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On the note of disengaging hubs and pedal kick, so long as whatever drive mechanism you have can automatically engage when you pedal forwards, it's impossible to prevent it from causing pedal kick. The drive mechanism, whether it be hub or BB based, can't differentiate between the chain getting pulled on due to you pedaling and the chain getting pulled on from the suspension compressing. Riding backwards is a little different in that you can use the fact that the hub is rotating backwards relative to the axle to disengage the hub.

Its interesting you bring up the Balance. I have one built 180/170, coil, burly. I also have a Pivot Switchblade. For the majority of my trails in Durango, which are mostly singletrack, blue or black rating I prefer the Switchblade. It pedals better, corners snappier. The Balance on a blue is so boring, it hates it. But when I get on that Balance on a proper black or higher trail downhill its so fun, not necessarily faster, but more fun. It's just so heavy uphill that I just don't grab it as often. The % difference in bikes is typically...

It took reading four pages of mountain bike discussion, but I just remembered they have giant TMDs inside of skyscrapers to resist wind and earthquakes.

I can tell its starting to get colder and rainier in much of the Northern Hemisphere We are over complicating this, for sure. The reality is you can ride any number of bikes down a trail and have fun. There is no such thing as "the perfect bike". Vital tends to skew a little more toward the racer, where bike choice matters (a lot) more, but even then I'd wager a good racer could likely put in about the same result on any number of good bikes with various amounts of travel (obviously within reason). Others have mentioned it...

i'm trying get that. we have all our past surveys and trends at the bottom of this page - https://www.vitalmedianet.com/vital-mtb - but we never actually did a trend graphic with bike type/travel. here's 2017 for instance - the breakdown was diff over the years.

hey all, i started a travel-specific discussion so tech rumors can stay focused on weird/new product - https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/how-much-suspension-travel-do-you-w… it has data from our 2024 survey that just wrapped up (thx brines for mentioning it)

I've ridden both but predominantly use clips for mountain biking, and used to find if I switched back to flats on the DH bike they could get bounced a little bit on certain bumpy sections, so I imagine it could help with those situations. Its probably exaggerated by being used to clips - if I was riding flats full time it might not be an issue

I didn’t notice any difference in traction to my feet using flat pedals. But notice more planted feel of the bike in general.

They are kiwis in OTB podcast and andi kolb is Austrian couldn't be further apart lol.

Fastest turnaround of a podcast I’ve ever done, we only recorded this morning… https://pod.co/making-up-the-numbers/racing-reform-rumours We talk through the doc & then talk team rumours 🔥🔥🔥