How to Get Aero on a Road Bike Like a Pro

In this video, we look at how to make your road bike as aerodynamic as possible. We're here at stage 1 of the Tour of Dubai, an individual time trial, and the riders, as you can see, can't ride on low-profile frames so they've had to make some minor adjustments to theirs. We're going to show you exactly how it's done. The main things to consider when making these adjustments is comfort. The position adopted in time trials is significantly different than on the road, as you'll be using muscles that are unfamiliar. There are many ways to get aero, but the main one is to reduce your frontal area. So, by lowering your stem, you'll immediately get lower on the bike. If you have a longer spare stem at home, you could use this also, as it will give you a flatter position. The position's all the same pretty much, I think maybe I'm a little bit longer on this one. Yeah that looks like, I don't think I've ever... This is a 15cm! Let's have a look at that, that is a LONG stem, angled downwards as well? Yeah, it's all about keeping the frontal area as small as possible, so again it's creating as little drag as possible. Putting narrower handlebars on the bike will also reduce your frontal width, something that Taylor Phinney did to good effect. I extended my stem, I changed the hoods a bit, spent a lot of time yesterday messing about with it. I'm happy with how it went and how it felt and now I've changed the bike back to my normal settings. Another easy win is to push your saddle further forward on the rails. This will bring you to a point more directly over the bottom bracket, and will avoid you sitting on the tip of the saddle, which can be very painful. What about your seat position? I noticed a lot of riders have flicked the seat forward slightly. so I haven't changed that, but yeah, some riders that sit further back will probably come more forward like a TT position for this, to open up the angle here at the hip. Many seat pins can be reversed, so when turned round, immediately throw the position further forwards. Tony Martin did this with his seat pin and got to a position nearly identical to that on his TT bike. Using these simple tips will allow you to make steps towards adopting a time trial position without changing your current setup. The next step being tri bars and then the TT bike itself. I mean, clip-on tri bars are probably the first step. I was there when I was 14 years old, putting clip-ons on and then, sooner or later, you're going to want fast wheels, time trial bike, skin suit and then start looking like Michael Hutchinson!