The World's Best MTB Videos (#46)
The best bike rider that you've never heard of, delivering some seriously insane footage this week (and a bunch of other riders you have heard of, naturally).
Let’s Ride
One more week until World Championships - we are in the final countdown for Andorra! Until then, we’ve got some videos from existing world champs and plenty more.
VanSteenbergen Bros + More: RNDM
RNDM “Mixed Bag” is a video with five riders in the interior of BC, fully sending it on a bunch of different bikes in different zones. Tom and Bas VanSteenbergen lead this video, along with riding from Brayden Barett-Hay, Soren Farenholtz and Liam Irvine (who also directed/edited the video). Just all out shredding for the entire video, mixed with one of my favorite Alice in Chains tracks.
Vali Höll - Symphony
Fun fact: If you cue up this video with the track “Symphony of Destruction” (to match the name of the video, naturally), it works just as well - if not better - than the Blondie song they chose. This video rips no matter what music you use, Vali Höll is awesome and she shreds in this video!
The Best Bike Rider You’ve Never Heard Of
Joacim Lundgren is a beast. Shoulder-height bunnyhops? Massive gaps? Long manuals and insane back wheel control? If you only watch ONE video this week, make sure it’s this one. Absolutely bonkers. I was rewinding almost every clip in this video, props to the Shin Dig crew for capturing this insanity.
Did You See This?
This is cringe-worthy presentation at best, but still left me scratching my head. Could it really be this easy to install tires? Has anyone tried it? This would save me hours!
Newsworthy
🤘 Red Bull Rampage has announced the men’s invites, as well as alternate selections for both men’s and women’s lineups here.
🏆 This has got to be one of the best bike launch videos out there, right? Santa Cruz Bronson “Keen On Another One?” is legit.
👀 Tommy G and Brendan Fairclough took a trip to Greece to find some epic new lines. Cool to see these two riding together outside of Rampage. The real question is…when do we get to see Deathgrip 2, Brendan’s new film with Clay Porter??
🔥 We’ve given Queenstown, NZ so much love in the past year, but it’s for good reason. So many banger videos come out of this place, and the latest video from Jai Motherwell is no exception. Check this out, you will be stoked that you did.
🕵🏻♂️ Pinkbike Patent Patrol never misses! This time it’s from SRAM, a wireless seatpost with electronics on the collar.
😳 Here’s some rad footage of Finn Iles, too.
I Can’t Stop Thinking About
This past weekend, I got a chance to check out the MADE Handbuilt Bike show here in Portland. Everything was hand-built, custom-painted, custom-built and blinged out to the absolute max. What’s not to love?!
What interested me the most was a conversation I had at the show with my friend Tara, who used to work at GT Bikes. She was saying that their Product Manager went to one of these shows a while back and saw gravel bikes popping up everywhere, and that was their signal to take a closer look at the category. This eventually led to the design and release of the GT Grade, one of the first production gravel bikes from a major manufacturer (and one of their best selling bikes in the year to follow).
While I like to think that these small shows are a bit like deep sea diving - a chance to see weird shapes, colors and other exciting things - they are also a signal of what could be coming to the wider bike industry in the future.
I made a full video walkthrough of the MADE show for paid subscribers of the newsletter, too. If you’ve got a few dollars to support my work and check out members only videos like that, that would be awesome. Here’s a link to that video (I think you get a free one-time preview, too).
Perfect Balance On ANY Bike!
I finally figured out the best way to teach trackstands. Turns out, the biggest thing people struggle with is the part where you roll slightly backwards. A big reason why a lot of people try to teach this skill on an uphill incline is to assist with the rollback, but I took a completely different approach to this lesson, and I think it works better. Let me know what you think?
No More Milkshakes
If you’ve been watching the Super Rider channel for a while, you know that I’ve put on a little bit of muscle in the past year. Lifting weights has made a huge impact on my bike control, and I recommend it to everyone. But the thing I struggled with at first - I couldn’t choke down thick protein milkshakes, the consistency and taste was awful no matter what brand I tried. Then, about a year ago, I found SEEQ. It’s basically kool-aid flavored protein mix (22g per scoop - and ZERO sugar) and it has the same consistency as kool-aid, too. There’s a bunch of legit flavors (blue raspberry and fruit punch are my two favorites) and they usually drop limited flavors every few months, too. This has been a game changer for me and my daily protein intake, I would highly recommend checking it out.
Thank You
Thank you so much for reading this week’s newsletter. It would mean the world if you hit forward and sent it to a riding buddy who might also enjoy starting every Monday with a bunch of rad bike videos!
That tyre trick looks like it is worth a try, it's basically just using a rope as a tyre lever, quite clever.