I get this question a lot from Pinkbike readers.
In the mainstream mountain bike media, we’ve been led to believe that cool, shreddy bikes have short chainstays and stodgy, cruisy bikes have long chainstays. That all started with Gary Fisher ‘s Genesis Geometry in the ’90s, and it’s become dogma. If you look at geo charts for “performance” mountain bikes vs. “comfort” or “fitness” or “enthusiast” mountian bikes, the less performance-oriented bikes often have longer stays.
People at the bike park see the long Namastays on my Mistresses, and they ask how the bikes work in the pump track and dirt jumps. Dirt jump bikes have very short chainstays, so how can long stays work well in the same situations? When I made the first Mistress prototype I knew cornering would be better because of increased front wheel grip, but I was curious about how the longer stays affect pumping and jumping.
I’ve written award-winning marking copy for many bike companies, and I know BS when I see it. I won’t give you any here. Here are some facts:
Your bike is comprised of two levers
1. The RAD (rider area distance) is the lever between your hands and feet.
2. The chainstay is the lever between your feet and the rear wheel.
The shorter the chainstays are relative to the RAD, the greater the leverage ratio between your hands and the rear wheel. If the RAD is 2x the chainstay length, each 100 lbs of pulling force at the bar drives 200 lbs into the rear wheel. This is a crucial part of generating pumping power, and it’s how we control height for hops and jumps.
Bikes with higher leverage ratios a la BMX and dirt jump bikes are often called “poppy” and “playful.” The few bike reviewers who truly know how to ride will feel it. The rest say what the press release says to say, or they’ll regurgitate common tropes like “this bike’s stays are too long, and that’s why it’s not fun to ride” or “this bike’s short stays make it exciting to ride.” Again, I’ve done that kind of writing, so I’m qualified to comment.
Because Mistress bikes have relatively short front ends and long rear ends, they have relatively low leverage ratios between the hands and the rear tire. Theoretically, this might make them less poppy and playful, as well as harder to manage on the pump track and jumps. I was curious to find out for myself.
Levers work two ways
Let’s use two excellent trail bikes as examples.
Stumpjumper v15 size S2
- RAD: 780mm
- Chainstay: 432mm
- Leverage ratio: 1.81
Mistress size M3
- RAD: 780mm
- Chainstay: 505mm
- Leverage ratio: 1.54
Compared with the Stumpjumper, when I pull on the Mistress bars with a certain amount of force and range, two things are different:
- The rear wheel receives 18 percent less force.
- The rear wheel moves 18 percent farther.
To sum it up, there’s less force at the rear wheel, but more movement. I’ve ridden Mistresses on pump tracks, dirt jumps, a slalom course, slopestyle runs, XC trails, DH trails and even the World Cup DH track in Cairns — which has serious pump and massive jumps. The bikes work very well in a curiously relaxed, easy way.
Here’s a very technical pump track:
Riding a Mistress feels different in these ways:
- I stay balanced and engaged in crazy terrain shapes with almost 1/5 less movement at my hands. This allows me to handle nastier bumps with less effort and stress.
- This makes it very easy to ride faster, while feeling like I’m riding slower. For the same speed on the same bumps, my hands are moving almost 1/5 more slowly. To ride 1/5 faster is no big deal, hence all these PRs I’ve been earning on both natural and manmade terrain. The most recent was on the NoWukkas hardtail, on a black flow trail.
- This allows riders who don’t have full range of motion (pretty much every modern person) to ride safely and well without having to train like crazy.
- If you do have the range of motion, you spend more time in your optimal range, which means you’re stronger and less susceptible to injury. And, like I said, it’s easy to go even faster.
To sum it up
Testing is showing me that the longer chainstays on Mistress bikes do not make the bikes less fun or capable in pumping and jumping situations. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.
Have fun out there,
Lee