Mountain Bikes 101 - Questions you were too embarrassed to ask

Welcome to another episode of Berm Peak Express. And guys, I feel like I was thrown from a moving vehicle. Yesterday, we did some stuff on the airbag and you just get tossed around like a ragdoll when you hit that thing. So today we're going to be doing something a little different, but kind of the same. We have a lot of people saying, hey, love your videos. I don't even mountain bike. And to be honest, that's a great thing. If what you get from these videos is that you like mountain biking, you're interested in it. That's great. We could use some allies. So I want to answer the questions that you might be too afraid to ask. Some people aren't afraid. I'll get comments like, hey, are we going to just ignore the fact that there was juice squirting out of his tire? We can talk about that. That's sealant. So we're going to, at a very, very basic level, answer questions that you might have from watching these videos. And we're going to start with the bikes themselves. There are so many different types of mountain bikes. It would make your head spin. We're just going to talk about the two main types you see me talk about in these videos. That is a full suspension mountain bike and a hardtail. Now, let's start with the hardtail. The reason a hardtail is called a hardtail is because the rear of the bike doesn't have any suspension. The only place where you will find suspension on a hardtail is on the front fork. Both bike categories have suspension forks. A full suspension bike has a shock in the rear, which will allow the bike to compress in both the front and the rear. Now, on hardtails and full suspension bikes, you're going to hear us talk about travel. Now, travel is how much the suspension compresses. So here I have a 150 millimeter suspension fork. That means that the length from here to here is 150 millimeters. In the rear, I have 130 millimeters. Now, as you can imagine, if you're going off of a jump and the landing doesn't look like it's going to go very well, you start to run out of options on the hardtail. This is going to take up the impact much better. But still, on this channel, you almost always see me riding a hardtail. I love hardtails. So why would somebody ride a hardtail? No matter how you slice it, a hardtail is less expensive to build, easier to maintain, and in a lot of ways, it just makes it more fun to own. The hardtail is going to be lighter weight because it has less components. It's also going to be snappier and more rigid and easier to throw around. Now, with all that said, full suspension mountain bikes have made a lot of things possible that weren't before. The types of drops and gap jumps and just things that people are doing on mountain bikes now are bigger and gnarlier than they have ever been in history. And we owe a lot of that to modern full suspension bikes. Now, in addition to being lightweight and having suspension and all that, modern mountain bikes have another feature, which is a dropper seat post. Basically, you push this button up on the handlebars and you can just drop the seat post all the way down. And when you want to raise it back up, you just push that same button on the handlebars and it goes up. That's a huge step forward in mountain biking. It's allowed us to do so many different things. I can go from pedaling up this road over here, drop my seat post without getting off my bike and immediately go into hitting jumps. You try to hit jumps with your seat all the way up. You'll realize really fast why people don't do that. So the next thing I want to bring you up to speed on is the basic anatomy of a mountain bike, because we refer to different parts all the time. So easier for me to show you on the hardtail, top tube, down tube, seat tube, seat stay, chain stay. And this area right here is the bottom bracket. That's where the crankset and front sprocket and everything attached. Now, this area up here where the fork and the stem and the handlebars attached to that is the head tube. This piece of the frame and this whole area of the bike on the handlebars where you have all your brakes and shifters and everything. That is collectively known as the cockpit. Now, this next one seems really obvious, but this is a wheel. And the reason I even mention that is because you'll hear people call it a rim. You'll hear people call it a tire. Those are different components of a wheel on a wheel. You have the tire. You have the rim. You have the spokes. And then you have the hub, this piece in the middle. And on most modern mountain bikes, you're going to have a through axle, which is an axle that we can remove from here to take the bike apart, load it into the trunk of a car or whatever. So oftentimes you'll hear us refer to gears or speeds. Gears and speeds are the same thing. If you look at a mountain bike and you count the number of little gears on the rear cassette, that's what this is called is a cassette. You will know how many speeds it has or how many gears it has. This is a 12 speed. On this bike, we have an 11 speed has fewer gears. The more gears you have, the smaller the increments between different gears. So you can achieve exactly the type of pedaling feeling that you want. Some mountain bikes have no gears at all. That's a single speed. I made an entire video on that. So, guys, I'm really, really short. I'm five foot four inches tall. That's one point six three meters. So I need a really small bike. If you just go on the Internet and look in your local classifies and just pick up a bike, you better check what size it is because you want a bike that's going to fit you at five foot four. I take a size small mountain bike. If I were five foot eight, I would probably have a medium or maybe even a large. And when you look at a manufacturer's website, they'll usually tell you what size bike that they manufacture corresponds to what height. But in general, if you go to a shop or you just get on a bike and feel it out, you can usually tell whether it's the right size. So if I were to present to you a typical bicycle from the 1920s, it would probably have grease and maybe chain oil on a modern mountain bike. We have all sorts of goopy fluids. There's there's grease. There's tire sealant. There's brake oil, fork oil, shock oil, carbon fiber grip. But the one that I get the most comments about is the tire sealant. So let me explain to you what that is. So if you've ever changed a flat on a bike tire as a kid, you remember inner tubes. So you've got your tire. You've got a tube inside of it. This is what holds the air. Everything's dandy. Now, of course, if you get a puncture, then the inner tube has to be replaced or patched. And if you get a pinch flat, the inner tube is going to go as well. Let me show you what a pinch flat is. So if you're riding down the trail or riding down the street and you hit a pothole or a rock or something at high speed and your tire is not pumped up enough, it's actually going to pinch the inner tube between the rim and whatever it is you're hitting, thereby tearing open the inner tube. Now, the solution to pinch flats is to run really high tire pressure. But on a mountain bike trail, that makes the bike very difficult to control. Now, in the last decade on mountain bikes, tubeless tires have become very, very popular. And on tubeless tire, you can run way lower tire pressure. And how do I not get pinch flats? The sealant. Tire sealant is this goopy solution with a sort of particulate in it. So when you get a puncture, that goop flows towards the puncture and all of the particulate in it gets clogged up in the hole and eventually it seals it up. So the person who left the comment saying, hey, are we just not going to talk about the fact that there's juice coming out of the tire? Most mountain bikers know what that is. It's sealant. But now I realize it's not so obvious to everyone. All right. So here we're pulling up to a trailhead. That is where all trails begin and end. Sometimes there'll be multiple trailheads in a given trail system. But here we are at the main trailhead where you park your car, you get off your bike and you go in for a ride. So at a trailhead, you're typically going to have some kind of a kiosk that's going to have maps on it, rules and regulations, just kind of welcome you to the trail system and tell you about it. And then you have your trails. So at the beginning of most trails, there's going to be some kind of signage to tell you what to expect. So you can see on this trail, bikes are allowed, but also horses and hikers are allowed. There's also a difficulty sign. This one is sort of intermediate because you can see there's a blue square on there. A black diamond would be really hard. A green circle will be really easy. So this right here, this is considered a fire road. Now, you'll see similar roads referred to as Jeep roads, double track, basically an access road for emergency vehicles, maintenance and things like that. It's also a place where you can pedal your bike out to trails. There are many trail systems where you have multidirectional trails going up and down the mountain, and you don't want to climb a trail that people are going to be coming down really, really fast. So you climb the fire road. So this right here is single track. This is what we come out to ride. It's no fun riding a big, wide gravel road. We want to ride something that's narrow and fast and windy and flowy. In fact, the word flowy is perfect to describe this trail. It doesn't have many rocks on it, doesn't have many features. It's just windy and smooth. But there are also trails that we would describe as technical. They're going to feature drops and rocks and terrain that takes a little doing to navigate. So when we talk about technical trails, that's what we mean. Because there are so many different disciplines of mountain biking, there's a lot of different types of gear. If you're just riding a local cross country trail, you might have nothing on but a helmet. If you're riding trails like the ones we just showed, probably going to have a helmet and knee pads on at the very least. Gloves are a good idea because your hands get sweaty and they move around the handlebars. For instance, a dirt jump helmet is made for maximum visibility and maximum protection. So when you have it on, you can see the helmet's not in your peripheral, but it's going to protect the sides, top of your head really well. Now, a trail helmet, we call it a half lid, half shell. This type of helmet is made for ventilation. You're going to be exerting a lot of physical energy when you're riding a normal mountain bike trail, climbing, moving the bike around. And so it's got all these vents so that when you're going forwards, it cools off your head. It's also very lightweight, but it still offers the protection you need front, back and side. Now, when you're at a downhill park and you're taking a ski lift to the top of the mountain and then zooming down, you're exposing yourself to a lot of risk, but you're not exhausting yourself as much in a cardiovascular manner. So with this helmet, cooling is not as important. It's made for maximum protection. It's going to keep your teeth from getting knocked out, protect the side of your head, back, top, every direction. Pretty heavy. And indeed, all protective gear comes in different forms. If you're just doing some light riding, some knee pads like this will be enough to keep the skin from scraping off your knees. Knee pads like these way heavier and harder to pedal in, but they have way more padding and afford more protection. So if you're doing something really gnarly or you're just focused on going downhill, you can use these or climb with them in your pack and put them on when you get to the top. We even wear mountain bike specific gear. This is a mountain biking jersey. It wicks moisture really easily. It keeps you nice and cool. Doesn't irritate your skin as it moves around. These are mountain bike shorts. They're made to be worn with a chamois underneath. It's like a padded pair of shorts that keep the seat from hurting all your stuff up there. It's even got zippers on the pockets so that you can stow your car keys and cell phone without worrying about them coming out. Mountain bike specific gear is not necessarily essential if you just want to get out on the trail and start riding, but it does make things a lot more comfortable. So one thing you hear mountain bikers talk about a lot is dirt. The dirt was perfect. It was hero dirt. The dirt was amazing. So it just rained about 10, 15 minutes ago. I mean, it poured. So this is too wet. But tomorrow morning, after it has a little bit of time to dry out, it's going to be perfect dirt, hero dirt. So good dirt is normally a reference to the consistency of the soil and the properties that make it good for grip and riding a mountain bike. A lot of the time you'll hear us refer to features. A feature is a ramp, a jump, a drop, a rock garden, anything on the trail of note. One common type of feature is a jump and all jumps start with a lip. The lip is the part that launches you up in the air. Right over here, we have the driveway jump and the lip is made of these wooden planks over here. Now, this particular jump, I guess you would call a step up because you land higher than the lip. A step down would be the opposite. You land lower than the lip. Good example of that would be the grandpa strength jump. You take off from the gravel road on one of a few rock lips and then you land a little bit lower down on the landing over here. This is a drop. A drop is any time you're going from an area of high elevation to low elevation really abruptly. But you're not gaining any elevation off of it. You're just dropping. So if you follow our stuff, one feature that you've heard us refer to tons of times is a skinny or skinny line. All it is is some kind of narrow feature that you have to traverse. It can be in the form of a ladder bridge, a log ride, a skinny rock, anything. If it's skinny and you can fall off either end, it's a skinny. So here we are at the rock garden, and most of you are familiar with what this is. Now, just because you're riding through rocks, doesn't mean you're riding through a rock garden. There are some trails where the entire trail is rock. Usually when you're referring to a rock garden, you're referring to an area where abruptly you encounter a whole bunch of rocks. Now, berms are usually made out of dirt, but they can be made of wood. And of course, Berm Peak gets its namesake from the word berm. It's like an embankment. Now, over here we have another berm. So, of course, before the Kevin jump, we also have a berm because you're starting over there. You have to take a turn and maintain your speed before the jump. So we put a dirt berm here. You ride along it, helps you change direction and get the jump after it. So here I am up on the flight deck and the flight deck is considered a roll in. And what it does is it maximizes the amount of trail you can ride by giving you a whole bunch of speed right off the bat. You roll really abruptly down a ramp and you have your speed. That's a roll in. So there are countless terms in mountain biking that refer to different things you can do on a bike, way too many to go over in this video. But there are some that we use time and time again on this channel. And I want to go over those. The first one is bailing. Bailing is when you are up in the air on your bike or going down some kind of a feature and you realize that things are headed south. You have to get off your bike when you fall off a bike. The thing that's usually going to hurt you the most is the bike itself. You can get tangled up in it. You can fall on top of it. There are handlebars sticking out. You want to get away from the bike as fast as possible. Bailing refers to chucking the bike and getting away from it and aborting mission. So the other thing you'll hear is hucking. What is hucking? What is a huck to flat? So when you use the word huck, it's never used to describe kind of a purpose built jump. It's always you have to do something a little extra to make it work. So if there's a rock over here and you got to jump to this one and you don't quite have enough speed, you got to huck it. You got to pull up on the bike as hard as you can and just make it. Now, a huck to flat is when you're hucking something and the landing is just completely flat. Normally, you want to land on a transition. You want to land on something that's kind of steep and mellows out. You don't want to just land flat because hard impact. And so usually when people are using the term huck to flat, they're talking about a drop that just comes out of nowhere, doesn't really have a good setup, and the landing is terrible. Now, another time, you know, you're in trouble is when you hear somebody talking about casing. Casing is not good, and it refers to coming up short on a jump. So if you were to, let's say, take off from here, get your front wheel onto this landing, but your back wheel doesn't quite make it. That's a case. And for that type of case, you're going to need a lawyer. Now, the very worst type of case is a nose case. That's when you're headed towards the back of a landing with the nose of your bike, the front wheel, and there's no lawyer that's going to be able to help you get out of that case. Your only hope is to chuck the bike downwards and try and clear the landing with your body. You start to really run out of options when you're about to nose case. You've probably heard us refer to roosting a berm. Roosting a berm is when you hit it so hard and so fast with no brakes that your tires are digging in and just spitting stuff everywhere. Not good for the berm, but if you have that much speed, it's going to happen. Now, sometimes you'll see somebody put on their brakes on a berm and try to like fake roost it. That's not roosting. That's just skidding through a berm. That's stupid and it wrecks berms. So as we discussed, the whale tail is a double. But this particular double isn't straight. You take off this way and the landings over here. So you have to kind of turn right in the air. That is a hip jump. Any type of jump that turns and you have to reorient yourself for the landing. Some hip jumps are very mild like this one and other hip jumps. You are turning a full 90 degrees. So the last term I want to define is bike park. You'll hear us refer to bike parks all the time. And a bike park is a place that is purpose built for mountain bikes. Berm Peak, kind of a bike park. The trail system we were at earlier today is multi-use. There are hikers, horseback riders. That's not a bike park. That's National Forest. A bike park. You can go as fast as you want. It's designed for mountain bikes. There's going to be jumps, berms and drops everywhere. And some of them even have uplifts to get to the top so that you don't have to climb. And you can just cruise all the way to the bottom. The key is a bike park is purpose built for just bikes. You're not supposed to hike there. You're not supposed to ride horses there. We need more bike parks. So that's it. We oversimplified and left tons of things out for the sake of brevity. The goal here today was to give a little bit of context and clarity to the casual observers of these channels to help you enjoy our videos a little bit more. If you're content to just sit by the sidelines and watch us mountain bike, I can't tell you how much we appreciate it and welcome you. Now, undoubtedly, there are going to be some questions that I didn't answer. And this is an embarrassment free, judgment free zone. If you think the question is stupid, believe me, it's not. There are going to be other people with it. So just go down into the comments and ask it. And I'm going to ask my viewers who do mountain bike, help a brother out. Help some people understand what's going on. Give them an explanation, not a condescending one of, you know, a welcoming one. They're interested in mountain biking and they want to know what's going on. So if you already understand this stuff, I hope I didn't bore you to tears today. And for everyone else, I hope you learned something. And we post one of these videos every Sunday. So please subscribe if you didn't. And thanks for riding with me today. I'll see you next time. So another word you're going to hear thrown around a lot is enduro. Now, enduro refers to a type of racing where you're not doing loops and laps, you're timed in a segment. And so enduro bikes are generally designed to be really good all around. You can climb with them. You can descend really good with them. And so people increasingly use the word enduro to kind of describe anything mountain biking. And the word has been diluted so much. It doesn't really carry much meaning anymore besides gnarly mountain bike. So when you hear the word enduro, you can pretty much safely ignore it.