It took me a long time to buy my first set of Ergon Grips.  I had read about them online on a few blogs I follow.  The reviews were all outstanding, but I had to wonder how great can a set of grips be and were they really worth $40?  I sort of forgot about them for a few months until I got a bike that had absolutely craptacular foam grips…I won’t mention any specific brand to protect the guilty, but I had to do something.  I was browsing my options at Bow and saw they had Ergon Grips in stock and impulsively decided to buy a set.  Bow is good about taking returns so I figured if I hated them I’d bring ‘em back.

Well it’s about a year later and I have Ergon Grips on 5 of my bikes - basically every bike that doesn’t have drop bars.  Doing the math that’s $200 worth of grips - yikes!  It gets worse every one of my friends that has tried one of my bikes with Ergon Grips has bought a set for their own bikes.  They are that good.

It seems simple - they give you a nice wide platform for your hands so there are no pressure points and you can just hold on with a relaxed grip.  These words don’t adequately convey how nice it is to roll along with your hands relaxed and totally comfortable.

Is it really important?…it can be.  This past summer I was riding my Surly Big Dummy on the Dempster Highway in the Yukon.  I had some typical rubber mountain bike grips on my bars and because of the rough road I ended up gripping them so tightly I suffered a nerve injury in my left hand.  I lost a lot of power and sensation in that hand for 6 months!  The whole time I kept thinking to myself ….”…why didn’t I put Ergons on these bars!!!!..”  Too bad I was 500kms+ from the nearest bike shop.  Of course the first thing I did when I got back to Calgary, right after a visit to my doctor, was stop by Bow and buy Ergon Grips for my Big Dummy.

Now I don’t even think about it…if I get a bike with mountain bike bars I put Ergons on it.

You can get Ergon Grips in many different styles.  I like the basic GP-1 version without bar ends - you can always use a separate set of bar ends if you like.  They come in trigger, gripshifter and a special Rohloff version.  They also come in a large and small diameter depending how big your hands are.