Mountain Bikes 101 - Questions you were too embarrassed to ask

Welcome to another episode of Burn Peak Express and guys, I feel like I was thrown out of a moving vehicle yesterday. We did some stuff on the airbag and you guys just get thrown around like a ragdoll when you hit that thing, so today we're going to be doing something a little different but pretty much the same. We get a lot of people saying, "I love your videos. I don't even

mountain

bike, and to be honest, that's cool if what you learn from these videos is that you like

mountain

biking." You're interested in it, that's great, we could use some allies, so I want to answer the

questions

you might be too afraid to ask.

Some people are not afraid. I'll get comments like, "Hey, are we going to ignore the fact that there's juice coming out of your tire, we can talk about that's sealant, so on a very basic level, we'll answer any

questions

you might have from watching these videos and We'll start with the

bikes

themselves, there are so many different types of mountain

bikes

that would make your head spin, we're just going to talk about the two main types that you see me talk about in these videos, which are a suspension mountain bike. total and a hardtail. Now let's start with the hardtail, the reason why a hardtail is It is called a hardtail because the rear of the bike has no suspension.

The only place you will find suspension on a hardtail is on the front fork. Both categories. of bikes have suspension forks. A full suspension bike has a shock absorber in the rear that allows the bike to compress both the front and the rear now on hardtail and full suspension bikes, you'll hear us talk about travel now. , travel is how much the suspension is compressed, so here I have a 150 millimeter suspension fork, which means the length from here to here is 150 millimeters at the rear, now I have 130 millimeters, as you can imagine , if you are going to make a jump and the landing doesn't seem like it will go very well, you start to run out of options. on the hardtail, this will absorb the impact much better, but still on this channel you almost always see me riding a hardtail.

I love hardtails, so why would anyone ride a hardtail, no matter how you cut it? A rigid is less expensive to build and easier. maintain and in many ways it just makes the hardtail bike more fun to own, it will be lighter because it has fewer components, it will also be more agile, stiffer and easier to ride now with all that said, full suspension. Mountain bikes have made a lot of things possible that weren't possible before, like the types of falls and jumps, and the things people do now on mountain bikes are bigger and gnarlier than ever before in history and we owe a lot of credit to that. that. to modern full suspension bikes now, besides being lightweight and having suspension, and all modern mountain bikes have another feature which is a dropper seat post, you basically press this button up on the handlebars and you can just drop the seat post all the way down and when you want to raise it back up you just press the same button on the handlebar and it goes up, that's a huge step forward in mountain biking, it's allowed us to do so many different things, I can go from pedaling down I walk here, drop my seat post without getting off my bike and immediately do jumps.

Try doing jumps with the seat completely raised. You'll realize pretty quickly why people don't do that, so next I want to bring you up to speed. It's the basic anatomy of a mountain bike because we refer to different parts all the time, so it's easier for me to show you the rigid top tube, the down tube, the seat tube, the seat stay, the seat stay. the chain in this area, here's the bottom bracket, that's where the crank is. assembly and front sprocket and everything, now connect this area up here where the fork, stem and handlebars come together, there's the head tube, this frame piece and this whole area of ​​the bike on the handlebars where all the brakes and shifters and everything that is collectively known as a cockpit, now the next one seems really obvious, but this is a wheel and the reason I mention it is because you will hear people call it a rim, you will hear people call it a rim . they are different components of a wheel in a wheel, you have the tire, you have the rim, you have the spokes and then you have the hub, this piece in the middle and on most modern mountain bikes you will have a thru axle which is an axle that we can remove from here to disassemble the bike, load it in the trunk of a car or whatever, many times you will hear us refer to gears or speeds, gears and speeds are the same if you look at a mountain bike and count the amount of small gears on the rear cassette, that's what the cassette is called, you will know how many speeds it has or how many gears it has, this is 12 speed on this bike, we have an 11 speed, it has fewer gears the more As for the gears, the more However small the increments between the different gears are, you will be able to achieve exactly the type of pedaling feel you want.

Some mountain bikes don't have any gears, it's just a single speed. I made a whole video about it, so guys, I'm really really short. I'm five feet four inches tall and 5'10" tall, so I need a very small bike. If you just go online and search the local classifieds and choose a bike, you better check what size it is because you want a bike that will fit you at 5'4. I take a small mountain bike. If I was five foot eight, I'd probably have a medium or even a large, and when you look at the manufacturer's website, they usually tell you what size bike it is.

They make the corresponding height, but in general, if you go to a shop or just get on a bike and feel it, you can usually tell if it's the right size, so if I presented you with a typical bike from the 1920s, it would probably have grease and maybe chain oil on a modern mountain bike we have all kinds of sticky fluids there is grease there is tire sealant there is brake oil fork oil shock oil carbon fiber grip but the one I get the most comments on is sealant of tires so let me explain to you what that is.

If you ever changed a puncture in a bicycle tire as a kid, you remember inner tubes, so you have your tire, you have a tube inside, this is what holds the air, everything is fine now, of course, if you get a puncture , then the inner tube needs to be replaced or repaired and if it gets punctured the tube will be gone too, let me show you what a puncture is, so if you're riding down the trail or down the street and you hit a pothole or a rock or something at high speed and your tire isn't inflated enough, it's actually going to pinch the air tube between the tire and whatever you're hitting.

By opening the inner tube, the solution to punctures is now to use very high tire pressure, but on a mountain bike trail that makes the bike very difficult to control. Now, in the last decade, on mountain bikes, tubeless tires have become very, very popular and on tubeless bikes. tire, you can run with a much lower tire pressure and how can I avoid punctures. Tire sealant is a sticky solution with some kind of particles, so when you get a puncture, that substance flows into the puncture and all the particles in it. it clogs in the hole and eventually seals it, so the person who left the comments said, "Hey, we're just not going to talk about the fact that juice is coming out of the tire." Most mountain bikers know what it is, it's sealant, but now.

I realize it's not that obvious to everyone, so here we are approaching a trailhead which is where all trails begin and end. Sometimes there will be multiple trailheads on a given trail system, but here we are at the main trailhead where you park your car, get off the bike and go for a ride, so at the trailhead you will typically have a kind of kiosk that will have maps, rules and regulations that will welcome you to the trail. system and it will tell you about it and then you will have your trails, so at the beginning of most trails there will be some type of signage telling you what to expect so you can see on this trail.

Bicycles are allowed, but horses and hikers are also allowed. It's also a sign of difficulty, this one is kind of in between because you can see there's a blue square there, a black diamond would be very difficult, a green circle will be very easy, so this right here is considered a fire road, now you'll see something similar. roads known as double track jeep roads, basically an access road for emergency vehicle maintenance and such. It is also a place where you can pedal your bike on trails. There are many trail systems where you have multi-directional trails going up and down. mountain and you don't want to climb a trail that people will go down very, very fast, so you go up the fire road, so this here is single track, this is what we go out to ride, it's not fun to ride in a great width. gravel road we want to ride something that is narrow, fast, windy and flowy, in fact the word flowy is perfect to describe this trail, it doesn't have a lot of rocks, it doesn't have a lot of features, it's just windy and smooth, but there are also trails What we would describe as technical will have drops, rocks and terrain that requires a bit of effort to navigate, so when we talk about technical trails, that's what we mean because there are so many different disciplines of mountain biking there are so many different types of equipment.

If you're just riding a local cross country trail you may have nothing but a helmet, if you're riding trails like the ones we just showed you'll probably have a helmet and knee pads, at the very least, gloves. It's a good idea because your hands get sweaty and they move around the handlebars, for example, a dirt jump helmet is made for maximum visibility and maximum protection, so when you have it on you will be able to see that the helmet is not on your peripheral but will protect the sides. top of your head very good now a trail helmet we call it a half cap half shell this type of helmet is made for ventilation you are going to exert a lot of physical energy when you ride a normal mountain bike climbing trails moving the bike around and so It has all these vents so when you go forward it cools your head, it's also very light but still offers the protection you need on the front, back and sides now when you're in a downhill park and taking a lift to the top of the mountain and then descending, you are exposing yourself to a great risk, but you are not exhausting yourself as much on a cardiovascular level, so with this helmet cooling is not as important as it is made for.

Maximum protection will prevent your teeth from falling out Protects the side of your head back in all directions It's quite heavy and in fact all protective gear comes in different forms, if you're just doing some light wearing some knee pads like this one will be enough to prevent skin from scraping your knees, knee pads like these are heavier and harder to pedal, but they have a lot more padding and provide more protection, so if you're doing something really complicated or just concentrating In going downhill, you can use them. these or climb with them in your backpack and put them on when you get to the top, we even use specific equipment for mountain bikes.

This is a mountain bike jersey, it wicks away moisture very easily, keeps you nice and cool, doesn't irritate your skin as you move around These are mountain bike shorts, they are made to be worn with a chamois underneath. It's like a pair of padded shorts that keeps the seat from hurting all your stuff up there. It even has zippers on the pockets so you can store your car. keys and cell phone without worrying about them coming out. Mountain bike-specific gear isn't necessarily essential if you just want to get out on the trail and start riding, but it makes things a lot more comfortable, so that's one thing you'll hear mountain bikers talk about. almost a lot of it is dirt, the dirt was perfect, it was heroic dirt, the dirt was amazing, so it rained about 10-15 minutes ago, I mean it rained cats and dogs, so this is too wet, but tomorrow morning after it has a little time to dry.

It's going to be perfect dirt for the hero, so good dirt is usually a reference to the consistency of the ground and the properties that make it good for grip and mountain biking. Many times you will hear us refer to characteristics. A feature is a ramp a jump a drop a rock garden anything in the way of highlighting a common type of feature is a jump and all jumps start with a lip the lip isthe part that launches you into the air right here we have the entry jump and the lip is made of these wooden planks here now this particular jump I guess you would call a step up because you land higher than the lip a step down would be The opposite, you land lower than the lip.

A good example of that would be Grandpa's Power Jump, you take off from the gravel road on one of the few rock lips and then land a little further down on the landing here. This is a drop, a drop is any time you go from an area of ​​high elevation. at an elevation it drops very steeply, but you're not gaining any elevation, you're just falling, so if you follow our stuff, one feature that you've heard us refer to tons of times is a thin or skinny line, all of which is some kind of narrow feature that you have to cross can be in the form of a ladder bridge, a log, riding on a thin rock, anything if it is thin and you can fall from either end, it is thin, so here we are in the rock garden and most of you are familiar with what this is.

Just because they are going through rocks doesn't mean they are going through a rock garden. There are some trails where the entire trail is rocks, usually when referring to a rock garden you are referring to an area where you suddenly come across a bunch of rocks now the berms are usually made of dirt but they can be made of wood and of course Berm Peak gets its name from the word berm. It's like an embankment. Now here we have another berm, so of course before the jump Kevin we also have. a berm because you're starting from there you have to take a turn and maintain your speed before the jump so we put a dirt berm here that you go on it helps you change direction and make the jump after so here I am on The flight deck and flight deck are considered a roll-in and what it does is maximize the amount of trail you can travel by giving you a lot of speed right off the bat, you roll very steeply down a ramp and you have your speed. .

Bummer, so there are countless terms in mountain biking that refer to different things you can do on a bike, too many to go over in this video, but there are a few that we use over and over again on this channel and I want to continue. about those the first one is bailing, bailing is when you're up in the air on your bike or going down some kind of feature and you realize things are going south, you have to get off your bike when you fall off a bike . What will usually hurt you the most is the bike itself, you can get tangled in it, you can fall on it, there are handlebars sticking out, you want to get away from the bike as quickly as possible, bailing refers to throwing the bike away and getting away from it and aborting the mission, so the other thing you'll hear is hucking, what is hucking, what is huck to flat, so when you use the word huck, it's never used to describe a specifically designed type of jump, you always have to do it. do something a little bit more to make it work, so if there's a rock over here and you have to jump towards it and you don't have enough speed, you have to dodge it, you have to pull the bike as hard as you can and just do it now from hook to flat it's when you're hooking something and the landing is completely flat you usually want to land in a transition you want to land on something that's a little steep and gentle you don't want to just land flat because the impact is hard and usually when people use the term hawk to flat, they're talking about a drop that just comes out of nowhere, doesn't really have a good setup and the landing is terrible.

Now another time you know you're in trouble is when you hear someone talk about casing, casing is not good and it refers to coming up short on a jump, so if you said you take off from here, put your front wheel on this landing , but your rear wheel doesn't do it at all. Make it a case and for that type of case you will need a lawyer. The worst type of case is a nose case, which is when you head towards the back of a landing with the nose of your bike on the front wheel. and there is no lawyer who can help you get out of that case.

Your only hope is to throw the bike down and try to clear the landing with your body. You start to run out of options when you're about to bite. In case you've probably heard us refer to landing on a berm, landing on a berm is when you hit it so hard and so fast without brakes that your tires sink and spit stuff everywhere, it's not good for the berm, but if you have so much. speed, this is going to happen now, sometimes you will see someone brake on a berm and try to fake a shelter that is not a shelter, that just slides across a berm, that is stupid and erects berms, so, like We commented, the whale tail is a double, but this particular double is not straight, you take off this way and the landing is here, so you have to turn right in the air, which is a hip hop, any type jump that rotates and you have to reorient yourself for landing.

The jumps are very smooth like this and in other hip jumps you turn a full 90 degrees, so the last term I wanted to find is bike park. You'll hear us refer to bike parks all the time and a bike park is a place that built specifically for mountain bikes, berm peak, kind of a bike park, the trail system we were on today is multi-use, there are hikers, horseback riders, that's not a bike park, it's a national forest, a bike park, you can go as fast as you want, it's designed for mountain bikes there will be jumps, berms and descents everywhere and some of them They even have elevations to get to the top so you don't have to climb and can just cruise to the end.

The key is a bike park. it's designed specifically just for bikes, you're not supposed to walk there, you're not supposed to ride horses there, we need more bike parks so that's it, we oversimplified and left tons of stuff out for the sake of brevity , the goal here today was to provide some context and clarity to casual watchers of these channels to help them enjoy our videos a little more if they're content to sit on the sidelines and watch us mountain bike. I can't tell you how much. We appreciate you and welcome you now, no doubt there will be some questions I didn't answer and this is a shame and judgment free zone, if you think the question is stupid, trust me it's not, there will be other people with It's like that just go to the comments and ask, and I'm going to ask my mountain biking viewers to help a brother help some people understand what's going on, give them an explanation, not a condescending one, yours, a cozy They're interested in mountain biking and they want to know what's going on, so if you already understand this, I hope I didn't bore you to tears today and for everyone else, I hope you learned something and we posted one of these videos every Sundays. so subscribe if you haven't and thanks for traveling with me today.

See you next time, so another word you'll hear a lot is enduro. Now enduro refers to a type of race that you are not in. When doing loops and laps you are timed on a segment, so enduro bikes are usually designed to be really good all around, you can climb on them, you can descend really well on them, that's why people use them every time. plus the word enduro to describe anything mountain. bike riding and the word has become so watered down that it no longer has much meaning apart from the gnarly mountain bike, so when you hear the word enduro you can pretty safely ignore it.