Cantilever
In one word, mechanical progression. As well as distributing shock loads and weight to a more ideal location, the biggest advantage to a cantilever (or pushrod) style suspension is its Mechanical progression. Mechanical progression is very simple, imagine pedaling your bicycle, in the revolution of the cranks relating to body position there is an area of degree that is most effective to giving you forward motion, this is usually as the crank is parallel to the ground, or if you are leaning forward on the bicycle, just below parallel, but always perpendicular to body position. Now that you have a visual, this degree of the rotation would be the most efficient angle to apply pressure in order to move the bike forward.
The relation to the bicycle cranks and the suspension is the more simple of the explanation, but basically the range of a suspensions travel should be progressive, this gives us a softer and more responsive ride when the suspension is in a normal operating range but when the suspension takes a large load from jumping and/or a large hole it can increase dampening the closer it gets to bottomed out to keep it from totally bottoming out and upsetting the balance of the vehicle possibly causing a loss of control.
To sum it up, the cantilever and shocks are placed in a position that as the wheel is approaching bottom-out the cantilever "cam" increases its ratio between wheel and shaft travel, making the shock more and more effective, thus increasing dampening giving us the term "Mechanical progression". Another benefit of this progression is the ability to valve a shock lighter creating less heat and minimizing shock fade.
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