Originally Posted by Cycle Drama
dabac,
Thanks for the feed back. I will need to look into whether or not the MS ride allows the aerobars.
The reason I posted the question was I noticed while riding the stationary bike at the gym they have handle bars with different geometry to allow an assortment of riders multiple postions for a more comfortable workout. I took the liberty to try all the different hand placements and found that certain positions seem to help increase my cadence by making the peddling seem easier. Now I understand that a road bike forces a rider to be in more of a crouch position than a mountain bike, but one would think by havng more options for hand placement might also give someone the ability to focus on improving his endurance and less time focusing on comfort......at least for us old gear heads.
John S
Be wary of using stationary bikes as a reference. There's a truckload of differences between stationary riding and dynamic riding. Not all of them immediately obvious.
The typical hotel gym stationary bike for instance will usually have a hopelessly wide saddle that will tend to shift a rider using the "correct" saddle height forward.
And the more forward you scoot, the more weight you have to carry on your arms - unless you're able to pedal harder to compensate for the added leverage.
A way to deal with that, to widen the type of people that'll be able to use the bike is to fit a kinda-sorta aerobar. The casual riders plonk themselves down on the wide saddle set low, as if it was a bar stool and crank away happily.
Those looking for something more energetic can balance themselves on the tip of the saddle, on the correct height, and bracing their forearms on the kinda-sorta aerobar.
And if you're looking at a more dedicated spinning bike, well spinning classes HAVE to offer some variation apart from rhythm, so they need several hand positions to make their gig work.
But you're half way right in your observation about multiple hand positions, but most people would be content with a regular drop bar for that. It gives you three basic positions: drops, hoods and the flat section closest to the stem. For flat bar bikes, the general recommendation is the trekking AKA butterfly bar instead.
Generally though, comfort and the big benefit from several hand positions only becomes an issue on longer rides. You should have a primary riding position that's comfortable enough for quite some time to start with.
I'd say start with investigating your basic position. Saddle height, saddle fore-aft, bar height, and bar fore-aft.
My bet is that your "easier to peddle" comes from one of these.
Saddle further forward will make it easier to put more pressure on the pedals.
OTOH If you can't push that hard, you end up carrying plenty of weight on your arms instead.
If your forward reach is too big, your bend at the waist may become too acute, restricting your breathing, so pushing the saddle forward is a way to mitigate that too. But again, it can transfer unwanted load onto your arms.
Too little forward reach will also affect the leverage you can apply on the pedals, but should leave your arms rested.
Not a complete picture, mind.
MTB vs road crouch isn't that clear cut.
Sure, a bike set up for All-Mountain or Freeride will have a fairly upright position. But that's because all "priority riding" on one of those will be done out of saddle. While a dedicated XC - cross-country - bike very well can have the bar at the level of the hoods on a road bike. Or slightly lower.