Originally Posted by
Scarbo
Great questions! I intend to listen in here because I'm a roadie who has recently switched to mountain biking for at least some of my riding and I'm still pretty pathetic at this, quite distinct, sport.
If I may, I'd like to add a question: how do you keep the front end of the bike from floating up on steep climbs? I'm very fit and climbs in and of themselves are not an issue for me; but the technique on a MTB certainly is! It seems that no matter how much I try to move forward to weight the front end I can't seem to keep it from rising up.
I've found that where I've tackled really technical trails I've had to back off a bit and go in search of trails that were a bit more sensible for me at this point.
1) Spin don't mash.
2) Don't pull up on the bars. One drill is to push the bars with your hands open, that way you can't pull.
3) Shift to the front of the saddle.
4) Chew you stem! Literally, get your face down so you're almost on the stem.
And lastly, have you looked at bike fit? Bikes more than ~5 years old were designed around ~100mm stems, putting a short stem on them just lightens the front. The trend is toward short stems, but you need a long-reach frame designed to really use a 50mm stem.