I just bought a full suspension mountain bike, now what?

Case Study for a 220lbs rider:

Starting Point
Rear Shock: 240 psi
Front Fork: 130 psi
Tire Pressure w/ inner tubes: 35 psi

Rear Shock should be set some where near rider weight to start. Rider weight is calculated with whatever you weigh on the scale + all your gear that you ride with i.e. water, tools, helmet, shoes, etc. our goal is to achieve 30% sag when resting on the bike.

Front fork will perform nicely at about 60% of rider weight.

This will be your base line. from here we want to set the red o rings on the stanchions of the shock and fork to line up with about 30% sag. At this point we can trust the air pressure in the shocks enough to move on to some finer tuning.

Blue Knobs = Compression
Red Knobs = Rebound

Compression is the resistance to move down through the suspension travel. Common thought of as a lockout but with air chambers shocks rarely if ever “lock out” the blue compression lever do make the shock feel stiffer and for smoother flatter trail or climbing make for a more efficient pedaling experience. where the rider does not compress the suspension with pedaling forces.

Rebound is how fast the shock returns back to the base line after being compressed. Setting the rebound slower or towards the turtle can smooth out a hyper active or bouncy shock. setting the rebound too slow can pack away the best part of the suspension and make the shock feel rough or bottomed out.
Often, there is a parallel drawn with dribbling a basket ball down the court. in this scenario rebound is how fast the ball will bounce back to your hand. a ball that is bouncing fast may bounce past your hand as you are dribbling down the court, the ball may bounce higher than your hand and be hard to catch and control. Slow rebound in this scenario limits how fast the ball bounces back to your hand. maybe the ball returns so slowly that it doesn’t reach your hand again as you expected and you’ve now run past the ball. and lost your dribble.

It is my advice these controls are used to understand the shock on the fly while riding. After your ride, adjust the shock’s air pressure to create the desired result and reset the rebound and compression back to the middle. The goal is to let the air pressure to the heavy lifting of what behavior you want from the shock and use the red and blue knobs to fine tune that heavy lift.

Tire Pressure:

Your bike was shipped to you with inner tubes. With inner tubes your Tires pressure should be about 30 -35 psi depending on what you prefer. towards the lower end of that scale you should see more traction, more grip, possibly a reduction is rolling efficiency and the tire may roll slower. going below 30 psi puts you at risk of a pinch flat where the sidewall of the tire compresses so much when hitting a bump that the rim may cut the inner tube.

Tubeless Tires break all these rules and you might see good results with 10 psi less, more grip, and less rolling resistance. The tires and rims on your bike are tubeless compatible. Tubeless is one of the best first upgrades you can do if you will be riding often (at least once or twice a week) but id does require some more maintenance and attention. I would recommend getting this set up at a local bike shop. In my opinion most tubeless sealants work pretty well but I believe Orange Seal works the best.