If you love action packed, adrenaline full and high speed sports, nothing fits that description better than mountain biking.

The sport of mountain biking is definitely not the most well known, but over the last few years it has grown a lot. Thousands of high schools through out the US and canada have started mountain biking clubs, there are international completions and you can almost mountain bike anywhere in the world. One of the best parts about the sport is how advanced mountain biking technology is. Although this means that it is more expensive than some conventional sports like soccer, it also means that the levels of safety, comfort and where you can ride have increased. Unlike in the good old days of the sport, there are now mountain bike specific parts, frames and clothing. There are many advancements that have happened which define the sport of mountain biking today, like hydraulic disc brakes, 12-speed shifters, and carbon frames. But in this post I will be talking about one that really changed the whole dynamic of the sport, the introduction of the shock.

 

The shock is part of something called the “fork” of a bIke. The fork is the piece that connects the front wheel to the rest of the bike. Originally the fork of a bike would be rigid, this meant that any impacts to the front wheels would go directly into your arms. This could be jarring, and possibly even break bones when people tried doing jumps or drop offs. To fix this problem people took a common component found on motor cycles and cars, a shock absorber. Obviously the shock had to be slimmed down to fit on a bike frame. But when completed it meant that when going through rough terrain or landing from out of the air less force went through your arms. This allowed people to progress the sport further than many imagined possible.

Shock technology has evolved a lot over the years. Originally a shock consisted of a spring in a cylinder. When there was an impact the spring would compress, absorbing the force. The problem with this was three things. One, after being compressed the spring would then rapidly release all the energy it had absorbed kicking the front of the bike up. Two, it was hard to adjust the springs tension for different weights. Three, the spring was loud and not smooth. So what innovators did is add air with a spring. This is called an air-spring fork. This way the shock was smoother and less loud. You could easily adjust for rider weight. But the key thing having an air spring did was allow for something called rebound control. Rebound is how fast the shock releases its energy. By putting in a reverse air compartment in the shock, you could increase how fast the spring expanded. This completely mitigated the kick back effect shocks were having, and is still the design most shocks use today. Many more advancements have been made in the ways you can customize your shocks performance. There are now lock out, low-speed compression, high speed-compression and air volume adjustments. To explain all these things would take forever, so if your interested in one of, in my opinion, the best sports off all time go do some research yourself.

 

Before you go one thing to remember is that you don’t need the best bike to have a good time mountain biking. All these new technology’s can make your ride more enjoyable. Though you have to remember that back when the sport began, and people were riding terrible road specific bikes down the trails, they were still having a great time. So get a bike you can afford*, good safety gear, and have a blast! 

Thanks for learning about one of my favourite sports for our week four SBC post. I wish all you other SBC bloggers good luck!

 

*DISCLAIMER: although you should always buy a bike in your price range, never buy a department store mountain bike ( if you plan to ride real mountain bike terrain ) even if it seems like a good deal! These bikes are generally unsafe, because of their lack of design, because of their cheap materials and components, and because of how dated the technology used in the bikes is.