Kids and Mountain Biking Glossary
Getting to Know Buying Bikes Terms and Cycling Words
Berms, bombholes with a full suss or hard tail can start to make sense to a parent as they get into mountain biking language. Supporting someone interested in cross country mountain biking could not be easier in practice – it’s considered to be one of the most inclusive sports around – once some of the key words and terms are known.
Mountain Biking
Mountain biking has widened appeal to boys and girls. As an outdoor pursuit and recognised sport, mountain bike riding is unrecognizable today compared to the modest start in the late 1970s. Marin County California is claimed to have given birth to the mountain bike. Many countries around the world have raised themselves on mountain bikes and riding trails.
Consider the inspiration of the World Cup title holders – including Canadian Marie-Helene Premont and Florian Vogel from Switzerland – for young people to get exercising outside, to appreciate the landscape and develop cognitive skills in manipulating their bikes around a course without dismounting.
If someone close is starting to become curious about mountain biking, hire or buy bikes and go out together. If the child's friends are getting keen as mountain bike riders, get to know biking words and terms in the following glossary to understand their shop talk.
Bike Terms
The first and important abbreviation is MTB for mountain bike. Definitions of common terms associated with mountain bikes follow:
- Suspension fork – mechanism that gives a MTB’s front wheel to move with the terrain while protects the rider from body-jarring
- Hard tail – bike with no rear suspension and a suspension fork on the front
- Soft tail – bike with rear suspension
- Full suss – bike with front and rear suspension
- Trail bike – sturdy bike with suspension and 5 inches of movement front/back
- Tyre tread – tyre patterns designed for varying weather conditions
- Snakebite – flat tyre by damaging inner tube against the wheel rim caused by hitting someone hard with wheel
Riding Words
Words relating to mountain bike riding, trails and features in trail design are set out as an alphabetical glossary below:
- Berm – a steeply banked corner built up to allow riders to corner with speed
- Bombhole – a sheer drop into a hole with a climb back out
- Bunny-hop – to jump the bike, by pulling up on the handlebars, over an obstacle without dismounting
- Carve – a smooth clean line made by a hard turn
- Chicken Run – trail alongside a feature giving the rider a chance to opt out
- Dabbing – touching the ground to avoid falling off MTB
- Double/s – design of two soil mounds - like a camel’s humps - with plan of riding of first mound jumping and landing on second
- Drop off – a sheer drop to be jumped
- Eating your greens – involuntary biking off track
- Fun Park – trail with frequent built in features
- Hammer – to ride hard
- Rail – to ride without trouble fast around a corner
- Rock dodge – avoiding small trail hazards by swift handlebar steering
- Rock Garden – trail feature of rocks embedded in the ground
- Singletrack – narrow trails about the width of a MTB tyre
- Spin out – loss of rear wheel traction when turning meaning the bike turns 180 degree
- Sweeper – wide turn
- Switchback – a zig-zag section of a trail
- Technical – trail section requiring specific skillset to complete without dismounting
By getting to know some of the biking terms and riding words, cross country mountain bike riding becomes familiar. Watching this outdoor pursuit and Olympic Games sport in Beijing in 2008 as spectators will give a chance to enjoy the MTB action and understand the specialised mountain bike riding commentary.
Sources: CBC Olympics Cycling and Bike Scotland Trails Guide (pocket mountains ltd, 2006) by Richard Moore and Andy McCandlish.
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