Mountain Bikes 101 - Questions you were too embarrassed to ask

welcome to another episode of burn peak express and guys i feel like i was thrown from a moving vehicle yesterday we did some stuff on the air bag and you just get tossed around like a rag doll when you hit that thing so today we're gonna 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 gonna just ignore the fact that there was juice squirting out of his tire we can talk about that that's sealant so we're gonna at a very very basic level answer questions that you might have from watching these videos and we're gonna start with the bikes themselves there are so many different types of mountain bikes it would make your head spin we're just 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 seatpost 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 seatpost 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 in this area right here is the bottom bracket that's where the crank set and front sprocket and everything attach now this area up here where the fork and the stem and the handlebars attach 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 as 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 1.63 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 5'4 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's 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 comments 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're 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 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 multi-directional 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 gonna 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 it's 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 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 gonna 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'll 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 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 jump 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 your 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 gotta jump to this one and you don't quite have enough speed you gotta huck it you gotta pull up on the bike as hard as you can and just make it now a hook to flat is when you're hooking 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 hawk 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 gonna 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 a 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 [Music] 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 breaks 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 gonna 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 erects 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 landing's 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 wanted to find 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's 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

Channel: Berm Peak Express

Views: 2,174,295

Rating: 4.962501 out of 5

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Id: J7GXupivCrs

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/bradland]

This isn't ebike specific, but given the number of new riders that visit the sub, I thought it'd be helpful. He covers a ton of ground in a very short amount of time.