Bouldering is the one for me, but I think it’s great that we all find one or more activities that resonates with us.

I enjoy the all encompassing nature of bouldering at my limit. I’ve spent 15 sessions over 3 months on the same bit of rock to top out a boulder, generally at night with lamps when the air is coolest and friction is at its best. When not climbing, i’m still thinking about how I can adjust my body positions to make the crux moves work, i’m training the specific positions on the training wall I built in my garage to replicate outdoor boulders, doing one arm pullups off the door frame every time I walk into the kitchen, and when I get to the kitchen, eating the right foods to keep my strength:weight ratio optimal.

Then it’s all about keep turning up, sticking with it and not letting the thought that ‘this one is just too hard for me’ win out over persistence.

It’s these project boulders that I enjoy the most, but if it’s a thrill i’m seeking then I can always go and do something that’s both high and physically/technically difficult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLv7Qvd4pdY

You don’t need to be able to backflip on a trampoline to flip a bike.

I’ve done it in foam pits at Radical bikes and Adrenaline alley as well as to both the resi ramps at adrenaline alley.

You don’t need to but it’s very helpful. I learnt both flips and flairs to wood, before foam pits were common place. I got flips round on the first attempt and landed them clean within a few more attempts as I knew what it should feel like. With flairs I didn’t have a clue where I was in the air and crashed hard. I then did 100’s of them on a trampoline to get the rotation wired and landed it on a bmx next time out.

Additionally, once you’ve pulled your first flip, that doesn’t mean you will land every single one going forwards. Different jumps require you to flip fast or slow, push through with your hips, or pull back to avoid travelling too far. Flip too fast off the lip and there’s not a great deal you can do to slow it down, so you need to bail at the right moment. Flip too slowly and with the right awareness this is usually correctable by tucking up, if not then underrotating is reasonably easy to escape from, but again, only if you are really aware of where you are. Better developing that awareness on a trampoline right?

Most skateparks allow BMX’s and jump bikes. Ramp 1 in Warrington and Rampworx in Liverpool are 2 off the top of my head.

There’s Dirt Factory in Manchester if you want to take in a big bike, although the air bag is the only thing worth riding there on such a bike.

I’d recommend making sure they have backflips wired on a trampoline first (without bike). This is valuable for having the awareness of where you are in the air and teaches how to get the rotation with the hips.

Working for an employer is simply a business transaction: your time/effort/skills for their money. It’s all a game. Terminating your employment with a generic letter of notice (or even telling the whole truth) isn’t going to burn any bridges, and if it does then f*ck them as it’s all on them.

First, ask politely to use your holidays. If declined then ask again sternly with a reason why you want/need to use them. If there’s a valid reason for your holidays being declined (e.g. workloads) then just work them so it’s not you that’s being unreasonable; however, if it’s the employer being unreasonable then go off sick and get paid your holidays.

Maybe you’re looking to buy the new bike partly to fill the void that’s left from your unfulfilling and stressful work, which is absolute madness because material things will never be able to do that.

A top shelf bike will bring no more joy than one that just gets the job done adequately – as long as you stop comparing to others and stop reading about bike reviews.

Spend the money by all means if you have it, but be aware it won’t fulfil you or bring about any lasting joy beyond the first couple of weeks. I think we all know this but sometimes need reminding and i’ve been guilty myself many times.

My riding buddy is 6’5 and rides an XL Scott Ransom at 500mm reach. I’m 6’2 and ride a medium Commencal Clash at 465mm reach. We only tend to ride DH/freeride. He wants something slightly shorter next time and I find mine perfect for my needs.

For anyone who isn’t currently suffering from major mental health problems, I recently heard an unexpected, inspiring comment from the UFC fighter Israel Adesanya. On why he sees a therapist, he explained with an analogy along the lines of “you don’t wait for your teeth to fall out then go to a dentist, you go to the dentist before you get problems and work to maintain the health of your teeth. Mental health should be the same and you work at it before you get ill”

Now we don’t all have access to therapists but the concept of working to maintain your mental health before you suffer is an obvious but great reminder.

Best to work on your mind imho which is the source of so much suffering .
Just my thoughts (well ..and the Buddha’s too !)

I think everyone could benefit from this (and i’m as atheist as they come). Learning to still ones mind and to reach the realisation that your external circumstances are utterly irrelevant to your suffering (or at least should be) is going to help most people tremendously. Continue further down this path and you eventually aim to realise there is no ‘you’ to suffer! (but I digress)

Personally, i’m at a stage of understanding the above to be true academically, but it will take more work to really feel it to be true in my daily life.

Sorry my post is general mental health related rather than suicide specific.

Just as interesting here to see the names that aren’t coming up!

get him in a decent skatepark a couple times a week on a BMX or jump bike.

Thanks for the responses, on reflection my previous post looks to be a bit devils advocate and ‘conspiracy’ but I didn’t mean it to be, so thanks for all answering sensibly.

Sorry if this is obvious and has already been answered – I lost interest and gave up on following covid news months ago, but it seems the deaths aren’t rising as much as the number of cases this time round?

In March we were at circa 5k cases per day and this was quickly followed by 1k deaths with a few weeks lag.

Now we’ve been seeing cases rise since July and are at c.15k cases daily but only around 100 deaths. Even accounting for lag between cases and deaths it seems that deaths are much lower than expected if you extrapolate March’s results.

Is there a reason for this? Possibilities i’ve conjured up include:

1. the virus has mutated to a less deadly form like most viruses tend to.
2. we are testing more people so have more confirmed cases now.
3. we know how to treat people better combined with vulnerable people now taking it more seriously and shielding properly.
4. young people have lost interest and are going out catching it without many direct health consequences.
5. i’ve seen rumblings on facebook about the tests having a ridiculously high false positive rate but this could just be conspiracy nutters doing what they do.

Confidence will be lacking without sufficient feedback from the front end. As counter intuitive as it may seem, try raising tyre pressure significantly (maybe 5psi to start?) and also maybe increase the low speed damping or air pressure on the fork. What you lose in theoretical traction that a softer setup can bring, you could more than offset being able to feel what the front end is doing, which will inspire confidence, allowing you to push into the front end and subsequently gain more traction.

In terms of building up skills, get on some steep, wet and muddy tracks, preferably not too rooty to start, where even the best riders will be sliding around all over the place. When you fall (because you will) it’s going to be at a slow-ish pace and probably on to your side, but I find this the safest way to get used to the bike sliding around underneath and you can learn to play with the limits of grip and purposely 2 wheel drift into a berm/feature that catches you. Consider the alternative of trying learn this limits of grip on a bone dry, flat-out, dusty track – death sentence!

Edit: in terms of doing all the correct posture things you’re supposed to do: weight over the front, attack position, weight low, riding confidently etc. I’ve found there’s 1 age-old tip that forces you to do all of the above and that’s look further down the trail. When you’re on a corner you should already be more or less looking at the next corner.

Is a bizzare fallacy, pay £2000 now and you’ll get £50 off a £350 policy in 5 years time. Survive without a car for now and you’ll have £2000 plus interest when you graduate in 4 years.

Also, statistically, there’s a 23% chance of them crashing in the first two years. So no NCD anyway!

Completely agree. NCD is hugely unimportant compared to age IME, and the increased risk for younger drivers is also something to be considered.

It’s well done and cool to see as an individual clip like this but in the context of a film I think it detracts from the story and emotion. It’s too clean and clinical – this works for something like the Matrix but for a war film, there are better ‘tricks’ for my taste, like shaky cameras, 1st person view, and wide angle shots which enhance the chaos and horror.

Mol Grips and Trail Rat:

The OP’s questions relates to losing weight. Exercise as a whole is not even the most important factor for losing weight. The old adage ‘you can’t out-run a poor diet’ holds true for most.

In addition to diet and exercise, also relevant are sleep, stress, attitude and so on. Roughly in order of importance, likely with many things missed, most people will see the best results from the following:

find a good diet that’s sustainable forever or at least a very long time
make better choices in the foods you eat so you can be full enough without too many calories.
drink enough water to be healthy and reduce appetite, snacking etc.
don’t snack
reduce alcohol intake
have nice things like cakes, chocolate less often
do some exercise
don’t cave in and have a big cheat and undo all your hard work to date
do a bit more exercise
sleep well to keep your energy levels up while eating less and doing more
keep doing all this, weight loss is easy but hard to sustain/maintain
tighten diet up further if it stops working, reduce portion sizes, etc.
are you strength training yet? it’s good for body composition / nutrient partitioning
ok now I might consider heart rate zones

I accept heart rate zones might come further up that list for some people, or even further down for others. My point is that if you’re out on the bike for a decent amount of time, for at least a few days a week and keeping moving at other times in the day/week, that will cover the exercise aspect to losing weight and making it any more complex often makes people focus on the wrong areas, e.g. what’s the point worrying about whether your heart rate is at 130bpm or at 150bpm if your diet means you can only stick to it for a few days but then are tired and hungry and on day 4 give in and eat a whole pizza, chips, desert and a pint of coke.

Excessive social media usage is fairly easy to identify as a problem and reduce accordingly; however, it’s easy to justify phone addiction in other ways such as excessive browsing of forums relating to our interests, reading about subjects we’re interested in, or simply just checking emails, the weather, stock markets, etc. as normal behaviour. This can add up quickly and become compulsive too. Ever felt that every gap in external stimuli has to be filled with looking at your phone – waiting for the kettle to boil? check the phone. Kids currently occupied? check the phone. On the loo? check the phone. I admit I have.

Spending this much time looking at a screen has obvious consequences such as being disconnected from your immediate surroundings, but I have a theory that there are less obvious and potentially more serious consequences too, such as being disconnected from yourself, and if you’re stimulated all the time, this becomes your new baseline and therefore everything genuinely stimulating becomes a bit less so.

I’ve had success by turning off notifications and setting screen time limits. Removing fingerprint unlock and setting a 16 digit pin is another good tip to reduce the compulsion to unlock it.

Whilst there’s some evidence to show that body fat is burnt slightly more efficiently at different work rates, in reality, for most people, work harder = more calories burned = better overall contribution to losing fat when combined with an appropriate diet. Unless you’re already circa 10% body fat, where you need all the tricks in the book to continue losing fat (most people get a 6 pack around 13-15%) then making it any more complex than this is concentrating on the wrong stuff. Diet and consistency are the biggest contributing factors. Heart rate zones is the last 1% so only deserves 1% of focus.

Consider an hour long slow steady ride in the optimal ‘fat burning’ zone. Perhaps you burn 500 calories overall. If you reward yourself with 2 beer’s later that evening you’ve effectively undone all of that work in terms of calories.

Goyt Valley, Derbyshire.

Interesting, are the current trails proper DH? Worth visiting? (circa 1 hour drive). It appears there’s a decent drop in height.

Over the last few years, primary for DH i’ve had:

Hope E4
SRAM guide
Hayes Dominion
Shimano SLX

I’ve had decent luck with all the above and not hated any of them.

Hayes were by far the best in every way: power, feel, modulation, consistency.

Next best for me are the Shimano SLX on my current bike which has surprised me as I tend to favour modulation over bite. Whichever you chose go for the biggest rotor you can.

Thanks all, really useful stuff here and I like the look of a few already having watched some youtube vids.

Answering various questions i’ve been asked:

I wasn’t expecting built trails. Usually my friends and I like to hit the biggest jumps/drops possible, and steepest lines we can find but my post here is for something a little different to that and natural trails are fine. I’d still like it to be as gnarly as possible – the views are no doubt amazing but the riding itself would be a bit boring if it’s tame.

I don’t mind carrying a bike up for hours.

I probably won’t be staying over, I will be driving from Leeds.

Really got to start asking what skill level and what terrain people are riding when you need s bike like this. Sure to see plenty at trail centres that are more suited to hardtail or short travel

Anyone who frequents Revolution and Dyfi bike parks and also pedals to ride similar sized features in local woods. This is basically everyone I know who rides a mountain bike.

Good to reasonavble value for money brands:

Bird AM9
Commencal Meta AM
Radon Swoop
Propain Tyee
Whyte G170
Canyon Strive?

Not sure about the lack of sympathy here? It’s not a competition to see who’s had it worst. If the OP has felt the need to post about it then they aren’t doing too well, whether that’s backed up by the obvious physical markers (job, health, etc) or not is irrelevant IMO. Lives are complex and everyone deals with things differently, just take a moment to consider the rates of depression and suicide, especially in men (not saying the OP is there, hopefully).

Unfortunately I don’t have much advice other than try to remain stoic – just worry about what you can control and live as best you can.

For anyone interested, this has been resolved by drastically altering the progressivity front and rear.

I tested this again while rolling after reading the comment above to see if it was just a stationary effect and it did the same thing, possibly even more pronounced. I tried every reasonable combination of air pressure, compression damping and rebound damping with no luck.

Today my tool arrived to open up the fork and I discovered that the zeb with its huge air volume (read: linear) had zero tokens. Meanwhile the rear shock had 3 tokens on a progressive linkage. No idea why commencal ship it like this.

I’ve removed all 3 tokens from the shock, running it at 25% sag (previously 30%) and added 2 tokens to the fork. Problem solved in terms of balance.

In isolation I actually preferred the more linear feel of the zeb with no tokens so I may try a megneg for the rear shock to further bring out the mid stroke emphasis at the back and then hopefully remain balanced while removing tokens from the fork again.

Save until January. There will be some bargains once it’s cold, dark and wet and everyone’s skint

For myself i’d be going for the oneup (210mm variant) however, for you it seems to be a no brainer – cheaper, reliable and enough drop – get the revive

Coil shocks suit the Capra very well as it has an ultra-progressive leverage rate. I ran an Ohlins on mine but have no personal experience with the CCDB.

You can also choose the same shock stroke length as the pro-race model to get the additional 10mm of travel – the frame is the same its just a longer shock

To add a little balance here, I was all aboard the coil hype train with an Ohlins TTX coil shock on my capra. I just switched to a commencal clash with an air shock, which I expected I would be replacing, but I’m pleasantly surprised to find there’s not a massive difference between them.

OK it’s a different bike so it’s not comparing apples to apples but it shows air shocks are getting there. The shock on my commencal is a super deluxe ultimate (what a stupid name).

my pedal strikes are mainly down to poor technique

will try more air first although think i’m already getting the recommended sag and it’s rare for me to bottom out the shock completely

cranks are short already

More air in your case is likely a bad idea if you’re already at the recommended sag and rarely using all the travel. I’d recommend consciously trying to improve your technique seeing as though you have identified it as a weakness. You’ll improve in no time and your suspension will still be nice and supple for when you need it. Better yet, it costs you nowt to upskill!

Volume spacers primarily affect the end of the stroke and would not significantly help in reducing pedal strikes. You’d get more mid stroke support by either running less sag or adding more low speed compression (not sure if this is adjustable on your shock?) but both of these will be a trade off against other qualities e.g. suppleness.

If your pedalling timing is already spot on and you are still struggling with pedal strikes then perhaps shorter cranks are worth considering?

If you still want to play with volume spacers, I just purchased some knock off 3D printed ones on ebay for half the price of Rockshox.

Thanks all. There were quite a few comments here and a bit of interest so thought i’d update.

I rode a few other peoples bikes that were in the same category – a large YT Capra and large Canyon Torque. I liked both in terms of overall size and the 650b wheels. It seems YT and Canyon don’t actually stock bikes these days and the final remaining 2021 Commencal Clash Race was still up for grabs at chain reaction cycles so I purchased it (through my cycle to work scheme!) in size medium as this is practically the same size as the large YT’s and Canyon’s I had ridden.

It’s exactly what I was looking for. Big travel, burly, slightly undersized (on paper) which means better manoeuvrability and as close to a DH bike as possible whilst still being able to pedal it to some degree. I visited a bike park this weekend and found that on the DH runs I could ride more aggressively and muscle the bike around better than on my previous XL Capra 29. I ‘felt’ faster, and whether this is true I don’t know, but what matters to me is it felt more exciting. On the freeride lines I could really throw it around ride more stylishly than my previous bike.

Still tweaking the suspension to get it perfectly dialled in for me but it’s getting there. The Zeb Ultimate 180mm fork felt a little bit divey at the recommended pressure for my weight. I’ve ended up 12 psi harder, LSC at around half way and HSC at 3 clicks of 4. This now feels spot on – I like my forks pretty firm! The rear suspension felt great straight away at 30% sag and no low speed compression at all but i’m finding it easier to use all the travel than on the fork so I will play with volume spacers to create more progression at the end stroke. Unfortunately there’s no HSC dial on the shock. Wheels with quicker engagement are a novelty to me which is something I never knew I cared for but it feels nice. Surprisingly the new Shimano SLX brakes are really good too. I’ve previously been more a fan of SRAM’s modulation than Shimano’s bite, but they seem to have found a nice balance here. The only bit to change is the 150mm dropper for a 210mm one as I like to keep it slammed in the frame for maximum clearance – 210mm should at least get my leg nearly straight when pedalling!

On my first ride on it this weekend, a gent with some fancy camera gear was kind enough to take this great photo which i’m really pleased with!

On my XL Capra 29 the position felt great for pedalling; however, that is my lowest priority. It felt ever so slightly stretched out for jumping, eve with a 35mm stem – sometimes this felt really good on very fast and big jumps but not as good for going sidewards and tricks on steeper jumps. It also felt a bit unwieldy on tight corners but that could have been a function of having my front end very high in attempt to shorten the reach.

The clash and slayer are both around 10-15mm shorter in both reach and stack in the sizes mentioned. The biggest geometry difference between them is chainstays which are just 8mm longer on the slayer.

For further reference I just borrowed a friends size medium nomad this weekend which is a true size medium unlike the new clash. I went to descend bike park at hamsterley and it felt fine for most stuff including the faster jumps like the road gap but a little bit like i was over the bars on the steeper black runs. That leads me to believe somewhere inbetween the nomad and my old Capra would be right.

In every measurement, both are only slightly smaller than my previous XL capra, which I found to be slightly too big.

Oh I’m still on my previous sram rotors too

I use them primarily for DH and I like them. The modulation and consistency is great. Power feels fine but as a decent boulderer I’ve never struggled with power on any properly installed disc brake.

I use an old sram bleed kit on mine and it works fine. Not sure about aftermarket pads

I’d say it’s worth trying the Yari – if it’s good for you then great, if you want more then convert to a lyrik which for my money is the best fork on the market (in top spec guise)

I have a 2018 27.5 capra and I’ve done big days and big mileage rides on it so it’s perfectly capable of that sort of stuff, but it is definitely harder work. I think the 29er has a different tune to the shock which makes it a better pedaller so that’s something to consider.

the 29ers leverage curve has slightly more ramp up than the 27.5. I think both Capras are the most progressive of any bike already! Not sure on shock tune though.

Some people note this as being harsh – indeed my 29er with 170mm travel and a coil at 35% sag feels no more plush than my previous 155mm patrol on air at 33% sag. It is absolutely bottomless though.

If I was into spending more money than I needed to i’d get a 180mm dual crown fork for it too!

The Capra is a monster. If it didn’t exist i’d probably have a Tues to give you an idea of my intentions with it. I don’t really care for pedalling all that much but it doesn’t seem to bob when spinning and that’s with a coil

Western boxing and some form of wrestling have to be the most effective disciplines in a street fight.

Kickboxing? no good in jeans and you’d rarely get the range for kicking
ju-jitsu? useless, you’ll get your head stomped by an onlooker
taekwondo, akido, karate, etc… not enough actual sparring, punch technique not as effective as boxing

100 PSI is almost certainly too high on this fork. I’m 14 stone kitted up and ran the previous Lyrik at 100 PSI and previous fox 36 at 100 PSI. This model i’m at barely over 80 and it’s VERY supportive.