If you could go back in time to those first years of riding, what are some things you'd wish somebody would have told you sooner? Let's create a nice thread for our new-to-the-sport fellow riders to reference and learn from!
I'll start off with a couple easy ones:
Set up your bike properly. No, I don't mean you need to buy stuff (we all know that will come soon enough anyway 😁 ), but get the most out of what you have. Play around with cockpit set-up, aiming for comfortable one-finger braking and shifter/dropper post levers that don't get in the way.
Pay attention to some finer points of bike setup. For example, tire pressure can make a huge difference in how the bike feels and subsequently your confidence level. A few psi in either direction can have a drastic effect, so don't be afraid to play around here until you find what works for you.
Get some coaching. Everybody needs good advice, and building the right habits from the start is both more fun and more safe.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself. But beyond that I think learning on the bike is half the fun.
Stop dislocating your shoulder. (chuckle)
Stop rollerblading.
From a racing stand point...
more miles (training) = more smiles (on dirt), if you have fit friends
you are the reason you're not fast, not your bike. assuming you've got an average build quality ride to start with
straight line rock gardens for show, corners for dough
you can watch yewchoob videos until you're blue in the face, but you will definitely benefit more from coaching
know what tire casing is appropriate for a majority of your riding, and dial in air pressure
never, under any circumstances, throw a straight air turn bar over a jump
Get coaching ASAP. We all 'learn' to ride bikes when we are kids. All that is learned is how to stay upright. There are a ton of skills to learn to ride safely and quickly.
Ride with people faster than you, smarter than you, older than you, younger than you. Always try to learn from them. Never stop trying to learn.
Be patient
Spend time at the pump track and learning fundamentals.
Learn to ride opposite foot forward.
Start riding dirt jumps right away! It transforms how you see the trail in front of you.
Pedal! Get out and see as many miles of different trails as you can. It'll pay dividends in reading trail blindly and going fast on blind trails.
If you go the route of pursuing sponsorship, companies don't care about your goals or your dreams. Often, they don't care about clicks, likes, or followers. They care about you offering a return on their investment. Understand what they are looking for in an athlete, then show them how you can bring that value to them. Essentially you are trying to get a low paying, high demand job from them, take it seriously.
Elbow pads are a good idea. While you likely won't break your arm (and those won't stop that), it'll be better than having scars all over.
Start earlier, get coaching.
Hold on for the ride!
My bike has taken me to some pretty amazing places and there isnt a whole lot I would change
I'd first have to take the time machine back to 1992....
Treat this sport, as a friend, that you can always go back to and ask advice from, and receive therapy from. You will have some really f__king hard days coming in your future.
I'm not sure this is an issue anymore but I would have told myself that Protec skate helmets aren't suitable for mountain biking, especially if you're chucking yourself off skinnies and ladder bridges in the late 90s and early 2000s. Luckily I didn't suffer from that decision but it could have been different.
That might be the only tip. The rest comes with experience and the learning curve / progression is half the fun of riding. No need to accelerate it!
1) Move near the mountains(or other good riding area) as soon as you can.
1a) Choose a career path that lets you live in random good biking places.
2) Don't worry about the lightest parts, get ones that don't break.
Eyes up, look where you want to go.
stay on flat pedals
it's meant to be fun
tyre/suspension setup does make a difference, learn it.
For myself:
1) Get coaching sooner
2) Spend more time sessioning and practicing and less time just riding miles of trail.
More interesting would be for myself as a parent of a mountain biker (the only thing I'd probably change):
1) Get the kid on a bmx at a racetrack, pumptrack or skatepark ASAP and start them there at an early age before progressing to a mountain bike.
Don't sell that OG Intense. That thing was cool back then and it's even cooler now.
1) If you buy cheap, you buy twice.
2) Oracle mode: 90% of your big crashes will be due to a bike with too low a BB. Don't buy bikes with low BBs.
Get two, no, get three jobs!
I've not been in mtb that long but I've been on bikes for 2/3rds of my life. These are maybe...things I wished I'd have known before I rode mtb that would have put me on an mtb sooner and made me a lot happier.
1. Stop riding bmx sooner. There is no need to punish yourself that hard trying to learn tricks and have fast flow while riding street. You'll end up so injured you'll have to be off the bike for a long time and further damage a lifelong ankle injury sustained because of a moron football coach. You'll wake up with pain. You'll sleep with pain. You won't be able to bend it as far as you should. You're not going to be able to straighten it as far as you should. It's going to be made much worse by overshooting jumps and landing flat with tires inflated to 100psi. It turns out that the things you love about bmx are also the things you're going to love about mtb...and mtb is a better vehicle for accomplishing that stuff! The entire time you thought you had no option but bmx if you wanted to have your type of fun on two wheels you also could have been riding mtb.
2. MTB can be many different things to many different people and you'll be able to find the version of it you love in the place you live. It's true that all the people you knew who rode mtb when you first came into contact with it were dick fucking heads. They went out of their way to make sure you knew that mtb was better than you and that you weren't invited. That's true. For a long time mtb seemed corny. That's also true. Those people weren't representative of mtb, they were just dickheads and would have been a dickhead to everyone around them in any realm they existed in. You weren't seeing the non-shitty people who ride mtb. You weren't seeing the non-corny side of mtb. You didn't know the version of mtb you love is out there. It's just as vast and varied in style and people as bmx. Not all of mtb is like the people from Dakota Cyclery, Epic Sports, or 701 Cycle in Bismarck, North Dakota. Don't go into those shops ever and you'll find bikes and people that you'll love even more than you ever loved bmx.
3. Stop drinking alcohol sooner in your life. Just because you don't have a problem with it doesn't mean it's something that's beneficial when included in your life. Your work demands lots of seated hours from you, alcohol is going to make you worse at that job and put you in worse physical condition. If you stop alcohol sooner you'll find yourself caring about your health more and that physical and mental clarity will make you way better on a bike and way better at your job (and also set you up to be suicidal and learn to deal with feelings while you still have a glimmer of hope for the world rather than suicidal from having to deal with feelings after that hope has died). Most of the time you'll have available to ride will be in the evenings after the time you'd have typically had a beer. You're a lightweight. The lack of motivation you feel is directly related to that one or two beers even though everyone else you know drinks way more.
A different batch of things I wish I'd have known...but some worthwhile lessons/thoughts none the less!
Wait for ebikes.
Got nothing to say to 13 year old me in 1996 who knew he was discovering the greatest thing I’d ever find in my life. All my closest friends, my best experiences and memories, they all come from bikes. My mental and physical health is a struggle when I’m not riding enough.
Also, none of this coaching and bike positioning/setup/practice was a thing back then. We just got on our crappy bikes and rode. Trails were trails and we never thought about flow, some bikes were better than others but we didn’t know any better and it was always fun.
For me the advice would be “Don’t sell your dirt jump bike!”
But more broadly, don’t narrowly focus on one discipline of riding. Ride a variety of terrain (and bikes if you can afford it) and it’ll broaden your skill base and make you faster, safer, and allow you to have more fun. Riding BMX tracks, dirt jumps, skateparks, pump tracks (etc.) is arguably the best way to develop the kinds of skills that the large majority of mountain bikers don’t develop just riding trails. Put as simply as possible, riding BMX/jump bikes require the rider to control the bike a lot more, as the bike can do less of the work than an full suspension MTB. Those bike control skills transfer to the trails, allowing you to ride with a lot more precision and a lot less “hanging on for dear life”.
The other, somewhat connected lesson, is do your best to not let the fear of sucking get in the way of learning. For me (and probably tons of others) it can be intimidating to learn certain skills or ride certain places (like skateparks) because you don’t want to look stupid. For example, I didn’t learn to wheelie until after I’d raced several DH National Championships. I was too embarrassed to look shit while practicing on my street. Conversely, watching Jackson Goldstone ride at an indoor skatepark, I was amazed by how many mistakes and small crashes he had - he was constantly trying new things and clearly had no compunction looking silly trying something new and messing it. While it is a totally natural reaction to be afraid of getting judged, I’m confident I’d be a considerably better rider today if I’d have just found a way to get over that fear earlier and started working on learning new things. This isn’t to say you should constantly be risking your life to try every new line or gnarly feature. Rather, you should do your best to let your risk tolerance dictate what you try to learn, not your fear of embarrassment. Easier said than done though!
Don't fuck around with hard tails, get an Enduro and ride.
Ride with a tube, tool, and pump. If not for yourself, other people.
It will save a lot of frustration with precious ride time, and you can save someone’s day!
If you ain't first you're last.
Oh yeah, there are plenty of people out there who absolutely hate riding with any kind of pack or tools - they rely on you to save the day! 😂
I completely agree with the alcohol. For the past decade or so I had always traded on and off weed or booze. Recently with property taxes due I had to get my finances in order and I completely cut out both. Now two months later I am convinced alcohol is poison. No amount is healthy and provides absolutely no benefits to your health or life.
Those trails are great, your just not good enough. Hike a bike with a smile. Whats boring to ride down will be fun to ride up, whats fun to ride down you cant ride up. Ride your bike in winter when its shitty ski conditions.
If I had just understood how to set suspension sag correctly when I began with a Bronson, I could have pedaled so much better. I didn't understand why I felt like death on every climb and literally everyone could out-climb me even though I looked pretty fit. Obese women pedaled right by me.
Many clueless people at bike shops & forums told me to set rear sag while standing (still common advise quite frankly) meaning I was running about 40% sag while seated and pedaling with a corresponding 50% anti-squat, and that oh so sweet 60' STA.
Also, a size Large bike back then was insanely too small for my 5'11" frame and I would have sized up at least one size. 429mm Reach! I prefer about 485-490mm reach. Literally, 2 sizes too small, but then with the slack STA you couldn't reach the bars while seated if the reach had been correct. Cheese and rice the bikes were so horrible.
If I had the size L Smuggler that I ride now as my trail bike set up as it is, I would have been riding 50% faster, in actual MPH, within days.
So for me, it was all about understanding the equipment better.
Just get a 27.5 enduro bike.. You can over-fork it/mullet it later, and just slide the saddle forward to fix the slack seat angle. It will only be about as overbuilt and slack as future trailbikes are, so pretty goldilocks. only "downsides" will be slightly higher bb (not really a downside) and you have to run a 50mm stem if you want higher bars (90mm rise baby!) but you'll get used to it, and it actually helps with stability on the climbs, so whatevs🤙
Ignore XC, downhill and jumps isdashit!
If l’d known that 30 years ago and followed that advice, I might have been quite decent at it by now!
Mullet meant 26/24" when I got into riding 😂👴
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