Mountain biking is a massively broad activity. Back roads and back flips. No bike does it all well.
First of all, some clarification. What do we mean by “underbiked” and “overbiked”? Aside from a few variables I’d say it’s about a judgement of a bike’s suspension travel and its weight.
An audio version of this article is available to logged in users so they can put our goods in their ears.To be “underbiked” is to be on a short travel sub-14kg bike and attempting to navigate significantly rough and/or steep terrain.
To be “overbiked” is to be a long travel over-16kg bike whilst pootling around smooth and/or shallow terrain.
Because this is cycling, everything is tainted with a tincture of sadomasochism. We admire riders who are underbiked. We mock riders who are overbiked. We prefer riders who put restrictions on themselves as opposed to riders who prefer to enable themselves. Cyclists are weird.
Furthermore, the use of the prefixes “under-” and “over-” implies some sort of baseline. Some sort of norm. I guess this is where the fabled “trail bike” is supposed to exist. I know we’re all supposed to love a good do-it-all trail bike but in my opinion, trails bikes are exactly what’s wrong with mountain biking…
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Depends which bike I’m riding. Don’t care.
I care enough to be thinking about getting a proper xc one again at some point.
i’ve been both. And i prefer being under-biked. With that in mind, i have moved on my Chisel FS, will be moving on my Madonna and picking up something like a Tallboy or Optic as a one bike to do it all, which will make me underbiked at times. But i am happy with that. I had the previous gen Norco Optic and did the megavalanche on it, Ard Rock, BPW, then trail rides and xc missions.
For most of my off-road riding, the base-line is ‘gravel bike’.
So yes, when I take my 29er out with 100mm forks and 2.25″ tyres, I’m ‘over-biked’. And yes, it’s enabling me to do much longer days in more comfort. So I’m now on the side of over-biking 😎
I’m overbiked, and I do care a bit, because I’m dragging the overbikedness around (and up…) stuff which makes the ride a bit of a, well, drag, at times.
It’s not like I’m on some massive Gnaarpoon (are they still a thing?), I’m on a Sonder Signal hardtail, but it’s still built to be capable/fast on stuff that I’m not particularly capable on or am that interested in going fast down. It is a bit of a lump.
It’s my fault, I bought it, but in hindsight I should have bought something less ‘hardcore hardtail’ and more ‘XC’, although at the time (2022) the XC stuff was still a bit short and steep, it’s only in the past couple of years that the seem to have slackened a bit.
Massive tangent but I believe ‘short and steep’ is still relevant and good in places, my Superfly is positively archaic in it’s geo, but it feels brilliant on faster smoother stuff and is transplanting my gravel bike for a lot of things. I don’t think a slacker head angle would help with this at all.
For me… I can’t be “overbiked" when it comes to forks and front tyres…. I can easily feel “overbiked" when it comes to rear suspension and rear tyres. Looking forward to the email…
Normal bike – most of the time probably (160mm/170mm)
Last e-bike – yes for travel (180mm/170mm with a 65mm stroke shock, 170mm/170mm with 62.5mm shock), no for power (35Nm, 250W)
Current e-bike – probably OK for travel (150mm/170mm), absolutely for power (130Nm, 1300W), but I’ve turned it down since the initial excitement of having the zoomies
I ride the same trails on – 160/140 FS, 150mm aggro HT, 160/160 ebike, 180/180 ebike. They all feel fine, I tend not to overthink it, but I’ve always erred towards the overbiked end of things I suppose.
I did feel like I was on the wrong bike recently though – out on the 180/180 28kg Kenevo the other week with the rest of the lads on exercise bikes – I was actually struggling to keep up in places
When on my Gravel and Hardtail = Underbiked mostly but enjoy it (my lower back may differ)
On the E Enduro = Overbiked, Massively. It overcompensates for my lack of climbing speed and with 170mm of travel soaks up the chunk like a magic carpet. But I don’t care as its simply for fun.
eMTB: Depends on the trail/location I’m riding… some I’m over, some I’m under and some I’m just right. Always happy though.
Gravel: Pretty much always underbiked, as it should be.
I’m on a 150/160mm full sus or 130mm hardtail. If I’m on the full sus I’m pretty much on the right type of bike 95% of the time, if I’m on the hardtail I’m probably under biked half the time. I don’t care either way as I’m out riding!
Varies on every ride. only when riding the xc fs have I considered myself underbiked. Even then it was still fun. Sometimes having too much travel takes the fun out of things.
But ultimately I don’t really care, it is all riding and is good to let you reset your thinking occasionally
Both depending on which bike I ride and where I ride it. I don’t really care because I can get off if underbiked and work harder if overbiked.
Most of the time when I’m on my Cube Stereo I feel over biked. I think I just prefer my hardtail. The Cube is much more capable than I am and I’m more wary of getting out of my depth on it. I had a go on my son’s Spectral CF8 and I really liked how it felt, capable without feeling to safe but I still had the feeling of, “I could get into some bother on this".
I ride everything from bridelways to bikeparks.
I build bikes that look cool and are fun to ride.
I always felt quite fit compared to my riding gang (like, at least on par) but a bit lacking in technical skill, so I preferred to be overbiked as a hopeful skill-compensator to bail me out of trouble and just deal with having to drag it up hills and so on.
Now a few years on I’m feeling a bit less fit generally and wondering if I ought to rethink this, but then I’d have to buy a new bike.
For most of my riding, I’m overbiked. Would I like something shorter travel for local XC trails or weapon of an Enduro bike for the handful of trips to bike parks/UK enduro/Alps trip every other year? Sure! But I based my buying decisions on the way the bikes made me feel, rather than what would be best for me… after all, this is supposed to be fun for YOU, right?
FWIW – current stable is…
Santa Cruz Bronson (160/150)
Santa Cruz Vala (160/150, full fat eMTB)
Ragley Mmmbop (probably the perfect bike for most of my riding but is subjected to winter hack and nursery run duties)…
Edit – double postage
The biggest revelation to me has been how much difference tyres make to the feel and capability of a bike.
In general, on most things outside of bike parks in the UK and the Alps, my 140mm Ragley Marley is more fun than my Stumpjumper Evo (150/160mm). However once it reaches it’s limits, the Stumpjumper Evo is more fun, less knackering, able to go faster, more confidence inspiring.
Having ridden the Peak District on both a gravel bike and a 160mm Enduro bike, both.
Do I care? Nope, just an old bloke playing about on bicycles, it really doesn’t matter
I do both.
Either I am on my fully rigid steel 29er on rooty technical trails, or on my 160mm e-bike commuting to work on gravel and asphalt 🙂
Probably underbiked but also in ignorant bliss. I ride a 10 year old £600 Voodoo Bizango. I’ve never ridden anything more expensive and at nearly 40 years old I’ve never even ridden a full sus so I don’t know what I’m missing out on (and I like to keep it that way otherwise I will be yearning for more expensive things). To be honest, I don’t ride anything like often enough to warrant anything fancier.
On the gravel bike I’m under-biked on the odd technical trail I come across but they’re infrequent enough to be a nice challenge when they appear. On the MTB (140/120mm FS) I generally only use it at trail centres on Blues & Reds so it usually right-biked but sometimes dips into over and under biked depending on the actual trail (or section of it).
I never used to particularly enjoy riding a HT on technical Blues and Reds as it just felt like survival rather than enjoyment most of the time, I get why it’s appealing to some people though, especially those with decent skills.
I have 2 mountain bikes. A YT Capra 165/170 and a Scott Scale 27.5 XC hardtail.
I cannot remember the last time that I rode the hardtail.
On Sunday I rode at AE Forest on the Capra, fitted with a set of grippy tyres and inserts. Probably about the right bike.
Today I’m gonna be riding canal towpaths with couple of pub stops and I’ll be riding the Capra again. This time with faster rolling tyres. Massively overbiked, but it works because of the wheel change.
In the past I’ve ridden a 140/150mm bike that I would class as underbiked and although it was engaging it was also very tiring, I felt beat up all the time.
In summary, overbiked works better for me, but it’s all in the tyres.