position, or flip the stem upside-down and point downward at a 6-degree angle for a slightly more aggressive riding position. Our Lytho mountain bike stems come in a +/- 0-degree angle. There are plenty of stems out there with more-extreme angles, so feel free to experiment to find what feels most comfortable.

6. Reach & Stack – A reach that’s too long or short can be uncomfortable on the bike. While your bike frame has a fixed reach, you can adjust your bike’s effective reach (the distance between where you sit and your hand position) in many ways:

• Stem length and angle
• Handlebars with different reach
• Seatpost offset
• Hood position
• Saddle height and position

Stack is the difference in height between the center of your bottom bracket and the highest point of your top tube. A higher stack puts you in a more upright position, while lower stack means a more aggressive, hunched-over riding position. Like reach, your bike frame has a fixed stack, but you can tweak your effective stack with cockpit adjustments:

• Stems with steeper or shallower angles
• Handlebars with more or less rise
• Adding or removing headset spacers under stem

7. Bar Tape & Grip – Your bar tape and grips are one of your three points of contact with your bike, so they’re no place to skimp. You can find bar tape in a wide range of materials, finishes, and thicknesses to suit your preferences. Our Radia bar tape has a gel backing for cushion and comes in two different thicknesses; try the 3.5mm if your hands regularly feel beat-up by rough roads; try the 2.5mm thickness if you have smaller hands or prefer a sleeker cockpit.

Grips are a similar story: there are endless sizes, shapes, and materials out there, and it may take some experimenting before you find the one you love. Our Lytho grips are a great starting point, with a comfortable three-zone design, stable lock-on collar, two thickness options and five colors to fit your preferences.  

8. Accessory Space – Do you regularly ride with a GPS unit, bell, aero bars, or bag mounts on your handlebar? Clamping real estate vanishes quickly as the accessories add up — make sure you choose a handlebar that can handle everything you want to mount on it. Most of our handlebars feature extra-wide clamp areas (as wide as 140mm on our Radia bars) so you never have a cluttered cockpit.

9. Material Matters – Handlebars come in a wide variety of materials — from steel to titanium to aluminum and carbon fiber — each with its own characteristics. Carbon fiber handlebars are prized for their ability to minimize vibrations from road and trail impacts, and their unmatched strength-to-weight ratio. All Teravail carbon fiber handlebars feature a unidirectional carbon layup for greater stiffness and strength.

Aluminum handlebars generally offer an excellent strength-to-weight ratio at a lower cost than carbon fiber, but they come in an array of different alloys for different balances of stiffness, durability, and weight. Our aluminum bars come in 6061, 7075, and 7050 alloys, and all are T6 heat-treated to improve strength and durability.
We hope this guide helps you set up your ride your way.