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I just don't want to be spread out over a bike. The more leaned over I am, the more pressure it puts on my hands and the less control I have over the bike's movement. I shouldn't be experiencing something completely different just because of my height. I should be getting the same experience on my size L bike as someone who fits a size S.
Reach changes too much between sizes in proportion to stack height, and rear centre lengths don't change enough. Right now, there's more difference in ride feel between the same bike in two sizes than two different bikes in the same size.
There's a reason Jackson is doing so well in the DH at the moment. He's able to be way more upright on his bike and take impacts through his legs rather than his arms, and your legs are much stronger, so he's able to push through to the end where other riders are starting to experience fatigue. I believe some tweaks to geometry, dialling down reach numbers a little (literally no size L bike needs to have a reach approaching 500mm, that's absurd) and increasing bar heights/stack heights would lead to a lot less rider fatigue.
I don't believe anyone is calling for any crazy revolutions in design, rather some small tweaks so that the stack:body height and front centre:rear centre ratios are more consistent across sizes.
I think that's a solid observation and I think a lot of it also depends on each rider profile (strengths, weaknesses, build, etc).
I went the long cs, shorter reach, high stack route and found myself riding faster and with more control on the terrain that I enjoy - steep & technical. Interestingly, when going from an Enduro to Madonna, I found the Enduro to be more of an unengaging riding experience that dulled too much of the trail for me. Which isn't to say the Enduro is a bad bike, but maybe not best suited to me, my preferences, skill, etc.
So I chose a bike with geometry that lets me ride the terrain I enjoy, more "better" - which I think is a pretty common statement for all?
For discussion sake, I'll throw out a half baked opinion - I think dynamic riders tend to prefer the longer reach/shorter chainstay setups as they're able to move their body around the bike as needed. As opposed to less dynamic riders who prefer the long cs/high stack and ride by positioning and bracing the bike for different maneuvers (insert skiing metaphor).
People are asking for size L and XL to have the same proportions as size M.
Ignore the total WB length number, there is no too long, and scale up the CS and stack to match the same proportion when increasing reach.
This is the way. Once again I'm reposting this video from Steve at Vorsprung because its just so... damn accurate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5R60JHJbxI
Did you find yourself having your back more upright on the Madonna than on the Enduro?
Also regarding EDR riders sizing down. These guys are getting longer CS's relative to the WB and stack is roughly the same. Yes the WB is shorter, but the balance is better.
I would assume so... setting up the Enduro to have as much stack as the Madonna made the bike feel awkward.
a lot of the pro-balanced weight distribution folks are saying just this: hey, this is how we like to ride. but then the argument gets confused when people say "no those bikes don't turn." so yeah, when they say "those bikes don't turn" the response is 100% "you don't get it" as in, thats not a valid criticism. it might be your opinion, but its be presented as fact.
agreed til the last part, had to downvote due to a very beautiful counterpoint to the dynamic bit: Goldstone. He is the most active rider right now and he has a set up that confirms the tall stack/long cs crowd. I think you mean "active on the bike" but the progressive geo folks want to be active on the trail.
After watching La Thuille, I was thinking Jackson’s bike is very active and he is very active laterally. But he may not be as active as others fore and aft, which makes sense to me.
He also looks crazy slow compared to how fast he is going. I would attribute this to his relaxed stance and hovering over everything.
Trying to take bike design/fit cues from pros is generally madness. I trust that Max Verstappen has clear ideas on how he wants his car to feel, but I'm not going to take those principles and try to apply them to mine, even if it's faster in an absolute sense. Likewise, I don't want the fastest bike in isolation, I want a bike that works well with how I ride bikes and the terrain I'm riding. If EDR pros are all sizing down to the smallest frames they can or sizing up to the biggest they can fine, great, whatever. I'm not an EDR pro, I'm not riding EDR tracks, I'm not cosplaying as them when I ride my bike. If Jackson Goldstone is running a medium frame with long chainstays, yay, good for him. Until I manage to learn his trick of only hitting the backside of every fucking bump on the trail, I'm not going to try to imitate his bike setup.
What pros do in races has very little inferential value for what I should do when I'm out riding for fun.
Uh maybe it IS Jackson's bike setup that does make it easier for him to butter all those backsides and some of us are willing to experiment to see if it helps.
100%. When i am riding upright and centered i can bounce and pop in and out of turns and compressions. because i don't have to move as far fore and aft i iam already set up to pop and/or pull. my taller-than-stock front end helps too, since i am primed not for head down rocketing but head up playful popping. if you watch jackson this is what he is doing. this is what sets him apart from the field right now.
but @codahale youre right, it is madness, at least to try to ride like them. this is a way higher stakes style of riding than keeping your wheels on the ground. jackson is able to pull off this winning streak not because the bike keeps him from crashing, but because he is a talent like we havent seen before. his mindset is unreal and his ability to focus and multitask on the bike while still being active and creative through lines that other riders wouldn't dare to hit... yeah i cant do that. funny enough, i was trying to ride like him the other day and was doing great, best ride in a year, until i completely misjudged speed on a turn and dumped my ass into a rock garden.
no one is saying this is the silver bullet to make bikes perfect, its just a revisiting a riding style that is really fun, but that bikes were not quite ready to support in the past. now we are super close but things just need a little tweaking.
Homie, it's not. Jackson's bike is set up for Jackson; what makes him fast is the fact that he's a generational talent. Here's some childhood videos of him doing shit on a push bike that most grown men couldn't do on a DH bike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf56cWhEd8I.
Keep in mind: I'm saying this as someone who is explicitly in favor of long-ass chainstays and short reaches and tall stacks and long wheelbases. Go back in this thread and see where I'm coming from and what I'm riding. I'm a big proponent of that design philosophy because I think it rides way better for me. So I'm not telling you "no", I'm telling you that looking at one particular pro who's hot shit and then trying to reverse engineer an entire design philosophy for your own bike from what you see on TV is a fool's errand.
You don't need to point to a racer and their palmarès to justify a bike design. That's not engineering, that's marketing.
It also stands to reason that what's good for racers is usually transferable to average riders. If that wasn't the case, there would be a whole lot more racer-specific tech. I know people claim otherwise, but DH and EDR racers are mortals too and the geo, suspension tech, wheel sizes etc that allow them to be more comfortable and have better control over the bike is not necessarily exclusive to them. Why would that tech trickle down at all if it made non-pro riders uncomfortable/slower? There was a PB video where Henry Quinney tested Loic Bruni's DH bike, and he said the way they had it set up felt unintuitive at first, but he ended up feeling like he could go faster on that bike than his own after a short adjustment period.
Not trying to pick a horse in the race, but as a counterpoint - A reason the tech might trickle down from racers is marketing and ultimately sales.
In ice hockey, there's a lot of preference that goes into hockey sticks. Different sticks have different characteristics that benefit different style of play. Pros often have 'fake' graphics on the hockey sticks they play with to help sell that retail version of the graphic. I.e. consider the hot new thing is a "Vapor" but the pro likes to use a "Supreme" model stick. His sponsor will give him a "Supreme" stick with "Vapor" graphics.
You’re saying it stands to reason but I’m saying it doesn’t. You want a unifying principle to explain hundreds of riders of all shapes and sizes riding tens of different bike models built up in hundreds of different ways and with constantly varying configurations over the better part of a year, hindered by UCI regulations, sponsor restrictions, and money/time constraints. That doesn’t exist.
Does some stuff trickle down? Sure, maybe? I still think that confuses the causal arrow, though. Companies don’t sponsor race teams to help with product development, they sponsor race teams to build their brand and market their products. Pro teams take mass-market products and adapt them to their needs, hence all the weird shade tree engineering around steel chain stays and lead weights. Racer feeeback is valuable, but not any more valuable than test rider feedback.
Again, my bike's got 525mm chainstays, a 718mm stack, a 460mm reach, and a 1334mm wheelbase. It's great. I love the way it rides and I have a ton of fun on it. I think more folks should try bikes with this design philosophy, but I don't need a pro to win anything on it.
I don't think any reasonable person is looking for a unifying principle to justify buying all the new stuff marketed to us, but it's totally fair to think that subtle trends in WC race bike setup are worth exploring for geeky riders like us that like to follow along (longer chainstays, adding weight near BB, messing with rear triangle flex, whatever else).
it's up to us to parse out what's truly helpful vs. what's marketing noise, but to say it's all to be ignored because the primary motivation of major brands is to make money is off the mark imo. to be fair, figuring out what's noise and what's not can be a difficult task.
of course we shouldn't all replicate Jackson's setup, or Richie's, or anyone's. but is it that ridiculous to believe there might be something to be gained from keeping a finger on the pulse of the entire WC field, and maybe trying some of the stuff they're trying with the expectation that it's actually helping them in some way?
I love that you’re unironically defending production bike design and shitting on riders taking inspiration from the best riders in the worlds setups. For some reason you’re upset that people like goldstones setup, even though the thing really isn’t that weird? It’s honestly a very conservative setup and you’re acting like no one should try riding it?
Honestly, the wcdh bikes for the most part seem way more enticing to me, an average rider, than say a stumpy 15 or enduro. I love how optimized they are. Production bikes are not optimized. They are compromised for the sake of mass production and marketing.
I feel like I've been saying the same thing over and over here, so I'll give it one last attempt and that'll be it for me.
You think I'm arguing against Goldstone's bike setup or design. I am not. It works great for him; it might work great for you. I don't know or care. My only point is that the fact that it works for Goldstone tells you almost nothing about whether or not it will improve your riding experience, and the illusion that it does is the foundation of competitive sports as a marketing vehicle.
There’s a big difference between buying Jordan’s and being interested in a riding style that looks as exciting and fun as goldstone. Mike didn’t need Jordan’s to dunk, but there is some secret sauce in the geo of goldstones rig.
On the geo side, we can start from his position on the bike and figure out if that style works for us. Bike geo in his case seems to be following his riding style/position. If we want to ride upright and we dream of being as dynamic on the trail, we can 100% draw inspiration from his bike setup.
I’m not sure why you are so anti this concept unless you’re just that against people looking up to riders who are better than them and trying to learn bike setup and riding skills from them?
yo i legit thought that was a typo. epic. reminds me of Bronsons BMB mule.
how did I miss this thread? i LOVE bitching about geometry.
admittedly my problems are less severe and I arguably get served better by the industry than somebody who wants crazy long chainstays. so I suppose I'm in good company anyway.
Things I've learned since switching from BMX to MTB (well like 1% of things we don't have all day). longer chainstays arent gonna kill me... tho i'd prefer them short. especially if I'm only gonna have one bike for all riding and not an outright freeride rig. its probly best that I stay 430+ and not try to grab an old 420-425 rig for all mountain riding just so i can spin 360s once or twice a year on a small step up jump.
dual 29er wont be the end of having fun on a bicycle... tho id prefer a mullet or dual 27 config. Ironically I've had some of my most fun rides on dual 29ers, particularly if they are of more moderate geometry and not a huge long slack mullet super enduro thing. which kinda brings up another point. 64.5 is about as slack as I care to go for my riding terrain/style. it's not like I'm DH racing over here. There's a sweet spot somewhere between 67 and 65 for me, so lovely if a bike has a flip chip or I just use an angle set with like a ~66 hta bike. (tho sadly the chip ideas kinda came right after 66 became a borderline irrelevant number for XC bikes only.)
My first MTBs were old larges. When I got a 'modern' large I thought I'd forgotten how to ride. Keep in mind while I am 6 foot I've done my elbow in so my wingspan was reduced when I lost full extension of my right arm. And it can mess me up if I repeatedly G out that arm over and over on a technical track. Sometimes even pinching a nerve, maybe the hardware, and shutting my arm off. Happened once, not fun. I kept demo'ing bikes and thinking I hated all the bikes that were size large. And whenever there was no L available and I tried a medium I thought the bike was the absolute titties. My BMX caveman brain eventually put 2n2 together and realized for modern MTBs medium is what works for me.
And aside from just being a more manageable reach for my specific situation, it's also the fact that the stack/reach ratio is nicer and there's less REACHING out for a relatively low FEELING handlebar. As I had put riser bars (like 80mm bars) on my size large to make it feel 'better' but it still never quite felt right. To some extent it does seem like brands design their bikes around a size medium, since they can't quite perfect every size in a production run. XL-XXLs often having a limited stack height, and XS-Ss sometimes having awkward stand over heights. Not to mention chainstay proportion weirdness.
Bikes are, of course, a sum of all their parts. All their numbers. And you almost never stop learning. I've hated bikes I thought I'd love. And loved bikes I thought I'd hate. And as the numbers were getting further and further away from what I believed was best for me, its nice to see the industry kinda dialing it back and not getting too weird with it. Such that everyone would need to downsize frame eventually. I get it that winnebago wheelbases are good for racing but... What percent of the customer base is actually racing? And at speeds/limits where they sorta 'need what the pros ride'?
All that to say that new Orbea Rallon looks like the best mountain bike ever made and I'll never be able to so much as touch the thing. But maybe it's for the best, cuz maybe I wouldn't even like the thing. Who knows.
I feel like you’re being quite clear there’s just a very strong undertone in this sub that long tall short etc etc is the holy grail of bike setup, and you’re not saying it’s bad! You’re just implying that perhaps the generational talent has more to do with the wins than the bike setup. Rumour has it that he runs a very stiff suspension setup - I’d love confirmation on this, because that is directly opposite to what dak runs..
What is also interesting is that im yet to see anyone acknowledge that the v10 was and has been the most common bike in dh finals all year, maybe the overall platform is just great in general.
Wait, are you that guy who makes those kooky stems and posts on insta a lot?
I saw something about coaching and flat pedals vs clipless pedals a few posts back and it reminded me of something that I've been thinking of recently that isn't enough of a topic for its own forum.
Current bike wisdom says that riding clipless pedals can lead to bad riding habits, like an over reliance on them to clean technical climbs, pulling up with your feet for jumps and drops and stuff like that. But are those actually bad habits? Sure, there is technique for all riding that works for both flats and clipless pedals, but it almost seems to me that a lot of the "good habits" are what is needed to ride in flats and "bad habits" are what you can do with clipless pedals but not with flats.
I can ride both with no problems, but I much prefer clipless pedals due to how I feel more connected to the bike and have better fine control with my feet. It allows me to be much lighter on the pedals when I need to be, floating over rock gardens and rough terrain where I have to smash through on flat pedals.
Flat pedals seem to me a lot more like a mental crutch that a lot of riders rely on to boost their confidence rather than a system that has objective benefits over clipless. No shame on anyone who likes them or feels more comfortable on them, being comfortable and confident let's you ride better.
What are your thoughts? Not a flats vs clipless debate, but more that "good technique" or "good habits" are centered around what flat pedal riders need to do, and less around what clipless riders can do.
I think it's more those "bad habits" leave you in a position where potentially necessary skills are unlearned and left on the table.
If you never have to bunnyhop higher than 4 inches then it's not a "bad habit" to learn to hop up and lift the bike with your feet. But if you ever come up to a 15-inch thick branch laying across the trail, then you're going to have to get off and walk over it or do the full compress->front wheel lift->explode upward to hop->level bike by pushing forward and rotating wrists->land bunnyhop technique. With flats, you basically have to do a compress->front wheel lift->explode upward to hop->level bike by pushing forward and rotating wrists->land bunnyhop in either "thing requires hopping" scenario (adjusting intensity for varying heights). A clipless pedal setup can lead you to learning one very limited technique while never forcing you to learn the other more useful technique.
You don't need to learn to ride heels down and with a soft bend in your knee if you only ever ride a 8-foot-long rock garden with four-inch height variation. Clipless pedals will keep the bike with you and you can keep on riding after holding on for that short bumpy spot. A person with flats will lose the bike if they don't drop heels and soften their knees on that same rock garden. If the rider then takes their riding to a 30-foot long rock garden, they'll need that dropped heels and soft knees technique either way and that stiffened up but clipped-in rider will have to learn that dropped heels and soft knees technique.
In both of the escalated scenarios above, the flats rider and the clipless rider have access to the same techniques to make it through those obstacles/features. The difference is the flats rider had to learn it early in their riding and the clipless rider might have to learn a new technique later in their riding while simultaneously breaking themselves of the habit of calling on an old technique that won't work for them in those escalated scenarios.
They're not "bad habits" as much as they're "techniques that are useful in fewer scenarios and a related techniques might have to be called on more often."
Related, I kind of wish I felt more comfortable with the idea of clipless pedals. I'm just too frugal to spend a bunch of money getting pedals and shoes if I'm going to find out I don't like it. I don't live in an area where I'd be able to easily sell that pedal/shoe combo so I'd be stuck with unuseable and unsellable parts. I ride my fixed gear bike with toe clips and it's perfectly fine in that scenario. I think riding my mtb clipped in would force me to be a little less wild in corners...which is something I really should do. As of now, if I overcook the entrance to a corner I can just stick a foot about and be mostly fine. Clipped in, an overcooked corner is a more crashy prospect. I hate the feeling of struggling to get into my toe clips and I think I'd really hate the feeling of not getting clipped in to a quick-start scenario on mtb.
As a side-note: I'm kind of blown away by how many mtb riders can't really bunnyhop. I learned to hop riding a bmx bike 20-some years ago. I picked up a mountain bike the first time 3 years ago and the first thing I did was bunnyhop it. It's such a useful technique that I think I'd be very scared to be out on trails without a full bunnyhop in my back pocket.
Nope, that's Bronson Moore. Full credit to him, though, he's pinning numbers on and putting his wacky shit on the line. Dude looks like he can ride, too.
I didn't design or fabricate the bike I ride, I just ride it.
Something else I have been wondering about. As you raise handlebar height, do you have to increase cockpit reach to maintain balance between the wheels? When I raise my handlebar height but keep stem length the same, I find that I end up riding off the back of the bike and have trouble weighting the front wheel. I guess it would make sense that as handlebar height is raised, cockpit reach (not frame reach) should increase, whether through stem length increase or sizing up a frame? Would be curious to get other people's experiences
i was introduced to this whole topic when i overforked my bike. I loved the way the front end felt but the higher stack and longer front center deleted a lot of grip up front. essentially I threw the geo out of balance. I looked at ways to get that front end grip back and a lot of folks talked about longer chain stays to balance out the rear-bias that comes with a higher stack/shorter reach. Luckily I have a stumpy evo and was able to just buy a s5/s6 seat stay that increases the rear center. bike designers have the option of just stretching the front, but that will radically change the character of the bike overall.
it seems to me that the balance is finding a front end long enough to feel stable, a stack high enough to give good leverage and allow a more heads up, playful command over the entire bike, and a balance front to rear to maintain grip through varied terrain. when we look at this set of variables we realize that within all of the different setups possible there are also varying riding styles and terrains that will favor some over others. incredibly shitty riders and incredibly good riders might be able to make any combo work, but therein lies the door to the qualitative: how does each setup feel? what type of riding style does each setup reward? what experience are you looking for on the trail, and which combination facilitates that experience for you?
sorry, just went on a ride and i am pretty inspired right now
Post a reply to: Modern Geo Talk: Chainstays, Stack, Reach, and Bitching About It