For me, weight on my hands is a fact of life for fit that allows the best compromise between power, comfort and bike speed. I learned that many years ago. I purchased a bike that two of my coworkers at the bike shop I worked in thought should work well for me. (Last year's Fuji Pro in the basement.) Radically steeper head and seat tubes than anything I'd ever ridden before. I set it up with most of the adjustments roughly in the middle. Stem height, seat fore and aft ... Much more weight on my hands than former bikes. First ride, taking the precaution of riding easy to not pull any surprises on my knees; the cranks were 5mm longer, I equaled my best time ever on the loop I'd been doing. Three days later two minutes came off that.

Rode 5000 miles on that bike that summer with two 175 mile rides and a few 160 milers. Absolutely loved the bike and that position. Got talked out of the position when I got my custom and I told the builder I would never race (and haven't). Struggled with comfort on all my bikes over the next 15 years. One day I pulled out some drafting paper and drew up that old racing bike and super-imposed on it my custom and my fix gear commuter. Very eye opening! To get those bikes to match that bike I loved so much, the custom needed the longest stock stem ever made and the commuter a radical custom.

It took me a few years to find that super long stock stem. But in the meantime I had a local framebuilder make me a 180 custom stem. When it arrived, the first thing I did was go for a 75 mile hilly fix gear ride. Came home beat. It was hard! But my entire upper body was telling me "yeah!". It was obvious that with a torso that wasn't being compressed, my body was getting much more oxygen every inhale and distribution of that oxygen rich blood throughout my torso was far better.

Biggest issues now are folk gawking at my stems and often trying to tell me I'm wrong. Now I still have weight on my hands. Often quite a bit. And I'm aging. I have to address my hand positions with more thought than I used to. Exact location of the brake levers, handlebar shape, placement (stem height and length) and handlebar rotation matter far more now than they used to. My "new bike" approach is now to leave the handlebars un-taped the first few rides. Just some electrical tape to keep the cable in place. Those first rides I bring the stem, seat and brake lever wrenches and stop whenever I feel something could be tweaked to better. When I like that, I tape the bars with cloth tape from the bottom. So it's easy to unwrap to the levers, move them and re-tape. Only after I've worn out that first roll of cloth do I tape the bars with something nice.

Oh, I was 6'1/2" fresh from the factory with long arms and legs. Lean. 45 lb racing weight and about 155 now. Upwind has always been a challenge. My legs make it very clear that a near horizontal back makes their life a lot better. Upwind at my current 72 years old isn't any more fun than it was when I was a 25 yo racer. (I'm NOT advocating that anyone else should be riding the stems I love. But I am saying that the current mantra of "seat back, weight off the hands" isn't the solution for everyone. That there are those, even those who do not race, who are better served by looking at how to best support their entire body for the best result. (When I( see a cat doing "the feline stretch" of making its back about 1 and 1/2 times longer, I think "yeah! When I do that on the bike, my body always says "thank you!" (And no, I've never gotten real cat elongation.)