If you’ve been mountain biking a long time you’re accustomed to the idea that the accepted wisdom may have no underpinning; no science, no research, no testing, and no validity. I’m talking about skinny tires, narrow bars, long stems and permanently fixed saddles. We did things because we did them. I remember getting a set of perfectly flat titanium bars that were dead straight, and chopping them down so much my brake levers almost touched. Why did I do this? Because narrow bars were the way to go man! If narrow is good, I’m going all in on narrow!* This has happened over and over again.
*Now that I think about it, narrow bars may have been the rage because they made riding 150mm stems possible
Unless you started riding within the last couple of years, you likely know this feeling; you’re climbing something steep with poor grip and the struggle is balancing grip and front wheel lift. Part of the solution was to slide forward onto the narrow nose of your saddle, which is always comfortable and only rarely seriously damaging to reproductive health. Saddles have long front portions for this reason, and some designers made that front section flatter to reduce the aforementioned damage.
[continued...]
From NSMB
Quality mountain bike editorial, photos, videos and news from a North Shore perspective.
