Video: Pro Mountain Bike Setup Guide With Ben Cathro - How To Bike Episode 2

Jun 30, 2021 at 11:59
by Pinkbike Originals  


HOW TO BIKE

EPISODE 2



For episode 2 of How To Bike, Ben Cathro takes a deep dive on geometry, stem lengths, suspension settings, and everything in between. Sit back, crack a beverage, and enjoy.


0:00 - Intro
1:20 - Frame Sizing
6:10 - Crank Length
7:33 - Pedals
8:41 - Suspension Setup
10:51 - Handlebars
15:43 - Brakes
19:18 - Grips
20:30 - Wheel Sizes
23:12 - Tires
25:45 - Outro


PREVIOUSLY

Did you miss the previous episodes from How to Bike? Here's the full Pinkbike Academy playlist.





We'd like to extend a huge thank you to Santa Cruz Bicycles, Deity and POC who supported this project.


photo




Author Info:
pinkbikeoriginals avatar

Member since Feb 15, 2012
1,110 articles
Must Read This Week
[UPDATED] Final Results & Overall Standings from the Finale Ligure EDR World Cup 2024
95055 views
4 Tech Takeaways From the Fort William DH World Cup
58046 views
Frameworks DH Bikes Stolen in Milton Keynes, UK
45102 views
Day 1 Randoms: Bike Festival Riva 2024
39882 views
Now THAT Was a Bike: 2016 Pole Evolink
37974 views
Norco Race Division Updates on Greg Minnaar & Lucas Cruz's Injuries
37594 views
Final Randoms: Bike Festival Riva 2024
35029 views
Brett Rheeder Announces He’s Sold Title MTB, Intends to Start New Brand
33520 views
Sign Up for the Pinkbike Newsletter - All the Biggest, Most Interesting Stories in your Inbox
PB Newsletter Signup

95 Comments
  • 69 0
 Science Cathro is awesome I wish this had been around when I started riding. It would have saved a lot of costly mistakes. Finally in a place where I feel like I have a bike that works for me and how I like to ride, but it's taken a lot of working out
  • 37 0
 It's never over. I've been riding for 28 years and still find out that I've been an idiot every other month.
  • 60 0
 why is there no section on colour choice?
  • 38 0
 Because everyone already knows that red is fastest.
  • 16 0
 VTEC stickers add 10% Hp to any bike.
  • 34 0
 It's super weird that they'd ignore the well-documented performance benefits of oil slick components.
  • 32 1
 Thanks for a dose of reality Ben. So tired of 'experts' insisting lower tire pressure is always better. Folded knobs don't grip better. The real goal is to not fold or squirm your tire in hard corners, as you pointed out. (30 psi ain't dead Smile
  • 7 1
 I was steadily moving to lower and lower psi and settled at 19 psi front and 22 psi rear and that works for me. But then I had set my tires at 30psi for a service road climb and forgot to lower the pressure. And then I got a Strava top 10 and now I don’t know what to do. It was super dry and I was slipping around a bunch so I’m pretty sure 30psi is still too high for me.

Side note: I haven’t had a chance to watch this video yet.
  • 27 0
 "30 psi in my minions don't care about your opinions"
  • 3 36
flag send-it-bro FL (Jul 8, 2021 at 17:37) (Below Threshold)
 @jojotherider1977: 26 minutes, yeah no thanks.
  • 3 0
 I find that lower front pressures tend to feel wonky on jumps, even when great everywhere else. Sometimes I think I've forgotten how to ride, but then realize my front had wandered down under 20 psi.
  • 2 0
 I am just north of 230lbs and have been riding for 25 years and am tired of people telling me that 30+ psi is too high. I have enough damaged rims, burped tires and other anecdotal evidence to say my big butt doesn’t care about that…33 rear, 31 front and I have all the traction I need with much less carnage….tho I did think closer to 40 was necessary until the last 8 yrs or so, so find your sweat spot and roll with it!
  • 2 0
 @teenwolf: it’s almost as people should figure out what works for themselves and realize it only works for them. I will, however, always recommend people try lower psi to see if it works for them.
  • 25 0
 Save yourself time by buying a used bike that the previous owner already setup! (sarcasm).
  • 5 2
 "Up for sale is a *like new* yada yada, *custom build* you won't find anywhere except for everyone else buying the current most trendy parts in our area!"
  • 1 0
 @jmusuperman: facts...haha
  • 15 2
 Ben - Pick your nose or blow it, but get the booger out of your nose. But love the video
  • 8 0
 This was so well done for the amount of ground covered Ben! Really appreciated the brief review of the key points without diving too deep. Also very cool how everything was described in terms of potential differences in experience and not just "good" or "bad." Really enjoying this series.
  • 8 0
 I really enjoyed the first one and I'm sure this one will be great. Thanks Ben!
  • 5 0
 I'm dealing with some tennis elbow related to descending, and after some physio consultation, they are advising against flatter levers. From what I understood, forces exerted on a bent wrist, which seems unavoidable with flat levers, antagonize the tennis elbow. So, I'm moving to a setup where palms and forearms are aligned in the same plane.
  • 5 0
 if you haven't thought of it, when do you need your brakes the most? Descending. So set them for your DH riding position not your JRA seated position. But I'm no physio just a bloke on the internet so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
  • 1 0
 @MattyBoyR6: Depends on your trails, when you spend 55 minutes out of every hour not descending, chances are you don't have trails steep enough to warrant flat levers anyway.
  • 5 0
 @bbqmike: you use your brakes while ascending?
  • 2 0
 Buy several Flexbars now and watch the videos on the twist exercise. Other exercises work but none reduce pain like the Flexbar. I am dealing with same condition and also had to switch to running my levers more downward.
  • 1 0
 I have had tennis elbow issues when riding for years. Had to stop riding but am back at it. I tried the Flexbar but it didn’t help - it actually hurt my other elbow. I recently came across the fiix elbow - a new machine. It is expensive but I have been pain free for 5 months now and I have ridden a lot this spring / summer. Worth it to me - I have crashed due to elbow pain b4. Tennis elbow sucks
  • 1 0
 @masonskis: Sometimes you slip out on a steep uphill, and yes generally managing speed corners and tight trees.
  • 5 0
 Wow, I have watched a lot of videos on this topic and this was the best one in terms of giving straight facts, not opinions while also avoiding being to vague on any specific topics. Great job, I am going to consider cutting my bars down from 780 to maybe a 770 on my trail bike for some added clearance when trying to learn tabletops and bar turns.
  • 8 0
 Best part was the moving spacers, wow , i need some of those Smile
  • 8 0
 The production values are next-level!
  • 1 0
 @thingswelike: that is like 1hr of labour for that clip alone
  • 6 0
 I learned nothing... pure rubbish, rim brakes and bar ends for the win! where are my Mr. Tuffy's?
  • 2 0
 Setup for small riders is still a problem. Pretty much impossible for my wife to get her seat up anywhere near the bar height when climbing.

So she gets a small frame which is great for going down but sucks for up or an XS and the opposite is true.

Thoughts on setup for short people…XS frames also end up having a rear center longer than the front which must make the bike perform strange.
  • 7 0
 How tall is she? I'm 5'3 with shoes on, generally happy with 27.5" wheels, small frames, slammed 35mm stems and flat bars. Found going to 165mm cranks and 700mm bars made a huge difference--its really hard to control a bike when you're in some sort of starfish yoga pose just to reach the contact points, as it turns out.
  • 3 0
 Flat bar, negative rise stem? All things I’ve done as a 163 cm tall rider. I tend to ride bikes labeled as small or medium. About a 420 reach with a normal 74 ish st angle. When I watch little kids on their bikes, the bikes look really long proportionally but those kids ride really well. Long bikes truck. Short bikes suck. Thing with mountainbikes is that set up is always a compromise between climbing ability and descending.
  • 1 0
 @ryetoast: 5’2”. Have done a lot of what you describe except the cranks. Good idea. The 275 bikes are harder and harder to find sadly. Perhaps a mullet setup might work.
  • 1 0
 @MikeyMT: I feel like a mullet would make the usually-too-high stack height of a small frame trail bike worse. But maybe if you reduced the fork travel (and put the geo in slack position if it has a flip chip to compensate for steepening the HTA)? I don't think I have ever bottomed out my 150mm pike except maybe at the bike park...
  • 1 0
 @ryetoast: her issue is short legs long torso as much as it is height overall.
  • 3 0
 @MikeyMT: ah I've got the opposite problem, comically short torso. Short cranks are probably worth a shot in that case. I think Canfield makes them down to 150mm, Hope and Race Face make 165s. Shorter cranks = less torque though, might want to go down a tooth on the chainring if you go much over a cm shorter.
  • 3 0
 @ryetoast: I would look at a super short headset upper like the cane creek slam set. It isn't much, but 5 mm can make a difference in stack height. There are also some lower profile stems that help get the bars down. I think he wildest one is the syntace flatforce 44, though it isn't super cheap.
  • 2 0
 This was outstanding, great work. Perfect blend of correct information presented without bias, and humor.

Already forwarded the video around to some of my "in the market for a bike whenever they become available at normalish prices" buddies who so far have been riding on random craigslist finds.
  • 2 0
 Great video Ben. Needing clarity on the organic vs sintered pad situation:

I find that when I ride metallic / sintered pads in the dry in a heavy braking zone they heat up and glaze over easier much than organics.....I used to have to switch my sintered pads all of the time because they were ruined by glazing, but I've never suffered a similar situation with organics.

Please advise.....will need to adjust my over-confident spraffing about organic pads if i'm wrong here.
  • 2 0
 Thanks so much for this vid. It is honestly one the best mtb-related videos I've seen. He covers so much critical topics without coming across as preachy. Have definitely saved for later as it's a resource I will use again and again - even something for stubborn customers who need an explainer on bike trends and bike fit. Cheers mate, definitely owe you a lot of beers for this one
  • 5 0
 But Ben, you didn't tell me if I should get a dual-sus or a hardtail!?!?
  • 5 0
 When he says "fork offset" I heard something else at first!
  • 1 0
 I went back for a second play!
  • 2 0
 I'd really like to know how Cathro made a Marzocchi Bomber CR fit his Tallboy. The Tallboy takes a 190x45mm shock, but the shortest lengh the Bomber CR is available in, is 210x55mm. Anybody got an idea how he did it?
  • 2 0
 Total guess but the bomber cr is just a van rc with new stickers and a black shaft- the van rc can be bought/has parts for 190x50 so the bomber cr can definitely be run in that size too. The 5mm extra stroke would fit in the frame and would up the travel a bit. Again just a guess!
  • 1 0
 Pretty sure the 7.5x2 inch size would work. It is effectively 190x50mm. I saw others saying they used that size fox shock on their tallboy.
  • 3 1
 Ben - great overall synopsis! What about saddle angle! There is a lot of weird stuff going on out there! We must nip the downward-pointed saddle trend in the bud. Climbing isn't that cool.
  • 1 0
 One thing not mentioned - Using crazy super wide handlebars means you need less frame reach. If you keep the same reach, your shoulders need to be angled further forward. Skinner handlebars may mean you require a frame with slightly longer reach.
  • 5 0
 “Wealthy slackers on Ebikes”. That’s comment gold right there.
  • 1 0
 @ben-cathro: Late to the game question here. Vacation got in the way of following your excellent material! You allude to the bar angle when talking about reach and stem height. Do you recommend mounting bars with the sweep vertical, or aligned with the head angle, or somewhere in between? I like the "hack" of using higher rise bars to maintain the reach instead of raising the stem. Thanks for sharing such great tips!
  • 1 0
 @ben-cathro - I set up my bars as Paul Aston does (nsmb.com/articles/paul-astons-210mm-do-everything-nicolai-g1) with the centreline of the grips through the centreline of the steering axis. This means rolling the bars back to get the centrelines to align. It reduces my reach (as I use 50mm and 70mm rise bars on FS and HT respectively) but keeps the steering feeling sharp.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this set up. Also i'm running 12 degree backsweep bars as they feel more natural for my wrists. I had carpel tunnel and 16 degree bars helped a lot to sort this. 12 degree feel better for agressive riding.
  • 1 0
 every new rider should be MADE to watch this......Ben is the best. Cutting through all the marketing BS and clearly explaining it like it is. Like Cam Zink i think bikes are getting too long and having been riding since the inception of the sport grew up on steeper shorter bikes and therefore as detailed in this video i would opt for the shorter livelier feeling bike but that doesn't mean i ride the flattest trails ever and dont like dh i just prefer a livelier feeling bike as thats what i had to learn on and i honestly feel its made me a better rider. The biggest and best thing in this video for witch Ben should be praised for is the fact that unlike manufacturers sales pitch babble he clearly explains both the positives AND negatives of each change. Ben your content is the best not only on pinkbike but anywhere else in the industry as far as i am concerned.
  • 3 0
 Can you please provide link to Episode 1 in the article?

Great stuff!
  • 2 0
 Is there a formula somewhere for working out your optimum reach/stack? I feel I’m still not quite there with that
  • 4 6
 Check out Lee McCormack and his Rider Area Distance m.pinkbike.com/news/lee-mccormacks-guide-to-perfect-bike-set-up.html. Really helps me!
  • 2 0
 I wish there was. It's probably somewhat depending on riding style and terrain. I find I can adapt to to different setups, but without back to back testing i'll never know what I truly prefer. So I think i've answered my question. I need to go to more demo days and do back to back tests on different bikes.
  • 5 8
 @shepridesbikes: That's really not a good method. This one is significantly better. www.peterverdone.com/pvd-rad-refined
  • 1 0
 That was really good to hear about FUN bikes! More manouverability can actually be a good thing. I love Ben cathros videos and this one made so much sense to me.
  • 1 0
 Could you confirm that no bikes were injured in the making of this video? I am not convinced that those pedal and bottom bracket strikes were CGI.
  • 3 0
 Canefield for ultra-short cranks both trail and DH
  • 2 0
 Great video Ben.
Did you breathe at any point?
  • 1 0
 Thanks Ben, will definitely pay attention to what’s relevant to my riding.
  • 1 0
 Hey Ben, What is the best Suspension design?
ZantaCruz, Treck, Commencal Meta, YT or Yeti?
  • 1 0
 Which model, which bike, best for what?, not a very good question.
  • 1 0
 @spicysparkes: You are right, well you see what i meant is the tipe of linkage used, ZantaCruz on the enduro models has had the same tipe of suspension linkage design for a while and othe companies have adopted it aswell, like the Specialized enduro. Treck has stayed with the same type of linkage for a while adding now the high pivot, but generally speaking the same design, like Giant, Kona and othe brands. Then there is the Commencal Meta type that goes directly to the top tube, and finally the YT Capra, Yeti SB and Commencal Clash type of linkage.
Ive been wondering what is the best type of suspension design generally speaking.
Which one keeps your center of gravity centered the most.
  • 1 0
 @alex-morales: all depends on how well the brands optimise their versions of the linkages. Generally a linkage system like Horst link or four bar which have the rear axle on the seatstay and the rear pivot on the chainstay should perform better than a single pivot linkage actuated like the commecal clash which has the rear axle on the chainstay. This is due to the Axel path following a perfect arc on the single pivot rather than a tuneable arc on the Horst link bikes. There's plenty of other designs with their benefits but again it's all down to how well the bike is designed and how it works with the shock. You can get a demo versions of this software called "linkage" which allows you to check out the suspension of almost every bike and see the anti-squat, anti-rise, leverage ratio, Axel path etc.
  • 1 0
 @spicysparkes: Thank you, i am just starting to understand all the technical terms, found Andrextr on youtube and binging on his videos. Cheers
  • 1 0
 great video - lots for beginners and those of us who think we know . . . but we don't great job Ben - super vid!
  • 1 2
 I might be alone in this, but crank flips always seem goofy to me. Seems like something we will look back on in 10 years and make fun of ourselves for doing. Anyways, awesome video nonetheless!
  • 1 0
 Great video; Not a word about tire inserts though? Critical when talking about tire/tire pressure.
  • 1 0
 When is humanity going to wake up and start sizing bikes according to span and span angle? Seriously people.
  • 1 0
 Great job! Wish I had this tips 20yeas ago!!
  • 1 0
 Easter egg...... ( busa in the wide frame shot of the garage)
  • 2 0
 Nice one - again! Smile
  • 1 1
 bruuh, so many infos, this overhauks every noob that starts to ride Big Grin , but vere nice infotainment Big Grin
  • 2 0
 Ben is really funny!!
  • 1 0
 Brilliant! So well done. Thanks for that. Looking forward to the others.
  • 1 0
 Ben, Two big thumbs up! Well done!
  • 1 1
 Good stuff Ben. These videos are great. Smile
  • 1 1
 This is really awesome! Straight to the facts, no BS. Thank you!
  • 1 1
 Love any of cathros videos, always down to earth fun videos
  • 1 1
 Good.
  • 1 1
 these are the best.
Below threshold threads are hidden







Copyright © 2000 - 2024. Pinkbike.com. All rights reserved.
dv65 0.037458
Mobile Version of Website