I went looking through the archives of this list but didn’t find any references to this question:
As I am learning to idle with the right foot lower than the left, I keep creeping to the right and eventually have to bail. I can get maybe 5 to 7 repetitions before the inevitable UPD. What am I doing wrong…or what can I do to improve this situation? I have seen some of the videos (by Andrew Carter?) recently posted and they helped a lot in watching someone idle. If you have any suggestions or can point me towards a thread that addresses this, I would be most appreciative.
You’re not keeping the wheel underneath you :). Sorry to state the obvious but you always should be thinking of this. To keep it where you want you often have to really aggressively yank your hips around (right before moving forwards, left before moving backwards in your case).
It’s important that you twist at the hips either before moving or at the very beginning of the forwards or backwards movement, otherwise you’ll end up just idling in annoying archs and returning to the same spot. Remember to keep your arms out wide and use them when twisting at the hips. When you twist you hips right, your arms should push (twist) anti-clockwise to help make the twist and to keep your body where you want it.
I hope that helps a little, I’m not sure what else to say other than maybe try putting more weight on the seat rather than that right pedal. That may stop the right movement you’ve got happening, not sure.
> As I am learning to idle with the right foot lower than the left, I keep
> creeping to the right and eventually have to bail. I can get maybe 5 to
> 7 repetitions before the inevitable UPD. What am I doing wrong…or
> what can I do to improve this situation?
I have three suggestions:
Practice.
Practice more.
Repeat steps 1 and 2.
I know it takes a lot of work to get to the point where you can
occasionally idle a half dozen times, but it still takes a long time
to get modestly proficient from that point. At least for me it did.
I also found that it wasn’t worth fighting some of the sideways creep.
Trying to correct to stay in place was significantly harder than just
drifting, and I felt more progress by gaining repetitions rather than
fine control at that point.
ken’s pretty much got it down
something that helped me get past that was to imagine that the wheel is drawing a ‘gear-gate’ on the groud as opposed to drawing a flower ?
quite often, at the beginning of learning the idle, the wheel goes out and comes back to the same point
as u start leaning or drifting to one side, u slowly start turning around and it’s as if u’re drawing a flower on the ground with the wheel constantly returning to the same place but going a lil’ to the right of where is was the last time on the way out
if u find that the wheel is going slightly futher to the right than on the previous stroke of the idle, make sure u adjust your backward travel to ensure that the wheel travels parrallel to the previous stroke
hell, that’s confusing
go back to watching someone idle
Any time you’re trying to learn a skill and you always fall to the same side, or in the same direction, you should work to get yourself to fall in the other direction. If you always drift to the right, you haven’t got the feeling of drifting to the left yet.
Once you’ve done both, you’ll have a better idea of what “in-between” feels like, and you’ll have a better ability to focus in on that.
But you can’t find the middle (the balance point) until you’ve been on both sides of it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for this bit of advice. I’ve been trying to learn to idle and have been constantly tipping to the right. The next time I’m out riding I will work with this idea. It makes so much sense. Did I say thank you!?
yeah, this is some good stuff. I’ve been working on idling, I can do it a few times then ride away, sometimes unless I upd. It’s fun to learn new things.
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