>>1693648Nope, it's a valid concern. Mountain biking is a different discipline and crashing is more frequent than road cycling, especially once you start doing more advanced stuff or if you're grug. Poor grug. But crashing is part of the learning process. You can go nuts with armor and stuff, but the most important thing is to nit exceed your limits too much (but do push because that's how you learn), don't try to send a difficult feature blind, and practice at skills areas where crashing has lower consequences. And be wary of that "one last run" because that's the one that messes up a lot of people who are tired from a long day.
Protective gear is funny. These days I'd rather ride milder shit with just a half-shell helmet and maybe knee/elbow pads than armor up for high risk stuff. Then again I still do 100km/h descents on my road bike with just a helmet. Weird how that works. Ultimately you need to do what makes you feel comfortable and is the most fun.