Originally Posted by
MRT2
Modern brake shift levers work best using one finger for shifting and two fingers for braking, pretty much like shift buttons and brake levers on hybrids and mountain bikes. When you ride on the hoods, the index fingers are resting on the break levers. While you can grab a whole fist of brake lever from the drops, if you actually tried to do this for real, you are going down as this is not how anyone ordinarily uses brakes on a road bike. For those with really small or weak hands, there is always the option of installing an extra set of break levers on the tops.
Do you mean to say that people with regular-sized hands can actually grab the brake levers with, say, index and middle fingers from the hoods just like they do from the drops? I never think of grabbing a whole fist of brake lever, but when I use the same two fingers from the drops, I get far more braking power than when I brake from the hoods. Granted, I've never
needed to brake from the drops - braking from the hoods has provided me with enough stopping power so far, but I've been told that I should hold the drops in descent "for better access to the brake levers." How should I interpret it?