If you’re new to the sport of mountain biking you may be wondering which type of bike is best to start out on – a hardtail or full suspension bike? While each type of bike has its pros and cons, there are some serious advantages to starting out on a hardtail, including levelling up your riding skills faster and improving your MTB abilities in the long run.
Full suspension bikes
A full suspension mountain bike is the bike of choice for seasoned riders who like to hit lots of rough terrain and fast downhill sections. FS bikes allow riders to take more direct lines over uneven trail surfaces including rocks and roots, and also provide more forgiveness if they happen to make a mistake, whether that be by hitting an obstacle they should have avoided, or making a hard landing.
The extra suspension in the rear of the bike can cover up a lot of poor riding, but it can be more important and even necessary for riders doing higher speed, higher risk mountain biking.
Why hardtails are an excellent choice for beginners
Despite the added forgiveness offered by full suspension bikes, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the best choice of mountain bike for beginner riders. In fact, there are many factors that make a hardtail mountain bike (meaning a bike without rear suspension) a better choice for those new to the sport.
Learning the importance of line choice
Choosing the right line is an important part of any rider’s mountain biking skillset. While a full suspension mountain bike will allow you the forgiveness to get away with riding over obstacles you maybe should have avoided, a hardtail mountain bike will give you the feedback that your line choice was less than ideal.
By riding a hardtail you will learn to pick smoother lines which will make you a better mountain biker in the long run.
Learning better weight shift
Getting your wheels over obstacles smoothly is much more of a challenge on a hardtail. But this also means that if you can learn to keep your ride smooth over rough terrain on a hardtail, you’ll have loads of confidence to shred rooty and rocky trails on a full suspension bike if you ever decide to make the switch.
When you’re coming over an obstacle like a rock or a root, if you just keep your body and weight still, you’ll feel the impact through each wheel as you ride over it. But to make it smoother, you’ll need to learn to de-weight and re-weight your wheels.
You’ll learn to de-weight your front wheel just as it makes contact with whatever obstacle you’re riding over, whether that’s a rock or root, and then re-weight it once your front wheel is over the obstacle, and in doing so, de-weight your rear wheel.
This is a skill developed through practice and your timing in when you de-weight and re-weight your wheels is very important to keeping your ride nice and smooth on a hardtail.
If you start out riding a full suspension mountain bike instead, this skill could easily be neglected, and you may never learn how to properly shift your weight to smooth things out. In the long run, your riding ability may not be as good as a result of not having as much need to learn this fundamental MTB skill.
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Improved riding skills in the long run
If you want to max out your riding abilities over time, starting out on a hardtail mountain bike is where its at.
While riding certain sections of trail may be more difficult on a hardtail, particularly rough terrain including things like rock gardens and sections with lots of roots, learning to tackle these challenges on a hardtail and relying more on your own skill than having a rear shock that makes up for your mistakes will definitely make you a more capable mountain biker in the long run.
Your ability to choose the smoothest line through the trails you ride will be much improved because it will make a bigger difference for you on a hardtail as opposed to a full suspension MTB.
You’ll also learn how to use your body position and weight shift to allow you to keep the ride smooth instead of relying more on your bike. If you don’t get this right, your bike will provide you with instant feedback that is lacking in a full suspension bike.
Lower maintenance
Another benefit of riding a hardtail is the lower maintenance costs you’ll have compared to a full suspension bike. By not having rear suspension, you’ll save on the cost of servicing the rear shock which can get to be fairly expensive.
Rear suspension should be serviced every year and requires a full rebuild every two or three years, which can run you hundreds of dollars. If you’re newer to the sport of mountain biking, you may prefer to keep these costs lower which a hardtail will allow you to do.
More moving parts on your bike also means more that can go wrong. A rear shock could potentially become damaged which can also be costly to fix, but not having one on your bike means you will not have any possibility of needing to pay for these repairs.
Better climbing
Hardtails are known to be superior at going uphill compared to full suspension bikes, and there are a couple of reasons for this.
Lower weight
Because there is no rear shock on a hardtail, there is less weight to carry around on the bike, all things being equal. While you wouldn’t think rear suspension would weigh you down all that much, it can definitely make a difference. Nowhere is this difference more noticeable than when you’re climbing up hills.
If you ride trails where you find yourself climbing hills often, you might find the extra weight from a full suspension makes you feel a bit sluggish after a while which can cause you to get tired out more quickly.
No pedal bob
Another key advantage hardtails have over full suspension mountain bikes is that they do not suffer from pedal bob.
What is pedal bob? Pedal bob means the amount your bike sags from the rear suspension as you pedal. Because your weight is almost directly over where the rear suspension is on bikes with a rear shock, each pedal stroke, especially on climbs, will cause the shock to compress, in turn sapping some of the energy from each pedal stroke.
This means that some of the force you’d be putting into pedaling and propelling your bike forward is instead going into compressing the rear shock. The end result is that your pedaling becomes less efficient and this can make climbs more difficult and tiring.
The other issue caused by pedal bob is pedal strikes on obstacles. If you’re climbing on more technical trails with lots of rocks and roots, its easy to strike your pedals on obstacles as your rear suspension is compressed, which lowers the height of your pedals. This can be annoying and really slow down your climbs.
By contrast, with no rear shock this is not a problem for hardtails. This, along with the lower weight of hardtails, makes them more efficient and less sluggish when climbing. If your local trails include a lot of climbs, there’s a good chance you’ll find it easier to ride them on a hardtail.
Downsides of riding a hardtail
Everything has tradeoffs, and if you’re a new mountain biker deciding which type of mountain bike to start out on, its important you understand not only the benefits of riding a hardtail but some of the limitations they can have as well.
Rougher ride
Of course with less suspension comes a rougher ride. Since hardtails have no rear suspension, when you hit rough terrain including rocks and roots, you are going to get bounced around more.
This does give you an opportunity to practice using your body positioning and weight shift to smooth out the ride, but you will definitely feel more impacts on a hardtail and especially at higher speeds.
Need to ride less aggressively
Because you are going to have less forgiveness on a hardtail compared to a full suspension MTB, you will need to ride less aggressively on a hardtail.
You’ll need to be more conservative in your line choice and will need to be careful to avoid hitting large rocks or roots at high speed, because you and your bike will be taking the brunt of that with no rear shock to cushion the impact.
Its also important to keep in mind that a hardtail will be less forgiving on a botched landing, so if you’re hitting jumps make sure you start small and work your way up as your technique improves.
Slower over the rough stuff
When the trails get rough, you’ll need to slow down on a hardtail more than on a full suspension bike. Hardtails will not have the same level of compliance with uneven trails as FS bikes, reducing their traction over these sections.
Beyond reduced traction, you will definitely feel the impacts more hitting rough terrain at higher speeds, so to allow you to manage the impacts on a hardtail with your body position and weight shift, you will need to hit these sections at slower speeds.
If you mainly want to race downhill or put a premium on descending even the roughest trails as fast as possible, a hardtail may not be the best bike choice for you. Riding a hardtail doesn’t mean you will have to ride slow, but you will need to be more deliberate about your line and understand that your bike won’t be as forgiving as an FS bike would be.
Related: Riding Downhill on Hardtail Mountain Bikes
Frequently asked questions
There are lots of reasons why you should start on a hardtail, including learning to use your body position and weight shift to navigate uneven and rough terrain. Beyond this, you’ll learn to be more particular about your line choice and how to master trails even with a less forgiving bike.
These basic skills learned from riding a hardtail will be useful later in your MTB journey even if you make the switch to a full suspension bike at some point.
In many ways riding a hardtail will make you a better mountain biker in the long run. It will teach you the importance of line choice, how to position your body and shift your weight to keep things smooth, and will force you to rely on your riding ability and not the extra forgiveness provided by rear suspension.
No, full suspension bikes are designed completely differently from hardtails. If you were to try to convert your hardtail into a full suspension, the geometry would be off and the bike would not perform or handle properly.
Conclusion
While deciding between a full suspension or hardtail mountain bike will come down to your own preferences and preferred riding style, there are some serious advantages to learning the sport on a hardtail, which include learning to be more precise in your line choice, using your body positioning and weight shift to get over obstacles smoothly, and relying on your skill instead of your bike’s forgiveness to get through challenging trails.
You’ll have fun and can improve on either type of bike, but your future self may thank you for beginning your MTB journey on a hardtail.