5 Pro Tips for getting the most out of your suspension

Let's dive into a topic that can make or break your racing: suspension! While a rider's technique and physical fitness are crucial, the importance of a well-tuned bike cannot be overstated. Different motocross tracks pose unique challenges, and adapting your bike setup accordingly can significantly affect performance. When I was younger, I would just ride and ride and never thought about fork height, compression, rebound, or spring rate.  Even as a young privateer pro, it took me years to develop the knowledge and feel to give appropriate feedback.  I honed my testing and bike setup skills with each factory team I was a part of, from Star Yamaha and TLD Red Bull KTM to the JGR Yoshimura Suzuki. Now I’m by no means a suspension “EXPERT”, but by the end of my career, I did feel like I had a decent grasp on “bike setup” thanks to the great suspension, engine, chassis, and mapping gurus these teams had.

A well-adjusted suspension setup can enhance control, stability, confidence, and safety. Most techs will generally give you a setting based on your height, weight, and speed, but there is so much more you can do to fine-tune it to your liking. Here are five tips to help with your suspension and bike setup.

1)Spring rate.  Spring rate affects where the bike rides in the stroke and is something that can be changed quite often.  For example, I liked a softer fork spring in SX because it gave me a good front-end feel in the whoops, and I could corner really well. But when it came to a soft rutty track, I didn’t have the hold-up I needed in the rhythms, and things could get a bit hairy… ( Watch A1 2022 Troll Train Vlog) You would think spring rates change a ton from supercross to motocross, but it’s not as much as you think.  Spring rates can be similar because of the speed at which the pros go, tracks being loamy and soft (generally), the downhills steep and fast (Mt Martin), and needing enough hold-up for these sections. Valving is obviously much stiffer for SX.

2) Oil height. If you are happy with your current spring rate but feel like you are bottoming on big jumps and G-outs, try adding 5-10 cc of oil to your forks.  This common change doesn't sacrifice your overall ride height but will help bottom resistance.  

3) Fork height. Fork height really affects a motorcycle's handling. Pulling your forks down in the triple clamps can help high-speed stability while stiffening your front end. It also puts more weight on the rear end. If you're riding on a tight track, pulling the forks up will help you corner better, but you might have to stiffen the compression as you put more weight on the front end. This is not a change I would recommend for outdoors or high-speed tracks.

4) Clickers. Compression and rebound clickers are a realm in and of themselves. When you stiffen your compression, you force the bike to ride higher in the stroke. If the bike is harsh and rigid on jumps and high-speed sections, you may be riding low in the stroke, and going stiffer will make the bike feel softer and more plush.  On the flip side, if the bike feels really rigid or harsh but you’re barely using any of the stroke, going softer on the compression might be your best bet.  Video feedback is incredibly valuable, allowing you to see what the bike is doing.  For rebound changes, on rough, choppy, square-edged conditions, speeding the rebound up will help the bike feel more plush and settled.  If you feel like the rear is staying down off jumps, speeding it up will help the bike be more balanced in the air. On the flip side, if the bike sends you into an endo-off the jump, you’d want to slow the rebound down.  Going up or down on the spring rate can have a similar effect to what the rebound clicker does. 

5) Sag.  Sag puts a certain amount of tension on the shock spring.  Typically, sag depends on the brand; when I rode for KTM, we ran our sag between 90-95, but on the Yamaha, it was between 105-110.  I would typically run the shock sag a little higher in SX, and in the outdoors, I would run a more squatted setting.  Sag is closely related to “ride height.”  I was particularly sensitive to this, and I would check my sag every day in practice to make sure it was where it should be.  If my sag was too low, I felt like I couldn’t corner, and the front end always felt high in the rhythms and off-jumps.  I couldn’t drive across whoops very well if the rear was too high.

It’s important to remember every rider is different, and settings can vary from year to bike to track. I Hope you enjoyed this article and find it helpful with your racing and training endeavors. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the process!

Alex Martin