Sushi Grips claim to offer a more natural and less stressed hand hold on your handlebars by a radically tapered shape at the pinky and ring finger end.

As with most new inventions – especially those found endlessly cluttering up Kickstarter – it can be very easy to instantly snort and sneer at these Sushi Grips.

But hang on (pardon the pun), we think there may actually be something in this. The main guy – Sean Madsen – was a big part of setting up and developing Specialized’s Body Geometry project.

And try not to look at that pseudo micro bar end ‘horn’ on the end. That is not the main thing here. (It’s sure to turn off a lot of people before they’ve even bothered to hear/read the description).

It’s the flat taper on the underside of the grip that’s the key thing here.

Grips are only relatively recently coming to the forefront of people’s minds when it comes to bike control and fatigue factors. There’s the move to fat lock-on grips (such as ODI Elite Pro) and the various silicone push-on grips (such as ESI Chunky grips). There has also been a bit of noise made about ‘shaped’ grips (such as the Ergon GE1).

These Sushi Grips are both similar to and totally opposite to the Ergon GE1 design. Where the Ergon grips narrow taper at the forefinger end, the Sushi Grips taper at the pinky and ring finger end of the grip.

The Sushi Grips actually taper so dramatically that the outer halves of the grips don’t fit over your handlebar. The Sushi Grips actually hang off the ends of your handlebar by 65mm. So unless you cut down your bars, Sushi Grips are going to add 130mm width to your bars. Which is great if you still have sub-700mm bars but not so hot if you’re already rocking 780mm bars.

Why the taper? To cut a long story short, the basic idea is that hands grip at their optimum when they’re holding on to a cone shape.

The name of the grip – sushi – came about after the designer noticed how someone was holding on to a cone-like shaped roll of sushi. Eureka and all that.

EUREKA!

Try it yourself. Grab hold of your existing grips. Your pinky fingers kind of feel a bit lame now don’t they? Your fore finger and middle finger are doing pretty much all the work and taking all the strain.

If you want to red more about Sushi Grips, go and check out their Kickstarter page. Pledges or $40 or more will get you Sushi Grips of your very own (should they hit their $57,500 target).

Is this what your hand wants to do?

Oh and that mini bar end horn thing? They call that the wing. It’s to help you push the bike into corners with your inside hand. But yeah, it’d look a whole lot less gawky if it wasn’t there right? Hey-ho. You could always saw it off.