Don’t Fall For These! Mountain Biking’s Biggest Misconceptions

Navigating the mountain bike world can be a perilous journey for beginners and experienced bikers alike, full of fads, jargon, and products that come and go quicker than steel-framed startups. What are some of the most common misconceptions of the mountain bike world? Wider bars are better. You might notice a recurring theme in these myths and misconceptions that bigger is better. Well, if an extra 5 or 10 mil here and there seems to be an improvement, it won't be long before someone adds an extra 50 mil to see just what happens. The most persistent bigger is better misconception would have to be wide bars. At the peak of the wide bar trend, brands were coming in with bars going up to 820 mil wide and beyond. Why go wider? Well, the main reasons are stability and control. Think of a triangle. The wider your base, in this case, your hands, the stronger and more stable it'll be to an extent. The extra leverage from wider bars also gives you more control at higher speeds or when the going gets really, really rough. This is why you'll see downhill riders using wide bars as they need to be able to take bigger hits. One example, Amaury Pierron, who's 180 centimeters tall, is using 800 mil wide bars. That stability comes at a cost, mind. The wider you spread your arms, the more you limit your range of motion. This impacts how well you can steer and lean your bike and how much you can straighten and bend your arms to react to the trail as well. This is why enduro pros like Jack Moyer, who's 186 centimeters tall, run narrower bars, 760 in Jack's case, for tighter, more technical enduro tracks. Riders need the extra maneuverability and faster steering that narrow bars give them. What width should you use then? Well, that depends on a few things. Factors such as your height, shoulder width, arm length, and type of riding come into it. As a rough guide, a little over shoulder width is a good place to start. This helps keep your bars roughly proportional to your size. When it comes to where you ride, if you're smashing big bike park laps all day, wider bars, 780 to 800 mil range might be the best option for you. If you ride tighter, natural, or more technical trails, should we say, you might be better off with bars more in the 750 to 780 range. I'm six foot and I run 760 mil bars. I love technical trails. If you want to experiment with narrow bars and you've got open-ended grips, you can slide your controls and grips inboard to just see how it feels. A small change goes a long way. Even five mil off each side will be noticeable. Just remember, though, you can cut more off, but you can't put it back on. If you want to try narrow bars, make sure small changes are done until you find that sweet spot. Good luck. Next up, bigger rotors are better. The story goes then that bigger rotors mean more power. Well, to some degree, this is true, but there are so many other factors that can affect braking. Pad compound, weather conditions, the amount of pistons even on your brake. A lot of people, especially new to the sport, seem to think that just putting on the biggest rotors they can find will give them more power. In some cases, it will, but it can have a negative effect as well. Sticking on a larger rotor can increase that grabby feel of the brake, making it harder to modulate. A great personal example of this is that on my propane spindrift I use at the Malta Enduro, it had a whopping 220 mil rotor on the front. I had to adapt my braking to be more careful and gradual on the brakes. If I grabbed a handful of the front brake each time, the wheel would easily lock up, especially on the slippery surfaces out there on the urban racing. Another good example is EDR racer, Martin Maes, who would run a smaller front rotor for that same reason, even going down to 180 mil front and a 200 mil on the rear, proving that even on really long Enduro stages, 180 mil is perfectly up to the job if set up correctly. If you ride in the wet a lot, though, then swapping out pad compound could be a better option. I'd recommend a semi-metallic pad, which will give you good bite and a nice, solid, consistent feel. How often have we heard this, longer, lower, slacker is better? Really? Do you remember that phrase that every, and I mean almost every, bike had to be longer, lower, and slacker? It was, well, dumb, but luckily, I think we're coming out the other side of that one. Essentially, all bike manufacturers for a while kept trying to push that we needed bikes with lower bottom brackets, longer reaches, and slacker head angles. It seemed that every new release of a bike was accompanied by this saying. For example, and I've got some good stats for you here, a 2016 Canyon Strive had a head angle of 67 degrees, a wheelbase of 1,204, a bottom bracket of 345, and a reach of 464. Now, bear that in mind a moment because, well, the 2025 Strive has a head angle of 63 degrees, so slacker, a wheelbase of 1,291, so considerably longer, a bottom bracket a bit lower at 341, and a reach, well, going up to a whopping 500. Now, there were companies at the forefront of this, such as Pole, Nikolai, and Mondraker with their forward geometry, but some of those companies, well, they fared better than others in the long run. Having ridden some of them in certain scenarios, they were all right, and others, well, unfortunately, not quite so much. There were then, of course, companies that pushed these numbers to the very extreme. A great example, Sick Bikes, you may never have heard them, but if you have, they had a hardtail with a 62-degree head angle. They, for a number of reasons, no longer exist, let's put it that way. This kind of boundary pushing does push and develop the bike industry for the good and the bad, but as with everything, there is a limit. When it gets to just being an arms race between companies at who can push the gnarliest numbers on us to the detriment of the bike and how it rides, then that's when I think we need to stop, but luckily, I feel like we are past that, and we've landed on a bunch of really well-rounded numbers that push for great bikes both up and down. The takeaway, if you see a company saying longer, lower slacker, take it with a pinch of salt. Soft pressures are good. Well, not if you ask the pressure police or your poor wheels next time you go hammering down a trail around a berm. This is a tricky one because I'm actually all for running lower pressures to a point, and that's where we need to put that exclamation mark. I'm going to blame all the lower-pressure warriors I see at the bike parks on the latest crop of insta-videos where peeps are inside lines, shrouping turns, and letting out to get the shot. It does look cool, I'm not going to lie, but it ain't the done thing, people. It's just not. The biggest misconception here, though, is that you get more grip from low pressures. If you go past that sweet spot, your tire can actually roll and squirm rather than letting your tire tread dig into the trail. You're also more at risk of potentially damaging the tire or wheel on any rocks, roots, or anything else in your way. Let me put it this way. A hard tire might roll fast and be less prone to being pinched and whatnot, but it won't mold or conform to the ground. Plus, it has a harsher deflection of lumps and bumps. It's pinging here, there, and everywhere. Run them softer, and that tire starts to take the shape of the ground it's on. Run it really soft, and it will mold and grip to the ground even better, but it's at a higher risk of rolling. When it flexes side to side loads, especially in corners, there's a higher chance of bottoming out the tire, potentially pinching or slicing it as well, or burping it off the rim altogether. Then if that does happen, then you're at risk of smashing and hitting the rim, causing even more damage there. Tire pressures are obviously subjective, independent on what you ride. Have a little experiment with your pressures. I would say if you run an insert in the rear, it might allow you to run even softer pressures than you thought were possible without hopefully damaging your wheels. Pros run their suspension pretty damn firm. Fact. Misconception though, you should too. Well, actually, maybe not. There's a reason they run it firm, and that's because of how hard and fast they're hitting sections and obstacles. These higher speeds and forces mean they need to run the forks and rear shocks stiffer so that they're not blowing through the travel. If a lot of us were to do the same thing, it would lead to the bike feeling really harsh and unforgiving and actually with a lack of grip as well. A great example of this on the extreme end of the scale is Blake's video where he checked out the riders' bikes from Rampage and they were stiff as anything. He could hardly make them move on some of them. There has been a bit of a shift lately though, and with riders starting to soften things up to get grip and stop pinging off things, people like Dakota Norton going softer pressures on their springs, but running slightly taller bars so it helps with keeping their weight upright and backwards rather than diving over the front of the bike. That's a wrap then on some of the most common mountain bike misconceptions out there. Have I missed any? Well, if so, let me know in the comments down below. Thank you for getting involved, people. It's been an absolute pleasure. Whilst you're there, why not like and subscribe? Until next time, I'll see you later.