Is there such thing as MTB drop?

Hello

Complete newbie here, just built up a Santa Cruz Tallboy (see thread), dialled in the suspension and now looking at riding position.

I come from a road racing background and ride a pretty agressive drop of 13cm (difference between the saddle to the ground and the bars to the ground) and was wondering if this was a thing in MTB and if there is a ballpark drop to get me started? Will be riding trail/xc stuff. Thanks in advance.

Probably is but depends non what the person rides to give a ballpark…I suspect it is a much wider range offroad than on-road.

Whatever is comfy for you is probably the best answer – I have about maybe 4-6″ drop between saddle and handlebar – very long legs and gangly arms so it works for me, but probably isn’t ‘right’.

mtb setup is more about control that aero/power so drop doesn’t figure that highly. Bars height is more likely to be setup in relation to bb for standing position than seated

It depends on many things including riding style and body type.  Don’t cut your steerer until you are sure you’ve nailed your personal setup.  Bikefit etc isn’t necessarily going to help here, hours on the trails and possibly coaching are what are going to tell you how high *you* should have your bars, whether you’re a flat/lo/hi rise person and whether you need the bars rolled forward or not.

As above, all theories about power generation and efficiency etc are pretty much out of the window. They obviously have some bearing if you want to pedal fast, but they aren’t going to inform your descending.

For comfort and control I’d say drop should be roughly zero for anything but full on XC racing. Unless you’re some kind of gibbon of course.

Not much drop on my Jeffsy but it’s a personal thing. I like the bars fairly high as I have neck problems and like a highish riding position.

For comfort and control I’d say drop should be roughly zero for anything but full on XC racing.

Pretty much how I set up for most weekend XC rides.

10 cm drop on my road bike, almost exactly 0 cm on the trail bike (Whyte T-129)

Depends on what you want to ride. Fast pedally xc having do well be fine probably. A soon as you start wanting to do jumps or steep technical, put it this way di you enjoy face plants?

I have some, but it’s not really something I’ve thought about. Most people use dropper posts now so it’s not a big concern, make sure the bars are comfortable for you standing and get the saddle out the way when you’re not using it.

If you don’t have a dropper you’ll probably want to compromise your pedalling position a bit for better control.

As above, a good starting point is to have the bars about level with the saddle. For XC stuff with lots of climbs and less tricky descents, maybe drop the bars a couple of inches.

Do some poking around for “dirt  drops” on google.

People who ride dirt drops eg On One Midge, Salsa Woodchipper, Genetic Digest, ride them for comfort and security on the downhills – your hands are hooked into the drops and you can have a secure hold on the bars without gripping with your fingers/forearems so much.  So if you’ve got drops, you’re going to want to be in them for the descents, and you’re going to need the drop section high enough to be comfortable/safe on steeper descents.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>The drop section is going to be a similar height to your best compromise flat bar position, and the hoods and the tops are really only for the odd rest, for cruising and flats/climbing.  And it sounds like you’re not really into resting and cruising and the flats and climbs are when you’re going to want to have your head down, going for it.</span>

Shiggy of MTBtires.com wrote the best set up instructions I’ve seen for MTB dropbars.

Basically it comes down to higher than you may first think.

I go for the tops level with the saddle and a shallow drop.

Coming from a road racing background delivering power on non technical flat or climbs shouldn’t be much of an issue but if you wanted to ride fire roads you’d have bought a gravel bike.

Everything (well not tech climbs bit mostly) new to you will be easier with higher bars.

It’s also obviously easy to cut the steerer later but you can’t add bits back on.

With ‘years of practice’ of course you can do all this with negative drop… but that’s a painful way to learn IMHO.

Just doing small jumps and drops will have the front wheel diving… etc. instead I’d say to start in the opposite direction, shorter stem as well than an ‘ideal’ until you’re comfortable and have 20-30mm of spacers to gradually move down before you make a cut you can’t uncut.

A natural attack position and saddle well out of the way will make it easier (and less painful) to learn new skills and you can then reduce the bar height if you want to focus more on pedalling performance.

I think I completely misunderstood your question!

Play around, see what happens.  Don’t suit your steerer down any time soon.

I built this one up not so long ago. light and racey was the idea, 90’s xc racer style (which it is/was), so low bars at the front.  Too low!  Pulled the stem up to the top of the steerer, then put a gopping high-rise stem on, and the bars I’ve got now have 20cm more rise.  Now pretty much level with the saddle and it feels spot on.

With the bars low, I was shying away from steep roll-off drops that were well within my ability, it just felt like I was going to go straight over the bars.   And I couldn’t get into a good strong position when honking on the bars, standing up out of the saddle.  you can pull much harder if your back is straight (think lifting position – lift with your legs, not your back) but my back was stooped with the bars low and it just wasn’t efficient of comfortable.

Leave the steerer for now, or only cut it a bit but leave some room to adjust stem with spacers.

And get a dropper post.

Fully adjustable then 😉

most of my bikes have the stems slammed.

For comfort and control I’d say drop should be roughly zero

I disagree – bars that high and there’s not enough weight on the front for me to have control. It’s personal.

As a start halfway between zero and slammed. See what you think.

For me it;s the weighting of the front wheel on turn in that i feel for.

For comfort and control I’d say drop should be roughly zero for anything but full on XC racing. Unless you’re some kind of gibbon of course.

This is fair. Level seems to be a solid starting point but if you’re tall you’ll likely end up with some kind of drop, I certainly do. It’ll also depend on the kind of riding you do, if your focus is on going downhill and on techy stuff then a higher front (within reason) can help, for racing and faster XC type work then a lower front end is often preferred.

There are differences between road and MTB.  On a road bike you’re fairly static – there’s your ideal position, and that’s that.  On an MTB, there are compromises.  If you have a good low position which feels right based on your road bike, it’ll make it harder to handle on anything technical – but if you raise the bars it won’t feel quite as good when climbing.  So it’s down to you to make a compromise.  I’m constantly raising and lowering the bars on my XC bike, although I think I’m settled now.  But I may be about to fit a dropper to it, so that will mean a change – I can then go lower on the bars which feels better climbing, and won’t be an issue when descending.  Having my whole body lower will help with manoeuvrability too.

This is why so many MTBers have multiple bikes.  And they are often pretty different.  I have a long travel bike which I take when I’m in the mood for technical stuff, and it’s got a much more upright position amongst many other differences.  It feels very different to my XC bike or my rigid one.  However on all my bikes I have a fair bit of drop – perhaps that’s just my body shape or perhaps it’s because I started in the early 90s.

A dropper post gets round this issue though as said.  In the 90s we just put up with high seats and leant on our forks.  But with longer travel this can be awful because you get so much more dive.  A dropper allows you to get low behind a long travel fork to deal with the diving.

After years of mucking about I have ended up about level. It’s about the right compromise for me of control and getting the hammer on.

Wow, I cannot imagine having zero drop!

I read somewher a long time ago that a standard XC saddle to bar drop is around 1-2inches

No idea of the provenance of that but its probably about where I am

1-2″ drop is where I used to be, but I put the bars up to level and it’s comfier with a bit more control and no loss of climbing/ flat speed. I am short though so this is still a low bar position with a zero deg stem. Just not a negative stem like I used to run.

 I am short though so this is still a low bar position with a zero deg stem.

This is a key factor IMO. As a tall person I have never had a bike, road or MTB with zero drop. Short(er) friends however have zero drop on road bikes and some rise on MTB.

A road bike with zero drop would need to have either a very high stem or a huge headtube, neither of which I want or need.

I’m not sure having a lower bar makes me faster, but it feels better.

My rigid bike has quite a low bar because there’s no fork dive to contend with so I can get away with it, which along with the rigid pedalling platform means it feels much better to ride despite being rough as hell and therefore very slow and uncomfortable on descents.

Funny old world MTBing.

FWIW I’m 5’11 with 32″ inside leg and zero ape index.

A lot depends on the rider….

Just picking a geometry chart I have to hand, but 140mm travel Helius AC had stack height of 589mm for the small and 627mm for the XL.  There could be over 300mm of height difference between the riders of those bikes but with the same stem/bar config the bars are only 38mm higher for the taller rider.

Generally I’d say small people on long travel bikes probably want the bars slammed or even a negative rise.  Tall people might want some spacers.  That said, I ride my bikes with 0 degree stem, pretty much slammed.  Steep descending is about dropped heels and keeping your weight low – little to do with bar height.  I don’t jump but higher bars might make a difference there .

Steep descending is about dropped heels and keeping your weight low – little to do with bar height.

DH racers run their bars higher than XC racers because it helps on steep descents. General trail riding needs something in between.

Steep descending is about dropped heels and keeping your weight low – little to do with bar height.

Higher bars allow you to get your CoG further back, and further away from the front wheel.  Because your head angle is < 90 degrees then a higher bar brings the bars closer too.

Admittedly droppers change the equation, which is what I said up there ^^ with a dropper you can get away with lower bars.

Well I’ll just add that even though I’ve wrapped the centre of the bars in cork tape so I can rest my elbows there for aero/giving the hands a rest on smooth flat bits, I run zero or possibly even negative drop.

It’s down to personal preference and what the bike will allow you to do – my stem is slammed but it’s a 29er with a relatively long head tube and 140mm forks. And the stem’s too short to run any drop on it anyway (but it feels right with the shallow rise bars I have, so I wouldn’t want to drop them any further).

I’m mot aware of anyone talking about “bar drop” in MTB, but bar height is a reasonably hot topic.

Mine are maybe 3 to 5in lower than my saddle at pedaling height, and I like them on the low side compared to the fashion for enduro-y riding. I ride all my MTBs up hill so the bar height is pretty similar, if I have them too high climbing just feels awkward.

Trial and error is the way to find out, as mentioned above – don’t cut that steerer too short and don’t expect to get it right straight away,

Also, beware of anyone who has a formula or claims to be a bike fit expert for MTB.

DH racers run their bars higher than XC racers because it helps on steep descents. General trail riding needs something in between.

Sure – DH bikes are a special case as they’re nearly always pointing down fairly steep slopes.  Assuming we’re all riding general purpose bikes that we ride uphill as well as down the real question is what gives the most balanced handling.

I just measured my XL Nicolai Helius vs Katies small Canyon Spectral. My bike is running at 50mm drop with a 5mm spacer under the stem, hers is just about level with the stem slammed. They’re both 0 degree 50mm stems and c20mm rise bars.

You can see Fabien Barel’s set up here at about 1.36. He seems to be running about 10mm under his stem and it looks like a small drop (25mm?) from saddle to grips (hard to tell due to angles but definitely looks lower to me.

https://dirtmountainbike.com/racing-events/enduro/set-enduro-bike-fabien-barel/

My rigid bike has quite a low bar because there’s no fork dive to contend with so I can get away with it, which along with the rigid pedalling platform means it feels much better to ride despite being rough as hell and therefore very slow and uncomfortable on descents.

Well that’s exactly why I raised my handlebars on my rigid bike – the rough ride even on light XC causing wrist issues, raised the bars to help get remove pressure from the wrists.

See cyclists palsy thread, and https://www.active.com/cycling/articles/7-ways-to-prevent-and-treat-cyclist-s-palsy

Further off topic, for me it wasn’t so much cyclists palsy, as the combination of commuting on a rigid bike 5 days a week combined with trying to get fit through bodyweight exercise – handstands, push ups, pull ups, inverted rows, l-sits, planks, support holds – all exercises putting strain through wrists. I’ve more or less swapped BWF (I didn’t progress far with it at all) for attempting to learn basic trials skills on the commute home – so higher bars also good there too.

There’s so much more variation in MTB than road, in terms of geometry, suspension, terrain, riding style and priorities. I couldn’t possibly define a standard drop for myself, let alone more widely.

The bars on my Stooge are way higher than I’d want on a more racy suspended XC bike, for example.

Although the OP doesn’t seem to have returned ….

Complete newbie here, just built up a Santa Cruz Tallboy (see thread), dialled in the suspension and now looking at riding position.

It seems to me that the most important thing is starting off with a “riding position” that will give them confidence and develop new skills.

What someone with several years riding experience uses on their bars is probably not the most relevant to a complete newbie.  This is ignoring the fact that just add/remove spacers is more likely to get the best position for YOU rather than a measurement.