COVER MORE GROUND
Every bike we build is designed to protect your most precious resource as a rider: energy. More energy means bigger adventures, longer rides, taller mountains — and more fun getting there. Everything we engineer flows from that one idea.
More than a catchphrase, Cover More Ground is the idea behind everything we build: protect a rider's most precious resource — energy. More energy means bigger adventures, longer descents, and more freedom to chase them.
We cover more ground in all sorts of ways. Living Link suspension delivers a better blend of capability, pedaling support, and traction than other designs — and does it the simplest possible way. Fewer parts, less weight, better long-haul reliability.
And because we're small, rider-owned, and beholden to no investors, we get to build with intention, taking the time to get things right instead of rushing to market with unproven designs. We'd rather make something that outlasts trends than something that follows them.
So how do we cover more ground? It starts with how we think. Whether we're designing a transformative suspension platform, pioneering breakthroughs in drivetrains and geometry, or simply refining pivot hardware, our approach is forward-thinking, unconventional, and always done in-house. A handful of principles guide every decision — and every one of them ladders back to saving your energy.
- Keep it simple, make it reliable. The most elegant designs solve complex problems in ways that last.
- Everyone appreciates efficiency. The more energy we save on the climbs, the more you've got for the descents.
- Lockouts are a design crutch. A suspension system worth its salt should never need one.
- Optimize the whole ride. What's the point of a bike that climbs well if it can't crush the way back down?
- Weight still matters. A lot of brands forgot that. We didn't — maximum capability at category-leading weights.
- Make more fun. At the end of the day, our job is manufacturing fun.
ADVANCED, IN THE SIMPLEST WAY POSSIBLE
We do all of our engineering under one roof. We aren't licensing someone else's suspension platform or handing the hard part to an outside design firm. That's a harder way to build bikes — and it's the only way we're interested in building them, because it lets us chase one goal above all others: the most capable bike, built the simplest way it can be built.
Simple isn't a compromise. Simple is the point. Living Link gives us more kinematic control than other dual-link designs — and better control than a Horst link — usually with fewer bearings and fewer pivots than the bikes we're up against. Fewer parts to wear out. Fewer things between you and a good ride.
It shows up everywhere once you start looking. We run just six pivot bearings, all the same size. We don't press bearings into the frame — they live in the aluminum links, where they're easy to get at and easy to replace. And we design our suspension so it never needs a lockout lever to pedal well. The less you have to think about the machine, the more you can think about the trail.
THE HEART OF EVERY SPOT
A patented leaf spring at the lower pivot. Ten years and ten bikes of refinement. Living Link is the reason a Spot rides like a Spot.
We've always liked dual-link suspension. Two compact links keep everything stiff, and a single solid rear triangle is stronger, lighter, and more precise to build than a jointed one. But we noticed something: on most dual-link bikes, the lower link barely rotates. So we replaced it with a flexing member — a titanium leaf spring built right into that lower link. That leaf spring is the heart of Living Link, and it hands us a lever on the suspension that an ordinary dual-link bike simply doesn't have.
What that lever buys us is control. We can place peak anti-squat exactly where you spend your time pedaling and let it fall away everywhere else. We can shape the leverage curve through the middle of the travel instead of just ramping it from top to bottom. More watts to the ground. Less chain growth. Traction where other bikes slip. And no lockout lever in sight.
We launched the first Living Link bike at Sea Otter in 2016 and have been sharpening it ever since. The third generation is the most evolved version yet — and it's still the same simple idea at its core.
Our bikes climb like they have less travel than they do, and descend like they have more.
THE LEAF SPRING THROUGH THE STROKE
Drag through compression and rebound to see what the Living Link leaf spring is doing — and what you feel on the trail.
What's happening
Rider benefit
KINEMATICS · A DEEPER LOOK KINEMAGIC The science behind Spot Living Link.
What kinematics is, and why it matters
Kinematics is the nerd word for what your suspension feels like and how it behaves. It's also where most of the bad behavior in a bike comes from. If you've ever felt overly squishy suspension every pedal stroke, or a harsh ride even though you're using all the travel, or a total loss of traction while pedaling or braking — that all traces back to choices the designers made, or didn't make, about kinematics.
Spot Living Link bikes don't do those things. We obsess over the nuances of suspension behavior because it makes the difference between a confident bike and a sketchy one. As riders, our most precious resource is energy, so we toil over the features that preserve it.
Anti-squat, focused where you need it
Anti-squat is the parameter that makes suspension bikes pedal efficiently. Too little and the suspension bobs and saps your energy. Too much in the wrong part of the travel and the rear wheel can't track the ground, sacrificing grip. Either way, you lose.
The third-generation Living Link layout lets us place peak anti-squat directly in the sag range — where you spend nearly all your time pedaling — and let it drop off cleanly above and below. The result is a bike that converts your power efficiently when you're putting it down, and stays free to absorb the trail when you aren't. No lockout lever required.
Leverage rate, and the leaf spring
Most suspension systems give you a steady ramp of force from top to bottom of the stroke. Living Link uses an inverted leaf spring layout that lets us change direction along the curve.
At full extension, a steeper initial curve makes the suspension easy to initiate — soft hands, soft touchdown. Through sag, the curve flattens and stays linear, giving easier access to the deeper parts of travel. Then, around three-quarters in, the curve switches direction and ramps up, building bottom-out support without compromising sensitivity earlier in the stroke.
The leaf spring itself does double duty — a negative spring at top-out for soft initiation, and a positive spring partway through the stroke to straighten the mid-travel curve. Traction when lightly loaded, support when you drive into it, bottom-out protection when you finally need it.
EVERY OUNCE EARNS IT
A frame is more than a stack of tubes. The way forces travel through it, and the way its mass is distributed, decide how the bike feels underneath you. We engineer around those two ideas, then take material away from anywhere that isn't earning its keep.
Pulled in, dropped low
One of our biggest design goals is getting mass low and centered — packed in tight around the bottom bracket. It lowers the bike's swing weight, so it steers faster and feels more maneuverable even when the geometry isn't especially aggressive. And it makes the bike feel lighter than the number on the scale. We chased this hard starting with the Ryve and have pushed it further on every bike since. It's the same logic Buell used putting the shock low and central on a motorcycle: centralize the weight, and the whole machine wakes up.
A frame that shares the load
There's an enormous amount of force moving through a frame when you're hammering a descent. Through the suspension's leverage, a 200-pound rider can put thousands of pounds into the structure — and a lot of that wants to bow the down tube out. So we engineer the load paths deliberately, focusing forces into the central frame sections and giving them more than one tube to travel through. Strength from how the frame is shaped, not just from how much material we pour into it.
Room for everything that matters
Good engineering disappears into a bike you can actually live with. Generous bottle access, room for bigger bottles, low standover across the size range, and space for the gear you carry — packaged so every rider gets the same benefits regardless of frame size.
SIMPLE, DOWN TO THE DETAILS
The small choices that make a bike easy to own.
SprockLock Pivot Axles
Pivots stay tight and quiet because that's non-negotiable. SprockLock replaces friction-based hardware with a true mechanical interlock — a splined axle and locking cap that key directly into the frame so nothing backs out under load. Fewer parts, simpler service, failsafe. Fasteners are accessed from the non-drive side, so the drive side stays clean.
Six Bearings. All the Same. All External.
Six pivot bearings — all the same size, all mounted in the aluminum links rather than pressed into the frame. The frame never sees a bearing bore, service is simpler, and your spares drawer only needs one part. Simplicity you feel every time you wrench on it.
Cables, Managed
Nobody does cable ports cleaner. Instead of molding metal threads into carbon, a single fastener ties both sides of the port together and threads directly into the drive-side cover. Less material, more reliability. Port covers are interchangeable to fit any common cable configuration.
An Efficient Brake Mount
The brake mount transfers braking forces into the chainstay, letting us lighten the seatstay, and it's positioned to protect the caliper and hose. Built into one machined part with the axle bore and dropout, brake alignment stays true while we reduce the number of threaded holes in the frame.
Swing-Link Mounting Cones
Placeholder — needs your real copy. You mentioned the cones used to mount the swing link, with the same load-spreading idea as the Slaybar. There's no existing copy for these in the theme, so I haven't written the engineering claim. Give me the gist — what they do and why — and I'll write it in your voice.
Molded Frame Protection
Custom molded rubber shaped to the chainstay, chainstay bridge, and down tube. It deadens chain slap, quiets trail chatter, and protects paint in the spots that take the most abuse.
RIDE-READY, OUT OF THE BOX
Covering more ground doesn't stop at frame design and construction. We spec every bike with performance, function, durability, and value in mind — down to the grips. Our builds are curated to be ride-ready straight out of the box, so the energy you'd spend second-guessing parts goes into the ride instead. You won't find better build kits at more reasonable prices anywhere else.
Every bit of this — the engineering, the simplicity, the details you'll never see — adds up to one thing: more energy for the ride. If you're already part of the Spot family, thank you. If you're browsing for a new bike, we hope you'll consider us.
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