Question when climbing

I do not know if this has to do with technique, weight, bike size, fork travel or perhaps a combination of the above, so here goes.

I have a very difficult time keeping my front wheel on the ground when ascending a somewhat steep incline. I tend to have to stand and put most of my weight on the handlebars. This works fine on climbs that are free of most obstructions, but..... on ones with rocks, roots, etc., it is not always a pretty outcome.

I notice that my sons and husband can stay seated, so what is wrong or what am I doing wrong?

It has to do with center of gravity and how you're interacting with the bike. Bikes are light enough compared to our bodies that if you're pulling up on the bars while climbing, you're going to pull the front wheel up. If your body is too far back relative to the center of mass of the bike, you're also going to pull the front wheel up. So you need to get your body forward and keep yourself from pulling up on the handlebars.

Instead of standing and putting your weight on your handlebars, think of moving your whole body *forward* on the bike. A pro told me she pretends there's a chocolate chip cookie on the handlebars, and she has to get her mouth toward the cookie. That mental image keeps her body low and forward. Depending on the steepness, you may find yourself sitting on the front end of the saddle, or even hovering in front of the saddle.

I think of keeping my body low and pulling the handlebars *back* (ie, parallel to the ground) rather than pulling up.

It also has to do with how light your bike is -- I recently got a bike that's about 5 pounds lighter than my old one, and I'm having to relearn weight distribution to get the right results on this bike. It's super easy to yank the new bike's front wheel up. But I'm doing it a lot less by applying everything I just described. On the plus side, it's also easy to unweight the front wheel intentionally for obstacles.

On the downhill, the opposite is true -- you want to get your body back, sometimes even behind the seat, but still low.

try putting it in a lower gear. Standing climbs don't work very well if you are either in to big of a gear, or there are a lot of obstacles. As monique says, CG is everything.

-Try a lower gear and staying in the saddle, but moving way forward so that the nose of the saddle is actually poking you in the butt.

-if you just feel the need to stand, get your body forward.

-a variation of the chocolate cookie thing is "boobs to the tube".

It could also be that your bike is too big/too long in the top tube. This can make climbing more difficult as it's tough to find the sweet spot.

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Originally Posted by Irulan

-Try a lower gear and staying in the saddle, but moving way forward so that the nose of the saddle is actually poking you in the butt.

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-a variation of this is "put the nose of the saddle where the sun don't shine". :p

I also put a longer stem on a bike once because I didn't have enough space to eat that cookie. But try radically changing your position as suggested before going this route. When learning, most of us don't move around on the bike enough, especially if we come from a roadie background where we strive for calm and still bodies.

I have the same problem sometimes and it's not so natural to move forward but I'm working on it. I learned quickly to put my weight on the back of the seat when I'm going downhill to prevent sliding but I'm not so good with the climbing part. My husband also comes off his seat a lot but I feel off balance doing that. I'm going to try to work on moving forward as suggested.

You might want to play with and practice the basic body position for mountain biking, called either the attack position or the neutral position. Pedals level ( 3/9) standing up - extending but not locked, but not just a little crouch off the saddle either. Eyes forward, no death grip on the handlebars, just one or two fingers on the brakes.

This is the basic body position from where all mountain biking maneuvers spring from. You ought to feel very balanced like this because you have 4 points of connection to the bike. When you sit on your butt, your are connected to the bike via an off balance triangle ( butt and hands) Think about it, what is more stable, four points of connection or an off balance triangle? practice this position - eventually it should feel very balanced and stable to you, and it gives you the advantage of being able to move your body around - especially back for descents. Scootching back on the saddle doesn't really count, you should let go of the saddle with your thighs, extend a bit and move your hips back.

[QUOTE=Irulan;324036]You might want to play with and practice the basic body position for mountain biking, called either the attack position or the neutral position. Pedals level ( 3/9) standing up - extending but not locked, but not just a little crouch off the saddle either. Eyes forward, no death grip on the handlebars, just one or two fingers on the brakes. QUOTE]

Thanks. I'll try this. I need to learn some technique other than basic "survival" for sure.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Irulan

-a variation of the chocolate cookie thing is "boobs to the tube".

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So, I just tried mountain biking for the second time in my life, demoing some different models before buying one. And randomly, during a rather slippery climb, I remembered reading this, so I tried it. Boobs to the tube, boobs to the tube...

All I gotta say is THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! You made my afternoon *much* more fun! I think I might light this mountain biking thing afterall!

-- gnat! (Just gotta write the check for the final amount, and I will have me a pretty sexy tube to put my boobs on)

It probably is a body positioning and weight distribution thing, but if you're still having trouble you might want to look at bar height. Having the bars higher does make it easier to unweight the front wheel when you want to, but can also make it harder to keep the front end down when you need to. You could try moving a spacer from below the stem to above it and give that a few rides to see how it affects things. :)

All the tips here are very good

- weight shifted forward - you may even need to move around a bit to ensure traction on both wheels
- easier gear
- BREATHE! its amazing how many people forget
- patience! nothing aggravates me more than to see people try to "momentum" up a hill in too hard a gear, at an intensity way past their fitness levels. Just be patient, the top of the hill will be there faster than you think. I have passed people who blew up before the top, because they tried to speed up the hill like that.
- riser bars tend to make climbing more difficult as it sits you more upright
- saddle position - make sure it isn't tipping "backwards" because it too will make sliding forward more difficult
- and overall geometry of the bike - all mountain bikes versus a cross country designs - even overly small frames like mine, affect the ability to shift forward and effectively transfer weight and traction to the front tire.

Happy Climbing! :D