TEAMROBOT's Likes

Back in the day at Norba Nationals and World Cups at Big Bear and Mammoth, the euros would come over to race and have no clue how to handle the moon dust. It's fun to watch pros flail sometimes. Especially when you're rooting for an American.

Real world it goes back to the old school thing with Ned Overend & Tinker Juarez on stand up climbing versus seated. Your heartrate while seated climing is an average of 10 beats slower and efficiency over distance is not just cumulative, but has an exponential effect where you're less fatigued at the same speed. I equate flats and clips to that, but with something in the range of 100,000 variables that can raise your heart beat once you throw in a trail. If you're clipped in, you're using entirely different muscle group firings than on flats. You're running your seat at a different height with both you actually have a variation in your center of mass depending on seat raised or lowered. In turns, clips can give you confidence being able to relax over chatter but can penalize you if you're on off camber and "want" to ride your unnatural downside heel (since most of us clipped in have a specific foot back). On flats, we all can turn both ways easily on off camber because we can slide the inside foot off and on easily, so you may make up time ON flats if the majority of time on a course is toward the camber of your front foot in clipless.

We cannot have a clear cut answer between the 2 efficiencies because you have to spend YEARS setting your bike's suspension up for one or the other pedal type, training your body to be at an optimum stance & physical strength for clipless racing or flats and THEN you can get your performance gains or losses measured.

There is ZERO way to evidence one better than the other without starting at the exact same timepoint in your career, training for that type of shoe and racing. Then...rewind time back to your same date in time and start the training for the other.

Hill is the best on flats. He is the best because he has NEVER waivered and went to clips. When he, Rennie & Kovarik all raced on flats full time, the MTB world was flipped on it's head. Sure, he didn't win Sea Otter on flats. He lost badly, but he also was on a very specific fitness plan that week and it wasn't his goal.

But Rennie won Sea Otter on flats. People forget that.

I run both just to change up riding and keep things from getting stale 365 days a year. But I'll always RACE clipped in because it's what I programmed myself to race all those years ago. But boy, do I love modern day flat pedals and Freerider Pros too. Party time in the woods on that combo!!!

If you're a racer and you want to race flats, put them on, don't doubt yourself...and NEVER LOOK BACK. The instant you "try" to race in clips again, you've already defeated yourself for a lifetime.

From what I have read in studies so far over the years, flat pedals are either the same or more efficient (when mountain biking).

I think there is some misguided opinions on this Just like when high pressures in tyres was thought to be a good thing when mountain biking (because it worked in road biking). In comes Pro Core and then everyone else...

The reason low pressure tyres work so well in mountain biking is because it has exactly the conditions that road biking or a static bike do not have.

Need a test that is done in the woods on real trails.

Like your video. At least it shows that even in non real world conditions (for mountain biking) flat pedals are basically the same as clips.

Luckily for snow summit they won't even have winter loading soon.

"Since I wasn’t excited about the options that were available to me, I decided to design the parts myself." So I decided to design the most boring looking components I could.

So we get NO explanation about why the empty shuttle truck & trailer are down the bank in the ditch? Wild times.

He says that most gauges aren't zero loss, not that most pumps aren't zero loss. But either way, the whole idea of air loss just doesn't add up.
Think of it this way. When you attach a shock pump, you thread it on a ways and it forms a seal (i.e. pump still reads zero, but the shock/pump interface is now airtight), and then you continue threading it on (those last 1-3 rotations on the threads) until the pump opens the shock's valve core and you get a reading.
The whole idea of "air loss" hinges on the idea that there's an overlap between those two instances I just mentioned above, basically saying that, as you unthread the pump, the airtight seal between the pump and the shock is broken while the valve is still open. This is why people are so scared of that little "hiss" when you detach the pump. And there are two ways to disprove it:

1) Why doesn't the shock lose air when you put the pump on (as opposed to when you take the pump off)?? If this overlap was actually real, the valve core would open before an airtight seal is formed while you attach the pump, and you would hear that hiss just as you do when the pump is being removed. But it NEVER happens when you attach it, does it?

2) Try unthreading your pump VERY slowly from your fork/shock once you've pumped it up. Right when you hear the hiss, stop. If there's actually air loss, the air would drain completely out of your suspension when the pump is threaded on halfway like that. But this also doesn't happen. The hiss is just the air leaving the pump, and once the pump is empty, the hiss stops. Thread the pump right back on and you'll see that your suspension is still at full pressure (with the disclaimer that, when you reattach it, just like this video explains, your reading will now be lower because the air in the fork/shock must expand slightly into the pump's hose in order to get a reading).

Like some people have said, pre-charging definitely helps with accuracy, but is only 100% accurate if you inflate to exactly the same pressure as what's in your suspension in the first place. If you're low, the shock loses a little bit of air and it'll read low. And if you're high, you add air to it during attachment and it'll read high. In the end just do two things: always use the same pump for consistency, and remember that air loss isn't real.

Soon enough. Thats actually what we were filming for but ended up with enough riding footage to slap together a quick edit.