Reach – what’s your ideal frame reach…?

What’s your favourite frame reach and would you go longer or shorter on your next bike?

I’m curious as to what most folk are riding size wise. Anyone willing to share their reach + stem length for their preferred MTB size?

+ Has anyone gone too long and regretted it or got used to it and would never go back?

At a touch under 5’10” I’m around 490 inc stem

515 on the Enduro bike, 510 on the trail bike, 485 on the hardtail, 35mm stems on all of them

I’m clearly still in the old school numbers. I’m 6’1′ and have 460mm with a 50mm stem. Next bike will be at least 20mm longer overall.

5’9″

Full-sus – 511 reaches (inc stem), 476 for the frame
Hardtail – 510 reaches (inc stem), 460 for the frame

I’m 5’9 with white long legs for my height and short arms / short torso.

I went too long with my last full suss bike that had a 481mm reach and 32mm stem. I rode it for 3 years but I was always battling to weight the front wheel enough in flat / fast turns.

Swapped it out for a bike with 457mm reach (probably less with all the spacers I run under it) and a 50mm stem. Feels really different even though the combined length isn’t hugely different. I think I could go a bit longer reach and same or shorter stem – got my eye next on a bike with 461mm reach which isn’t hugely different but is a swap from 650b to 29er.

On a hardtail I want my reach shorter – I designed my current frame with a 445mm reach and 50mm stem. Slacker seat tube then the full suss. It’s better seated and over distance than the full suss as I’ve got a better seated position but I think I could have gone a little longer in the reach – maybe 450-455.

Interestingly when I rode the XL of my 2018 Cotic Flare Max I found the reach too long, but only when seated (JRA and climbing), so bought the L – which I love.

But in early 2020 I rode the new version, with a steeper seat tube, but same reach. I preferred the XL over the L.

I reckon it’s because I’ve long legs (for my height) and the steeper seatpost angle means the saddle is less ‘backwards’.

Only message is, don’t just focus on reach, also check out the seatpost angle – although this could just be an ‘issue’ for us long-legged folk.

Full sus (size L) 495mm +35mm stem

Hardtail (size ML) 482mm +50mm stem

I wouldn’t deliberately go longer.

187cm.

~490mm on both bikes. All with 50mm stems. All with reasonably steep STA’s.

Tried bigger, turned me into a slow wobbler. Wouldn’t go bigger again.

5’10” , 485 reach with a 42.5mm stem .
Feels way better than other bike at 465 reach and 50mm stem .

528mm reach plus 45mm stem on my full sus, 510mm plus 50mm on my hardtail. I’m 6’5″ so although both are quite long I wouldn’t say either is extreme, if I had to choose a favourite I’d probably say the shorter reach but that might just be because I prefer the bike. I tend to use the full sus for more gnarly riding where long reach would be more beneficial. I also have a 4x bike which must barely have a reach over 400 but does what it’s designed to very well

A smidge under 6 foot
I’m on a fs with 484 reach and 35mm stem currently. Previous bike was a bit longer- 487 reach and stock 40mm stem. I changed the stem on that bike to 35mm as it felt too resistant to turning corners when I first got it.
Thought about sizing up when I bought this bike but the next size up is 505mm reach I think and I was concerned that would be too long, lose some playfulness.
Previous hardtail ran 450 reach and 50mm stem and that didn’t feel too short.

5’9″ with short 29″ legs and long body/wingspan.

490mm reach and 35mm stem seems to be my sweet spot, along with nice steep SA to be really well centred on the bike.

Reach is a pretty crappy measure of a frame. I think Too tube length and head angle are way more important. The reach should be the product of getting a whole load of other things right, but the number on it’s own tells you almost nothing.

For the record I’m 190cm, and my 130mm trail bike bike has a reach of 540mm. It’s pretty much the longest bike of it’s type and fits well. I haven’t tried anything longer, but I would be open to it if the extra length came from a steeper seat angle or from a marginally longer top tube.

Given frames were always measured by seat tube length, I think if you were going to provide a size based on a single measurement then surely reach is the best one to use? Obviously reach on its own won’t tell you what a frame is like but it’s a good start and can’t really be adjusted like a head angle can be with a headset

“ Reach is a pretty crappy measure of a frame. I think Too tube length and head angle are way more important.”

Top tube length is a mess – it’s a confusion of reach plus a tan function of effective seat tube angle and stack height. Effective seat tube angle is a messy because of the variations in tube offset, tube bend and tube actual angle. It’s a rubbish measurement for a bike where fit when riding downhill and thus standing is critical.

The hypotenuse of reach and stack is a much better guide to frame size than reach alone but no-one quotes it and the mental arithmetic is quite hard…

Reach is quite effective on similar geometry bikes (BB drop, wheel size, fork travel) but if one bike has a big fork and front wheel and a low BB and the other bike the reverse then they’ll feel really different in size.

5ft8, 462mm + 40mm stem, happy with it. Next time I might look for slightly shorter, as with my slight/weak build I find it a bit difficult to lift the front wheel. And shorter seated too (by proxy of reach, or by seat tube angle), for long days with lots of seated pedaling.

5’10” / 178cm. My large soul has 480 reaches with a 35mm stem. Feels pretty good. My mate has the SolarisMAX also in large, that has 485 reaches but feels a bit shorter, maybe it’s something to do with it being taller or a slightly steeper seat tube.

I’m honestly not sure – I’m 180cm.

My hardtail, which I previously thought was a great fit, is:
455mm+50mm stem = 505mm.

Then I bought a Geometron G16:
502mm+35mm stem = 537mm.

I recently got the hardtail back out for winter and it feels terrifying now!

I couldn’t say – bikes are more complex than one measurement.

As above it’s complicated but…

Newest bike is 515 for a trail/SS at 6’4”, I’d go longer on an enduro bike or XC bike ideally.

5’9″

Large Norco Optic, 480mm reach plus a 42.5mm stem.

fits like a glove.

Have a Ragley Big Al, Medium, which i think is 450mm reach with a 50mm stem. Also feels pretty good, but equally i cant ride it as hard as my FS (lack of skill/confidence!)

460 reaches on my trail bikes, 475 reaches on my super-enduro bike.

I’m 5ft 8in with short legs.

I’d probably go to 470 reaches on a trail bike if I could choose.

Reach is a pretty crappy measure of a frame. I think Too tube length and head angle are way more important. The reach should be the product of getting a whole load of other things right, but the number on it’s own tells you almost nothing.

Couldn’t disagree more.

Reach is a very good measurement to go by for bike sizing, but we must be careful to compare apples with apples. I know a few people who have sized their recent hardtail purchases based on their LLS trail bikes, and found the bikes far too long and unmanageable as a result. As an example, I’m a smidge over 5ft10 and here’s my bikes figures…

Trail bike 490mm reach 40mm stem
Ebike 478mm reach 45mm stem
XC full sus 445mm reach 55mm stem
XC hardtail 429mm reach 70mm stem
Fatbike 437mm reach 65mm stem
Gravel bike 400mm reach 80mm stem
Road bike 394mm reach 100mm stem

They all fit me well, and have been designed to do different things well. A road bike with the reach of my trail bike would handle terribly, even with a much shorter stem to compensate. It’s also important to think about the angles too, as both my trail bike and eBike have roughly 64/77 angles respectively, with wheelbases over 1250mm long. My road bike has 73.3deg parallel angles and a sub 1m wheelbase…

Don’t get too caught up in the numbers basically, unless you know EXACTLY what you are looking for.

5’10” – long legs

Marin Alpine Trail – Large – 465 with a 45mm stem. Standard bike is 35mm stem, but swapped it out as I was understeering too much.

Orange 5 – Medium – 442 with a 50mm stem.

Orange is way more fun for just dicking about, lobbing off drops and stuff like that. I wouldn’t want to go longer than 465mm in the reach and I prefer a top tube 600mm to 620mm.

5’7 with a big ape index (long arms), 485 reach plus 35 stem on my main bike, whatever combination of bits I need to make others as close to that as possible.

I’m not exactly sure.

But I’m settling between 484 mm with a 50mm stem on the FS and 497mm on the hardtail with a 40mm stem.

Contrary to popular thinking I prefer my HT longer for stability because I ride it in the same conditions I ride the FS and it compensates a bit for the absence of rear suspension.

I’m 182cm tall.

6’3″

495mm with a 50mm stem. I reckon a bit shorter would be better.

5ft11, 510mm reach seems ideal with 35mm stem. Long inseam and arms. Anything less I seem to crash more. Got 3 hardtails 470, 490 and 510 reach. Seem to ride the 510 the best. Anything smaller I just feel off. A trip to the Tweed Valley the last few weeks with all bikes confirmed this to me. Had a lot time to ride the Golfie back to back.

Quite a range in variation here, really interesting to read through. Thank you to all who have contributed so far.

To expand on this, what top tube length (Effective Top Tube) do you find most comfortable for seated climbing?

For myself around 622mm feels about right with a 40mm stem (middle of the saddle rail) which allows me to go 5mm either way via 35mm or 45mm stem length, depending on the saddle rail position.

To expand on this, what top tube length (Effective Top Tube) do you find most comfortable for seated climbing?

ETT is just a mathematical function of reach and effective seat angle, and also doesn’t take into account the stack height at all. That, and last time I checked, but most saddles came with 30-40mm of useable adjustment on the saddle rails to effectively increase or decrease an ETT measurement as required…

It’s about the least relevant measurement on modern bikes, now that we have come away from the old school roadie methods of sizing I would argue.

I’d also add that you can’t compare hardtails and full-sus bikes’ reach without compensating for the rotation of the frames at sag. Full-sus bikes slightly shrink in reach, hardtails lengthen a fair bit. The end result is that a full-sus and hardtail with the same reach unsagged will feel about a whole size different when you’re on the bikes (assuming same head tube and fork length etc).

Some people quote hardtail geometry sagged but most don’t, so comparisons are confusing at best.

It’s an odd one this, ETT/reach didn’t much matter to people 10-15 years ago, but Head angle was apparently critical, BB height mattered for nailing those corners and suspension travel really mattered to some. The magazines/bike companies/websites seem to like getting the punters whipped up into bizarre geometry based dick measuring contests that eventually results in this sort of nonsense:

And the real point of measuring the various parts of your bike gets lost, does it fit you? is it comfortable to ride? Can you control the bastard thing?

The trouble is that they’re all arbitrary numbers if looked at in isolation and lots of other things have changed during the last decade or so, wheelbases and wheel diameters have generally grown, handlebars got wider and stems got shorter pretty much across all MTBs, in that context increased reach makes perfect sense.

Of course ETT (depending on how you measure it) is only one fixed, frame measurement that partly determines the fit of a bike with its rider, but in isolation it’s pretty meaningless. It’s interesting that lots of you are caveating that number with a stem length and your height for reference. But it’s all still largely meaningless to any stranger trying to size their own bike.

I do wonder if the various bike companies have far more detailed information comparing anthropometric data and bicycle geometry, but they’re just dripping feeding that understanding out via marketing to keep ongoing demand up for the next few decades, or if they’re just slaves to the fashions of bike shapes like their customers, nudged into a change when someone else tries something different every few years.

5’10” tall, 460mm reach with a 50mm stem (FWIW)…

Bikes of 10 years ago had radically different geometry compared to modern bikes. They both pedalled ok and “fitted” us (the saddle/bars were in the right sort of place). However I would say that modern geometry (LLS) has made MTB’s significantly more capable than they used to be.

I can understand how some people will claim modern bikes are the best thing ever and others will happily stick with their old fashioned bike wondering what all the fuss is about, both will be on comfortable bikes that fit them but will be more suited to different riding styles and terrain.

If we consider the Effective Top Tube measurement to equate to a comparative seated reach, or cockpit length on bikes of similar travel, then it has significance. As with the actual reach number in giving a good impression of size.

I might be wrong, hence my asking. Perhaps a large reach on a short ETT frame somehow balances things out. I can’t see how but I’m wide open to the possibility my current thinking is misguided.

My understanding of modern geo is that the seat tube angle is steeper (great) and the head tube angle is slacker (if appropriate for the travel it’s great) and the bottom bracket is lower. However the seated cockpit length seems to have been neglected, sitting between 595mm to 610mm for a medium and 630mm to 645mm for a large. At 5’10” that’s a big old gap, with most medium frames being cramped and pokey unless a 50mm+ stem is used and the large sizes being huge even with a 32mm stem.

I find it really interesting though and certainly a problem that could be solved regarding sizing measurements in general.

Looking at the responses os far it seems as though many are happy with or moving towards more reach. How this relates to the seated cockpit (ETT) is where my thinking gets stuck.

I am 180
Bike is L slash with a 486mm reach and 40mm stem and I think it’s too long for me. Especially bunny hopping is really exhaustin. Would like something between 465 and 475 and maybe 50mm stem so I could weight the front more easily.

465-470 please.

I’ve absolutely no idea. I just look at the size guide and then buy a medium.

I’ll be **** if I ever have to buy one with Specialized or Cotic new style of sizing….

[EDIT: I just realized this thread is a year old and somehow back from the dead… But since I typed the below out I guess I’ll leave it for posterity or something like that 🤦]

“Ideal” is quite a hard one to fathom.

I’ve gone from quite old-skool 420mm on a M 26er Cotic Soul, to 485 on a L Cotic BFeMAX, via a 460ish mullet NS Eccentric, over the last six years or so.

Each of them felt ok at the time, and I had them long enough to properly gell with them. But going backwards (I still have the Soul, and have ridden a mate’s NS) the older, shorter bikes feel very small and sketchy!

The BFeMAX is the first bike I’ve found it necessary to consciously weight the front when riding. Which *could* be a reach thing, and *could* be indicative that much longer wouldn’t suit me, but it’s hard to say. I’ve certainly ridden longer (FS) bikes and found them fine.

At a certain point it’s a bit like asking “what’s your favourite waist band size?*” 🤔

* Since you asked, 28″ if we’re reminiscing about my youth, 30″ if we’re being realistic, 31″ if we’re leaving a little room for pudding