Also worth looking up Lee McCormick's RAD and RAAD measurement on pinkbike, I'm not sure if it's right for many riders now and I don't have a view of it a s a benchmark tbh. But the idea is valid as it's easy to measure and looking at your 2 contact points and considering how well/easily you can move your weight from there, over a fairly wide range of terrain angles (descending mainly). Using his general formula I get a RAD number that seems a bit short but the formula was from 2016ish.
+1 for perhaps try raising your bar as well.
I just lowered it! It had been on max height.
What'll happen if I fit a slackening headset?
Thinking about this some more, I think a session at a decently big pump track might be a good idea, it'll help you feel where the centre of the bike's gravity is and how best to shift your weight going over the bumps and leaning/compressing the bike into the berms. This way you can easily repeat sections making small adjustments each time.
In recent times I've been sessioning sections of trail, trying to improve my technique, it's really helped my riding as well as my 11 year old son's riding. Something I never did in the past as I was more focused on 'getting the miles in'
What's your height?
What's your bar height and width?
What's the stem length?
What's the frame reach?
Yeah some sessions on man made stuff would be good. I should go to BPW.
- 180cm
- Ape index 0
- 780mm wide, 12mm rise (Nukeproof Horizon v2)
- 45mm stem
- 480mm reach
You don't seem anywhere wild in terms of size, maybe on the longer end of things, bars are a lot lower than I personally run.
What symptoms are you getting that makes you think your weight is off?
I ride bmx bikes, jump bikes, trail bikes and dh bikes, they're all varying shapes, I've never had to think "do this with your elbows, chin here, heels down", nor have I ever had to think about it when changing between bikes, so don't really buy into "well if the bike is x shape I have to ride it y way", only when setup has been off, which pretty much only seems to be bar height related for me.
Just a case of new bike, feels different and just have to get used to it?
What symptoms are you getting that makes you think your weight is off?
First time out I nearly wiped out spectacularly as the front wheel washed out. After that it just felt.. off.. compared to my last chunky bike, a 2007 Patriot. I tried every variable trying to make it like the Patriot until I realised that it wasn't possible, it was too different. I found that moving my weight forward did help. Then on Saturday I did some big steep descents for the first time and the steering felt really wobbly, floppy and insecure, prompting me to think about more about it.
I am a big advocate of fettling bike setup and I have a stack of stems and bars to prove it, but I think here I was trying to make it be like something it couldn't be. I under-estimated just how different it is to my old bike and I'm having to learn some things and really un-learn other things that weren't 'bad habits'. They were very good techniques on my old bike, but don't work at all here.
Similar boat here @molgrips. Going from a 2012 Nukeproof Mega to a new Trek Roscoe 9 and it feels like a runaway train on the steep stuff. I just put it down to being A/a modern 29er and B/a hardtail and concluded I just need to ride it more and get used to it being different. The videos posted earlier in the thread seem useful though.
Missed off your measurements, what’s the stack height of the frame?
if you’re riding off the back of the bike already, slackening it out further will give you even less front end grip. Same applies for a going shorter on the stem.
On that size bike at your height you should be able to weight the front well enough.
Maybe you're just hiding at the back a bit too much due to years and years of trad. conditioning?
Took me a while to break old habits.
Just try keeping a bit of a bend in your elbows. Sometimes you’ll find yourself with straight arms on a steep descent and have to consciously bend them which will bring you more into the middle of the bike.
How tall are you / what size reactor?
If the fronts washing it could be you’re too far back, but equally you could be too over the front and overloading the tyre making I dig in, or maybe just dragging front brake. If you think you’re too far back watch some World Cup racers and have a look at how much tyre buzz they get in a run and how much they trust the mechanical grip of the front of the bike
So I don’t know what your issue is, as I’ve not seen you ride. But I can describe my issue and it may give you something to look at.
I am fairly good at keeping the front wheel weighted, just try and keep my chin over the stem and stop my elbows from dropping too low. Great, well not so much. What I then end up doing is letting my hips move forward and down a bit too much which puts me in much more of a precarious position on the bike. It feels fine, but when the trail gets steeper or twisty it leaves the bike (and me) unbalanced.
So I’m slowly learning to recognise when this happens and move my hips upward again. Start of a ride now I just do a few drills to remind myself how it feels when they drop forwards and it seems to make it easier to maintain better body position. Every time I correct myself on a feature or section I immediately feel more stable on the bike. Muscle memory is a shit at time.
So when I fitted the lower rise bars the bars felt too low, so I raised the bars as much as I could. But somehow, riding with the bars slammed does not feel too low?? Just goes to show how subjective it is.
Anyway it seems that bending my elbows and lowering the bars was the thing I was missing. It was actually a bit better climbing but much better descending. My chin was over the bars generally but being lower which pivots my torso around my hips has movedy CoG forward. Everything felt pretty dialled.
It's a very different way of riding though. On the other bike I used to be more upright and I'd be putting my weight off the side of the bike and pulling the front wheel around, but on this one I am sort of sitting in the middle and doing more hip steering. It feels more like getting your weight over the middle of skis; also somewhat perversely since my body is now so low my back is flatter and it is much more like descending on a road bike or even further BITD on a mid 90s rigid bike. Quite hard work on the thighs though.
Anyway it seems that bending my elbows and lowering the bars was the thing I was missing
I find bar height has a massive effect on my confidence, lots of people have talked about having higher bars to give more confidence on steep stuff for a few years now (in various places, mag articles etc) , I tried raising mine, but dont like it all, it really affects front wheel grip on steep downhill stuff. The problem is its hard to articulate bar height in objective terms, maybe everyone who advocates higher bars is coming from a starting point of bars much lower than mine already were, so mine ended up way too high when I raised them?
Anyway - mine are now (and always have been - after trying higher and finding I dot like it) in a position where the grips are about level with the saddle/just a few mm lower, when the saddle is in the raised position.
So when I fitted the lower rise bars the bars felt too low, so I raised the bars as much as I could. But somehow, riding with the bars slammed does not feel too low?? Just goes to show how subjective it is.
I've found this before. I think when you have them very low, you get forced into that straight armed style that you see most of the pro xc racers in when on easier descents.
When they are high, you have the elbows out posture of the gravity rider.
When in the middle, you cant do either effectively.
Of course where high middle and low are, varies for the individual, and also per bike.
I would love to trim the now un-used 20mm off the top of the steerer for that proper slammed look but I'm sure I'll regret it later 🙂
It sort of makes sense that at the short end of the range for that frame size I should have the stem low. There's only about 2cm of seatpost showing.
