I may have missed this part of the equation somewhere but what about bike setup? A HS set up bike usually does very poorly when getting "big air" while a well set up mx bike handles big air well and does decently in the trails. In the few HS events I've attended ,I've seen and followed some really poorly set up bikes compounded by poor rider technique. It is little wonder these same people are afraid of an MX track with jumps. After watching their bikes performance I was all "puckered" for them.

I say a well setup bike is confidence inspiring and can handle well almost all situations offroad. A poorly setup bike is a major limiting factor that most people attribute the problems to be rider related.

Most of my major injuries were on my early bikes that I had no idea how to setup. In retrospect, they were POS's mainly due to setup.