Whilst rad, mountain biking isn’t all gnar, and by presenting it like that, lots of people are missing out an all the easy fun that mountain biking could offer them.
Matty Johnson is a former professional baseball player who now makes mountain biking content for his YouTube channel. He discovered mountain biking five years ago, and in that time has pushed himself to ride harder features.
In this video I will be talking about some misconceptions when It comes to mountain biking and how all the expensive bikes and difficult trails are not what mountain biking is all about.
The topics he covers have a lot of overlap with the agenda of Reframing MTB. What do you think? Is there room for all styles of riding? Do we see enough of ‘just riding along’? Or is it boring to watch, but fun to do? How would you encourage more people to give mountain biking a shot?
This does go along to some thoughts I’ve been having lately after a bit of a break from the sport (putting the slightly clickbaity title aside, anyway). My last ride was with Freeride Madeira, incredible day out with lots of fun and a good balance of scenery vs adrenaline. And afterwards as my ageing battered body recovered I started to think about being effectively retired from the sport. Like, I just didn’t want to go do it again, whereas my usual experience is to be busting to get back out there as soon as possible.
Meanwhile my bike back home has a rear brake problem I can’t seem to summon the energy to diagnose and fix, and I can’t really use the bike safely without it, so months later on I just haven’t. I still take the old hardtail out with my kid to the BMX track now and again but that’s about it. I feel like I suddenly aged out of wanting to push myself on the gnarly stuff that I always associated with the sport. The recent weather has been making me feel like getting back at it, historically XC has left me a bit cold but maybe that’s what I need now, at least for a while. I shall see! If I had terrain like that in the video on my doorstep, maybe I’d be more into it!
No idea about the guy’s main thrust about new riders… I have seen a few videos of people trundling through beautiful scenery and they’re very nice but maybe not as easy to market as the big jumps and thrill-ride stuff. When I was starting out it was the idea of progressing to all those cool crazy skills that drew me in.
Most of my riding is old school XC, 30-60km days out at weekends of just riding around, stop at a cafe/pub and riding back. That’s why i have the Trek Fuel nowdays as my only bike, it’s superb for that. Then every now and again it’s a bit of FoD/wherever for a bit of adrenaline, but with so much racing, i rarely get out for weekends.
Majority of my MTBing is old school XC from the door, I love it. I’ve never been into gnar and jumps! Hardtail and exploring the countryside is where it’s at for me.Â
Wanderingaroundthescenery biking for me.
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Ive always felt there are two main types of bikers.  Those who use their mtb to go places and those for whom the actual riding is key. Landrover or rally car.Â
That’s an interesting comparison, though some riders (including me) happily switch between them. Especially now gravel is a thing.
I’ve just bought a cheap 10-year-old hardtail (without a dropper) and have enjoyed/endured a couple of local XC rides, just for the sake of doing something a bit different and embracing the limitations.
I’d say the majority of my riding is the equivalent of going for a walk on my bike, just further and (slightly!) faster, and I think that’s why there’s been such a rise in people “gravel" riding which is mainly just going out for a bimble on whatever bike you have/enjoy riding for longer days out over mixed terrain.
But I also appreciate that’s not as marketable/aspirational and doesn’t really drive the progression of bikes/kit etc forwards to keep the industry and the people working in it fed. And I don’t mean that in a “they just want our money" way, I mean there are loads of passionate people out there that want to develop new and better things and also eek a living from it which I think is great.
@milko9000 makes a really good point and reminds me that I really, really need to get my Stumpy to the mechanic (like I said I would last year) for a bunch of work. Winter indoor training just took up so much of my life I could not summon the energy to drop it off. Hell, I used the beater hardtail more than the full sus last year and those combined were less used than my road bike.
I need to go out and cycle more. I kind of miss it.
I believe gravel bike sales are still thriving, compared to non-eeb MTBs – and a lot of the marketing seems to be about exploring and social riding rather than performance – probably still aspirational though TBF.
This isn’t really mirrored in MTB marketing, to my knowledge. Maybe it should be, eh?
No one is lying to me, I’ve always done mostly XC riding on my own as thats whats on my door step. Call it gravel if you like but riding bridleways and stuff in nice scenery is great. Always come back smiling from a nice ride on my 100mm hardtail, which is actually marketed as a gravel type bike, Cotic Cascade, but I run it with flat bars and a suspension fork.
That said I’ve just bought a Cotic Rocket Max for big stuff and love it. It climbs really well as well, so will be great for days out in the peak as well as DH in the Alps and UK stuff in between.
I love it all. Riding bikes is great!
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Do it yourself, fixing most stuff on a bike is really easy. Literally just turning bolts.
Sorry (genuinely), but I’m not a video person, so no clue what he actually says.Â
But I agree with the broad headline. For example, Bikeradar is a great site generally, but I really resent the incredibly marketing-BS-centric approach of much of their coverage. “Why you NEED an emtb (that costs £4k)", “this 160mm trail bike is a must-have", “only £8k? What a bargain for this go-anywhere bike!": while they may not use those exact headlines, it really paints this picture that an old hack bike for £300 isn’t ‘proper’ mountain biking, and you need to give your head a wobble.Â
I suspect STW is quite a skewed group in a way – we’re all experienced enough in MTBing to know that the only real criteria is to just have fun, however you do it. But for many relative newcomers I’ve no doubt there’s this sense that without all the gear you won’t be able to do it properly, or get enough out of it. Why do you think we see so many multi-thousand pound ebikes on trails where it used to be £300 GT starter bikes etc?
Oh, and I dragged myself out for the first time in 7 months at the weekend. I’d been putting it off, with “I need a new drivetrain", “need to fettle" and so on, but finally got out to the local trail centre and just loved it. I wasn’t particularly on it, but loved how well it flowed and can’t wait to get out again – even after all this time it amazes me how much I put it off!
I do quite like Matty and his videos, but he seems to be going a bit heavy on the reverse elitism lately.
I get his POV that people starting out don’t need an expensive or super capable bike but there’s nothing wrong with these bikes existing for those that do want to ride gnarlier trails than what Matty rides.
The article title is click-baity af by the way 😀
I think you’ll find that the industry has had no problem making gravel riding marketable…
Still exists ????
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I’m afraid this thread is just pushing my growing hatred of overly click-bait-y titles even higher than usual. I watched about 30 seconds of the video and had enough – I realised that no one is actually lying to me about anything. My expectations for STW are higher than this. But I guess this is how the world is today and there’s no point in whinging about it. Even here.
Personally I enjoy the technicallity of riding – but that doesn’t have to mean an ever increasing arms race of travel, head angle and armour and uplifted or e-assisted climbing to access the steeper harder trails they require.
I’ll happily have fun flicking my little trail bike around local flat woodland trails.Â
I love trying to extract speed on a rolling blue trail centre.
Technical climbs are great tests of skill.
Getting fit just means I can do more of the riding I like.
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I do think the current bike marketing leaves something to be desired. I know we can have an infinite argument on “over-biking" and people are free to spent their money how they want but some people really are on the wrong bike (or wrongly specced bike).
I’ve said before on threads about the rise of e-bikes – I reckon the next generation of XC bikes will be the pedal powered pinnacle of the sport. And some of the current gen are pretty damn close. Electric bikes will take most of the bigger travel gnar market.
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Just to be clear, the only place where MTB is rad is Germany, perhaps Austria, and NE Switzerland…
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Sorry to be clear what I mean is that it’s not that marketable as “Mountain Biking" and getting that section of the market/demographic motivated to spend money on the latest thing. Gravel is obviously a big trend currently, but with mountain bikes already being incredibly capable and/or fast there’s not a lot of innovation to sell to that market to enable them to ‘just pedal about’.
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Youi taking that too Fahr!🤪