High vs Low Anti Rise Bikes

Personally I like AR around 60-70%. To me this number is before it “lifts” but stays active. If I rode steeper trails like in Europe, the higher AR would be more ideal. 

I've ridden a ton of different bikes and can't say I've ever noticed anti-rise. Not saying it's not a real thing, but it's never been the difference that stands out to me on a bike. I'd love to do a back to back test that isolated AR so I could discern what it feels like. A floating brake arm like Martin's would be perfect for testing this, if I had an extra genie wish to burn.

Can I ask you a question? It sounds like you said you've only been riding bikes with higher AR, but I must be misunderstanding you. If that were true, how can you isolate what you're feeling?

For instance, if I'd only ever ridden bikes with short reach lengths, I'd have an awfully hard time knowing the difference in ride feel between short and long reach lengths.

My two cents on anti-rise...

First and foremost, it depends on the trails you are riding. There isn't a universal value that's best on everything. Low angle trails, especially one's where you're trailing the brakes to maintain speed, favor low anti-rise. On the other hand, steep trails and/or trails where you're hard on the brakes favor higher anti-rise. Sure low anti-rise can make for more active suspension, but it's impossible for your suspension to be active at all when it's fully extended. Having the rear go to full extension also really messes up geo usually when you're in a scenario where you'd rather it not be messed up the most.

Two, shape of the anti-rise curve matters a lot for higher anti-rise bikes. If you happen to have a bike where anti-rise starts high but then drops off through travel, it can strike a good balance between the world of high anti-rise and low anti-rise. When you're actually in the travel, which hopefully you are, it's fairly active but if the rear starts to extend it fights it.

Lastly, the amount of mid-stroke support a bike has impacts it. If there's not mid-stroke support then low anti-rise in steep or heavy braking may not be as negative on account of the bike wanting to sink into its travel anyway. Meanwhile, if you have low-anti rise and a bunch of mid-stroke support it rides higher in its travel and likes to go to full extension often.

Given all the options, I lean towards bikes where anti-rise starts high and then drops off because of three scenarios I've run into where I can't stand low anti-rise. Creeping into steep sections where I'm on and off the brakes trying to get it just right is unnerving on account of the bike pitching around. This is especially not fun on longer travel bikes where the fork dives more. Steep sections right into a catch berm are not optimal on account of how it makes you shift your weight. Moving weight even further rearward to counter the extending shock in the steepness doesn't lend itself to cornering when the transition to the catch berm is nearly instantaneous. Then there's one particular step down around here where you're hauling in the runout and have to shut it down hard. Low anti-rise bikes end up riding front wheel there. 

2016 Maiden was a perfect example of a low AR design that effectively locked out the suspension under hard braking. The rear end would end up skipping around due to the its inability to absorb the uneven terrain, and you would also get the pitching forward sensation on steep trails. It was a great park bike for groomed trails until the brake bumps developed. Oddly, the linkage blogspot comparison bikes are all low(ish)-AR examples as well. 

Shout out to Neko for testing this question about high vs. low AR, and I loved the test results because they were so undefinitive and subjective. Neko and Asa liked lower AR values (70-75%) and Angel liked higher AR values:

"The better rider you are, the higher AR value you might want. If you're braking really intentionally, late, and hard with both brakes, I can see why you'd want the bike to squat, even though it loads the spring and feels stiff, the position is definitely more confidence-inspiring when you need to brake hard and late. If you drag your brake a lot, like me, I'm pretty bad at that, I've been bad at that my whole career, you want the value to be lower because you want the bike to be active while you're dragging your brake. I guess on steeper tracks as well you'd want it a bit higher, and on flatter tracks lower values are pretty good, I've noticed that this weekend at Rock Creek, there's these really choppy ruts that you have to brake through, and they're not that steep, and the whole bike feels pretty locked out when you're doing that, suspension's not tracking as well, but last weekend at Windrock where there were some steeper sections while you're braking, it's nice to be in that more confidence inspiring geometry position."

So maybe this is a personal preference thing and not a good/better/best kind of thing?

In Neko's defense, Greg Minnaar is also a self-described rear brake dragger, and Greg seemed to do alright at the races.

Link to the brief Frameworks article that accompanied that video here, if you're interested: https://rideframeworks.com/blogs/racing/floating-brake-arm

Anybody know the anti-rise values on the old 26" aluminum Evil Revolt? I remember that bike being insanely confidence inspiring on rough chop, and especially under braking, but I had to be stronger than the bike when I hit the brakes. I also remember running the fork almost locked out to keep up with the rear suspension. That's the only bike I can remember where the feel under heavy braking was super noticeable. Neko's description of "braking really intentionally, late, and hard with both brakes" reminded me of the Revolt.

Ditto.  I ride and set my bikes up for riding moderately steep to steep trails.  I've had bikes with 100%+ (Guerrilla Gravity), a bike with ~50% (Levo Gen 3), and a few with it in the ~60-70% range.  That's the sweet spot for me for a constant-ish AR suspension design.  Too high, and you pack down the rear over successive hits (like brake bumps).  Too low and you've gotta add a bunch of LSC to the fork to counter the pitch forward effect.  Somewhere in between strikes a decent balance.

Like @CascadeComponents says, one of the nice things about a lot of current VPP designs is that they've got both... high at start of travel that drops down through travel.  So when you're creeping down steep shit it tends to sit down and not pitch forward, but when you hit a bunch of successive 50%+ travel events it tries to recover rather than pack down.

My ideal range would be something starting around 100-120% and dropping to somewhere around 0 by bottom of travel. Hard to put a number on it since such a wide range can really work, but I definitely don't mind over 100% around top of travel as long as that drops off to at or below 100% by sag.

Don't know the number for the Revolt, but being a linkage driven single pivot with the pivot being none-too-low it's almost certainly on the higher end of the spectrum. If I had to guess, maybe 110% at top of travel and 80ish% at bottom of travel.

There's a tradeoff for stability vs suspension.  Anti-Rise uses the wheel/brake dragging to keep the back of the bike down.  The less of that goes on the more active (less hindered) the suspension is.

Some people would get scared on a bike that's free to move all the time.  Like everyone was scared of suspension moving in the 90's.

When reading the above comment, everyone should know that Dougal sets his bikes up extremely soft and under damped. I rode his personal setup on a 160mm mattoc at one point and it would bottom out doing cutties in the driveway, and we're the same weight. 

Do chain isolating devices like O-chain/sidekick help with Anti-rise?  I know they don’t eliminate the actual anti-rise that is happening with the suspension and bike geometry, but do they make the negative characteristics of high ant-rise more manageable?  

I don’t know the technical answer to this but I became a brake dragger once I started using the DT Swiss Degrees of Freedom hub on my bike because I could get away with it 😭

Anti-rise alone, no impact. How stiff a bike is perceived to be at a given moment is a combination of many things. Feedback from the chain when you're hard on the brakes is more noticeable especially when it's trying to ratchet your feet back. If you're braking hard and the sensitivity of the suspension is impacted by both chain growth and higher anti-rise then maybe if you decrease the impacts of chain growth the stiffness on a whole falls in a range that you're happy with.

Is there any relationship between leverage rates and anti-rise, as far as ride feel goes? Does a higher starting leverage in combination with higher anti-rise create a “middle ground” on rider perceived feel? Ie. even though the bike is squatting or firming up when braking, the suspension doesn’t feel as firm.

Shock set up plays a huge roll there. Higher initial leverage ratio doesn't inherently mean it uses travel easier. It might, but it also might not be that different. But yes, if your suspension is less supportive at a given point in travel it will feel softer on a whole with anti-rise forces added in. That's driven by a combination of leverage curve and shock setup. 

Which setup was that again?  I rode production Mattocs between 7 and 12 years ago.   I ran them on 3 dfiferent bikes and they all needed different setup due to geometry differences.

They were the ones sent to me for review where i turned them into a pair of maracas in 5 minutes because the press fits were badly engineered, and you tried to tell me it was my fault cos you'd been riding them for days and they hadn't made a peep. And then the second pair did the same thing so we didn't proceed with the review.

My point with the above was really just to give a bit of perspective on how you set a bike up - which i'm assuming from your fork, is so you can steam over chatter on flatter terrain while seated. On a trail with any gradient it would have been sitting on or near the bottom the entire run. So it's not surprising that you don't care for high anti-rise on your bikes, it doesn't sound like you ride in a way that it would benefit you. Your post was talking like you'd come from the future to inform us about your highly superior opinions on bike setup so I wanted to say something.

You sent me the fork straight from your bike, and also sent me the settings. I checked them a couple times and used a second shock pump because I thought something was wrong, the fork was unrideably soft in both spring rate and compression damping. I was on a fairly rear-biased bike at the time, but regardless of geometry, being able to make harsh bottom-outs happen in my driveway without lifting the front tire off the ground was pretty hilarious. Genuinely would have broken something if i'd taken it for my benchmark ride, even if i'd softened up the rear a bit to balance it out.