High-Pivot Mountain Bikes: Everything You Need To Know

Although full suspension at its core — chasing a smoother, faster, more controlled ride — hasn't really moved in decades, the roadmap taken to get there has shifted constantly. A lot of the innovation we enjoy today came out of the V-Process, the framework brands used to refine rear-wheel trajectories across designs. Bikes like Trek's early high-pivot prototype on the GT Session 10 back in 2006, and even older experiments reaching back to the GT STS in the mid-90s, show the idea isn't new at all.

More recently, high-pivot suspension has been dusted off and reintroduced to a new generation of riders, largely thanks to the Scottish brand Deviate. Since Deviate rolled out the nuGrade mountain bike in 2016, it's become a leading voice in the category. We caught up with Chris Deviate, one of the brand's co-founders, to understand how these bikes actually behave and why they're picking up momentum with riders who demand more from their suspension.

How Suspension Really Works

Before we dig into the ins and outs of high-pivot designs, it helps to quickly revisit what suspension is doing in the first place. Every full-suspension mountain bike is a system of linkages working in concert, independent of each frame to let the rear wheel absorb impacts. Each brand strategy decides how that rear wheel moves through its travel, and that trajectory is what ultimately defines how the bike feels on rough ground.

To pull this off, a full-suspension frame is built around a linkage, which can be a single pivot, a series of pivots, or a rocker-link setup that couples the rear wheel to the mainframe. There's a small army of suspension designs in circulation across the industry, each employed by different bike brands. They don't all deliver the same ride — in fact, subtle differences in linkage layout produce meaningful differences in how a bike rolls, climbs, and pedals under load. These are the design decisions that shape suspension character.

This is where concepts like anti-rise, anti-squat, progression, and leverage ratio come into play, but those sit for another article. The axle path and anti-squat behavior are especially important for high-pivot mountain bikes, though, because all of those other concepts are also present and carry their own weight on high-pivot builds.

Put simply, a bike's axle path describes the route the rear wheel takes as suspension compresses. To keep things manageable, axle path is usually measured as the rear-wheel travel with respect to the mainframe. It's described with a small percentage — typically well under 100 percent anti-squat — that sits in the suspension when pedaling. Importantly, no axle path can fully cancel pedal kickback, another phrase to remember when we shift into the high-pivot territory.

Explaining Axle Path

Axle path is the trajectory taken by a wheel as a bike compresses through its travel. Both ends of a full-suspension mountain bike technically follow an axle path loosely generally, but how the rear wheel moves is shaped by the position of its main pivot on a low-pivot frame, which is often just above the bottom bracket (as seen in the diagram below). This illustrates the path of an average full-suspension mountain bike.

This is very much a layman's way of describing things, but to get a little more complete it helps to picture drawing a large arc around the lower pivot that intersects your rear axle (as shown in the pin below). This depicts the axle path of an average full-suspension mountain bike.

Almost all full-suspension mountain bikes have a rearward axle path to some effect, but as you'll see, a high-pivot mountain bike does things very differently as it raises the main pivot higher on the seat tube, hence its name. Because of that, our imaginary circle (loud is drawn), thus more of its circumference is available to let the rear axle travel around. This is what makes a high-pivot bike as different as the axle path is considerably more rearward.

Rearward axle paths can be achieved through means other than raising the pivot, but few do so as drastically as high-pivots. But note that linkages and axle paths are much more nuanced than this, so take this explanation as a simple visualization.

What a High-Pivot Does

A rearward axle path is desirable as it helps the rear wheel roll over bumps rather than get hooked up on them, which can destroy momentum and feel pretty awful when riding. Almost all full-suspension mountain bikes have a rearward axle path of some degree and some brands are even tweaking their linkages to increase the rearward axle path — take Pivot and its most recent Switchblade for example. However, these rearward axle paths are minimal as you can see in the diagram above.

A high-pivot mountain bike is all about rearward axle path. The higher a main pivot is, the more rearward an axle will travel as it hits full compression.

With an increased rearward axle path, the rear wheel mimics the direction of an impact which Deviate says gives the suspension more time to compress, which then frees the shock to do its work.

How Does Idler Placement Affect Things?

A knock-on effect of a rearward axle path is that a bike's chainstay will grow in length and that causes something known as pedal kickback. Pedal kickback can occur on all mountain bikes and is a result of a chain's and a drivetrain's influence on a suspension platform as it compresses deep in its travel and as the rear wheel moves away from the main pivot.

Essentially, the chain will pull on a crankset and force the pedals to backpedal slightly. This usually happens under big compressions and can feel harsh, or jarring through your feet. Because a high-pivot bike's chainstay grows so much in length, this effect can be much more dramatic. However, some think of pedal kickback as a bit of a myth.

Regardless, this is where an idler pulley, a telltale characteristic of all modern high-pivot mountain bikes, comes into play. It can sometimes require the use of a longer chain. The idler changes the chainline — its height and angle to the main pivot specifically — and this greatly reduces the effect of the grown chainstay. Pedal kickback that'll happen as a result of the greater rearward axle path and chainstay growth of a high-pivot bike. Some brands, such as Deviate, can then place the idler in such a way in which pedal kickback won't happen.

However, an idler has a second and arguably more important role as the pulley is required to tune anti-squat performance and even the smallest of changes in its location can have a large influence on how that balance between anti-squat and pedal kickback sits.

Why Is a Rearward Axle Path Better?

A high-pivot mountain bike is all about improving suspension performance. Generally, high-pivot bikes deal with bumps more effectively than conventional designs as they allow the rear wheel to roll over an impact better. This can then provide more control and comfort at higher speeds. This is why such designs have been increasingly common on downhill mountain bikes.

Are There Any Downsides to a High-Pivot?

More hardware also means more maintenance as the idler pulley will eventually wear, as will the bearing, or bearings that it rolls on. Some designs also require the user to purchase more than one chain as one isn't long enough to snake around the idler and the drivetrain.

And to those new to riding high-pivot bikes, the exaggerated rearward axle path and chainstay growth compared to regular mountain bikes can feel peculiar to start.

Why Are High-Pivots Becoming So Popular?

Over the past 10 or so years, a lot of work has gone into perfecting mountain bike geometry and only now bikes have started to plateau in that respect. Now we're seeing interesting things happen with high-pivots and those are starting to come to shine suspension performance. And of course, that performance lends itself very well towards race-specialize where exact opportunity to save energy is key.

Are High-Pivot Mountain Bikes Better?

Mountain biking is all about navigating bumpy and shocking terrain and as high-pivot mountain bikes do a better job of absorbing bumps without limiting the movement they make an awful lot of sense. And even more so if you're looking to take on such riding with as much composure and speed as possible. Because of the increased control they provide, riding with confidence comes much more naturally. And because the shock is freer to do its job properly, a high-pivot bike can become so much more comfortable. But these bikes do have their downsides, as any mountain bike does.

The most notable one lies within the growth of the chainstay I've been banging on about. Having a chainstay grow so much as a bike compresses through its suspension is a unique feeling that not everyone will get on with, especially if you're new to the sport. For those with more experience under their belt, it'll take some time to get to grips with your first high-pivot mountain bike as you learn how it reacts to certain inputs. It affects heavily the wheelbase as you push it into corners, which is something to get your head around.

High-pivot bikes make a serious case if your riding is often very technical and very bumpy, as the suspension works effectively to smooth the trail out. If you're most regularly riding smoother and more manicured trails, a bike with a high-pivot might be overkill.