Originally Posted by
Ken Cox
Sit in a hard chair with your feet aligned as if on pedals and about as far apart as on pedals.
Hold a pencil in each hand.
Lean forward and imagine holding your handlebars about as far from your hips as suits you; and begin to stand up.
Just as your bottom begins to break with the chair, look at the pencils in your hands.
The angle of the pencils indicates the angle of the hoods or horns, and the angle of your torso (as determined by the height of the bars and the length of the stem), best suited to YOUR body.
No it represents the angle your torso needs to be balanced over your feet when getting out of a chair of a given height. If you saddle has the same height and depth of the chair that may be good but it(like most of the "tricks" you post) is a pretty ****ty rule in general.
Likewise how you hold your hands with no load doesn't set a hard and fast rule for how you can best hold bars and apply force in all the directions needed when riding a bike.
Originally Posted by zacked
Flat bars of the same length allow for a lot more leverage than drops or bullhorns.
You have that backwards. hold your hand like you were holding flat bars of a given length. Now pretend you are holding the hoods or horns of the same length. You will see that as you rotate your hand your forearm moves out about 2-3cms on each side. So flat bars of a given width provide the leverage of horns or drops about 4-6cms narrower.