For many of us upgrading our bikes is one of the enjoyable parts of cycling
But have you ever thought about a number of ways which you can upgrade your bike and your ride without spending any money at all
Seriously, I think for most of us there is some degree of optimization. We can do to our bikes and indeed ourselves
So here is a list of free upgrades that you can make
It's not hard to find the right tire pressure
But many of us don't now that might be through laziness and therefore having under inflated tires
Or it might be through holding onto tradition and therefore riding with our tires
Too hard either way it can be both uncomfortable and slower than it needs to be so try taking a look at this rudimentary graph
Your ideal tire pressure for standard 25 C tire
We now know on GCN that getting your satellite millimeter perfect isn't actually as important as we first thought
But getting it centimeter perfect is it'll make you more comfortable more powerful
And it's really really important for injury prevention
But clearly a lot of people we see out on the road haven't actually spent the time getting it right however
We have a great video showing you how here on GCN you can watch or
Just in essence. You need to have a slight bend in your knee when your pedal is at the bottom of the pedal stroke
right let's stay with bike fit for just a few more moments because
Adjusting the reach and height of your bars can have a huge impact on your riding and what you may find is that you don't
necessarily have to change your stem in order to make those adjustments
Now it might be that you want to get more aero and therefore have slightly longer reach and or slightly lower bars
Or you might want to get more comfortable which might mean
Raising your bars up slightly while having them very slightly closer to you either way make sure that you first take advantage of any space
That you have above or below your stem here
But secondly bear in mind that rotating the bars up here or even the shifters on the bars can also give you a couple of
centimeters of adjustment either way
clean your bike
Seriously, this is in another GCN video, and I'm sorry if you're sick of hearing about it
But we can't stop saying it because it makes so much difference
To the performance of your bike cleaning your drivetrain for example will lower the friction and actually make some
Significant gains to the efficiency of your bike not to mention actually it just feels nice to ride
Then finally a clean bike also lasts longer
So you spend less money on actually just maintaining it which is a bonus
It always surprises me just how many rides as I see going around with gears that either are completely out or just not quite working
perfectly although to be fair
I have done this myself on occasions mainly when I swapped wheels and the slightly different alignment the cassette here at the rear
Means that my gear is no longer working 100% perfectly
But it's silly because actually it's probably going to be just a small tweak of the barrel adjuster here
Which will see them working perfectly again
And you too can do it you're not completely confident around adjusting your gears simply watch our video here on GCN where we completely
Demystify the subject
It's very easy to add accessory after accessory to our bikes a garmin here a
Saddlebag here a frame pump here and a light here
But if you ever actually thought about how much of this stuff it might be taking with you that you're not actually using
Well all of this can be removed at a moment's notice meaning that you can tailor exactly what you take with you on your rides
Depending on what you're doing, so you could make your bike lighter more aerodynamic and in fact even quieter
Well, Si may have told you through a few ways to quickly lose weight in your bike
But I think the best way to lose weight is from your body now
I know this is not an upgrade in the typical sense, but my goodness this really works
So continue to eat well continue to eat a balanced diet
but just reduce your calorific intake
ever so slightly whilst maintaining the amount of
exercise that you're doing then what you'll find is that for every kilogram of non lean body mass that you lose you'll be going a
Lot faster on your bike
Now this next one might surprise you but a lot of the reason that cyclic it looks so good on Pro Riders
Is that it's actually custom tailored or much of it is anyway and doesn't even need to be done at the original
Manufacturers either meaning that what you wear can be made to work better or fit better with just a needle and thread now
I'm not saying I can actually do this
I have had to ask a nice person to do it for me, but you might be more practical than me
And so there's nothing to stop you doing it at the drop of a hat
Or at least learning
So you can make your jerseys more?
Aerodynamic your arm warmers could be made tighter or in fact you could just make crappy old jerseys into really useful vests
There is an old and rather worn-out phrase in the world of cycling you shouldn't just buy upgrades you should ride upgrades
or Ride up Grades Ride upgrades
Oh, is that what it means in this, and it is actually true as well now as long as your bike isn't dangerous
you can still enjoy riding it and that is one of the beauties of cycling and should always be remembered
Next time you're lusting after a carbon trinket that you can't quite afford
Yeah and by riding your bike more you should under all normal circumstances get better at riding it. So effectively you are upgrading yourself
Which is a Win-win situation
It is indeed now if you want to have a bit more information about how to lose weight through
cycling like Dan mentioned earlier on then we've got a video on the subject
If you click, just up there
Then you get straight through to it on the other hand you can't be bothered to lose weight
We've got top ten best value upgrades for you as well and you find that just down
That way there yeah before leaving this video. Do make sure you subscribe to GCN
Can do that by clicking on us
And our freely upgraded bike and selves you can should ride up grade
I didn't get that saying before these are a ride up hills yeah