back pedal goes down
Fantastic. you’re riding better than me, and I’ve had a lot more than 6 hours practice. But I’ve been practicing in 10-minute intervals when I have a short break at work.
I’ve been trying to freemount in my basement over xmas break, doing longer sessions, and I’m not getting it. Achingly close, but no improvement. I can land about 10% of my attempts.
How do you keep the back pedal from going down when you mount?
Do you jump with both feet?
David
Hey Nerd, from my website, specifically at How long does it take to learn riding? , you can download a spreadsheet in which you can enter some personal data like age, gender, wheelsize etc, and it will give you an estimate of the time required for you to learn and ride 50 m (which is one of the three requirements for level 1). This is based on the statistics for over 60 people.
When I was learning, especially in the first few days, it was helpful to not practice more than about 30 minutes. Once you get tired, there are diminishing returns. I was able to ride pretty well after about 3 weeks.
–tom
Zen and the art of free mounting
TimeTraveller
As a learner myself I am in no position to offer you the sort of advice that more experienced riders have at their fingertips - but since you asked…
Clearly, there’s lots of advice on the forums about mounting - pedal positions, weight off pedals until on board etc - and I followed that. But even as a learner I can add an interpretation…
Basically speaking, in the free mount position standing, say, on the road with the unicycle in front of me I understood that I should put one foot on a pedal. My dominant foot is left so this was on the pedal. From here, with the saddle under me, I know I should ‘spring’ upwards to contact the other pedal with my opposite foot. Whichever technique - this is all well documented and videoed stuff.
Before trying to ‘spring’ I do something that I have not heard discussed. I try and stop focusing on any one particular item. I kind of perceive my whole body, or my body as a whole, at the very point of launching myself. I am not targeting with my mind any one particular foot or knee etc.
Clearly, I have to get all the body parts in the right place and coordinated into a flowing motion - but I try not to be overly distracted by one particular part. For example, in free mounting I decide to get into position on the road ready for ‘springing’ up. Then I launch my whole body into the air somewhere approximately where it should end up - because I have thought, ‘get your body to that position’. I don’t necessarily think, ‘Keep your mind on that foot and watch were it is going’. In this process when free mounting I kind of ‘wake up’ at the point where I am no longer on the ground - but might be in a better position to place feet, arms, legs etc where they need to go.
Yup! there’s so much stuff out there on free mounting and I am a mere beginner. If you are not numb by now - why not!! Of course, I realise this is likely to be of no use to you - but as a student I wrote a thesis on the principals of Physiological Psycho-dynamics that seemed to be appropriately echoed in the trials and tribulations of free mounting a unicycle.
Don’t make yourself smaller than you are. I think that for beginners, other beginner’s advice is at least as useful as the advice from more experienced riders. One reason is that beginners are more able to word an advice as explicitly as needed, while experienced riders tend to skip steps they take for granted. Another reason is that what is good for an experienced rider is not always the best for beginners. E.g. experienced riders often emphasise to look ahead, not down. I’m not sure this is good advice. I am an experienced rider myself now, and indeed my balance does get worse when looking down. However, I remember that when I was learning, it actually helped me to look down so that in addition to tactile (feeling) clues, I could get visual clues about what the wheel was doing. Now, looking down may not be helpful for every beginner, and it may (just may) be disadvantageous in the long run, but I refrain from telling beginners that looking down is bad.
All I want to say is: beginner’s advice is very useful!
i appreciated monos input! i also admire you for taking up a sport when everyone else ur age is just meeting for lunch. inspires me as i plan to be doing this at 60 and beyond. 
10-15 hours of practice gets you where, now ?
Let’s see…
Averaging 10mph for 10-15 hours, umm…
It gets me to my aunt’s house.
fify 
ouch… that hurts just thinkin about it.
To do a static mount (a regular freemount) you can hold the back pedal back by pushing your weight forward into the seat, and you relax your back leg a bit so it doesn’t kick the wheel backward. It can take a while to train your leg to respond how you want it to, but once it behaves itself it will hold the wheel steady for plenty of time to get your other foot on.
If it seems like it never wants to stay still and always goes backwards (the pedal threatening your shin), you can try a rollback mount instead, which is what I used to do when I started. You go half a revolution backwards before going forwards. Grab the front/top pedal and pull it backwards with your foot… it somehow seems safer to approach it that way since it starts going that way when you get on.
10-15 hours practise gets you started! By that time you will know if you want to continue or not, and like the others said you should know the basics. I would say 1-20 hours for the basics- cos people are so diverse, but in the young age group I teach I would estimate most of the students would fit into the 5-15 hour bracket. If you have persevered for 15 hours then you would expect to see progress at least. Some people may never learn to ride despite having spent many hours trying.
If it’s bad - it’s good for you
Thank’s for the feedback! I have formed a number of opinions based upon several issues I had when learning to unicycle. I hesitate to express them realising they were no doubt ‘bad’ practice - although they still helped me improve!
I appreciate your encouragement and for putting this in perspective.
For the static mount you could imagine yourself stepping on and over a traffic cone w/o putting enough pressure on it so that it deforms.
Also check Terry’s vid. (Tutorial starts @ 2:48)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBrBr1UW-Mg&feature=channel_page
I just turned 50, learning the uni for the first time. So, after 15 hours, I can…
ride 100-200 feet pretty consistently
turn, sometimes. Other times I can’t. Can’t turn sharply yet.
just started learning to freemount (with a chock behind the wheel), I can do it maybe 10% of the time.
Nice to know there are other old farts like me doing this!
Learning to ride
Recently I was very encouraged by the positive comments made by several experienced unicyclists to the learner-videos I produced of myself learning to unicycle. they are here
Further encouragement from Klaas Bill and CBS has reminded me that I made notes to accompany each video I produced - and I wondered if these would also be interesting for other learners to read. At the risk of my notes appearing a load of cod’s wallop here are bits that accompany two videos. If they are of use I can upload the others. Please remember I remain open to correction - I am a leaner.
HOUR 1
Balance and unicycling
At Hour 1 it is worth noting some experiences. Firstly the balance principle. I found this intriguing because I couldn’t find a ‘point’ of balance to aim for as I sat on the seat. No matter how I leaned there wasn’t any feedback for balance.
In retrospect I can see I was thinking ‘bicycle’ not ‘unicycle’. On a bicycle your whole weight may be on the pedals and it is possible to stand up on the pedals as you ride - especially going up steep hills.
As a learner on a unicycle the point of balance is achieved by transmitting body weight through the seat and the seat stem. Legs are used to turn the pedals - not to lift your weight onto them. To a beginner like me this is a strange feeling - it’s like relaxing the top of your body whilst tensing the bottom half. Experts clearly develop further abilities but this account is designed to communicate with people who have never tried a unicycle. So, it focuses on my experience as a beginner.
By relaxing my body weight onto the seat and feeling this transmitting through the seat stem I began to get some sensation of balance or at least reference to the wheel under me. Simultaneously I also felt growing awareness of control, albeit partial, through the position of the cranks - whether vertical or horizontal.
Looking where you are going is another technique that I have trouble with. When I looked ahead up the road I kind of lost orientation with the unicycle. I didn’t have any references with the road - because the unicycle is your link to the road - but it is underneath you and it can’t be seen if you don’t actually look down! Looking ahead is like floating free along the road - that I found somewhat disorientating. On a bicycle you are normally aware of the machine and can still see the handlebars and front wheel when you look up the road.
However, I believe this points to one of the major pleasures of unicycle riding i.e. ultimately you ride along the road with a sense of freedom from the device that is enabling you to go along the road!
Now I have to practice looking ahead and also sitting up straight - I believe these two thing will come hand-in-hand. I am also eager to develop control of the cranks using the legs.
HOUR 3
Wow! discovered today how to ride faster as follows:
The saddle position has a lot to do with balance and also how sensitive the machine is. Push the seat backwards and the unicycle becomes slower to respond to pedaling motion. Push the seat forwards and the unicycle becomes twitchy and over responsive.
Think of it like this:
To go faster you have to lean forward then as you fall you pedal faster to keep the unicycle up. However, when you are sitting on the seat there is a balancing point between leaning forward and leaning backwards.
If the seat is set forwards to ‘twitchy’ the balance point is extreme. between leaning back and leaning forwards there is hardly any middle balance point. So one second you are leaning back and if you compensate by leaning forward the balance point shifts at light speed and you fall off.
This has to be damped by setting the seat backwards enough to dull the over responsiveness but not so much that the unicycle becomes sluggish to pedaling faster. This position is found by experimenting with the setting that is personal to each individual. I found my setting today.
Now I have got a compliant unicycle that is happy to come to life when I start pedaling hard. When I slow up the unicycle becomes passive and allows me to do some good balancing acts at almost full stop - way to go!
However there is more. As a beginner it is natural to expect both feet to be planted on the pedals whilst the backside is firmly planted on the saddle. If this is not so you simply fall off the unicycle as you loose control. Now I have discovered that is is possible to shift the feet as well as the backside on the seat. This is done by essentially having the cranks horizontal and stopping the unicycle from moving as you balance in a stationary position. At this point it is possible to lift off the seat to reposition where you are sitting - without loosing control. Same goes for the feet as you can slide them into different positions on the pedals. As a beginner this is useful as a way of repositioning after just starting off - if you are just not in a comfortable position having mounted the unicycle.
correction
Damn technology!
Just realised in my last post:
The titles ‘HOUR 1’ and ‘HOUR 3’ should read ‘WEEK 1’ and ‘WEEK 3’ respectfully.
My 11 year old son is probably at around the 5-7 hour mark of practice; it’s hard to judge as he goes in intervals of 10-30 minutes. He’s been working at this since late October, I’d guess. He’s the youngest of 3 sons and the last to learn to uni.
He’s at the point where he can consistently ride 50+ feet, with lots of longer rides in there, too–up to around 100 yards at a shot. He can go down our driveway, turn either left or right, and proceed down the sidewalk. He’s working on “assisted” freemounts, where he puts the wheel against the curb to keep it from rolling back. He can mount that way about one-fourth of the time. He knows that, as he gets better at that, he’ll start moving the wheel out from the curb until he can mount unassisted. I haven’t really helped him much with any of this, except to watch and give him encouragement. He’s pretty persistent! I’ll look forward to having all 3 boys with me on muni rides soon!
I don’t know - it’s not often that one encounters cars on offroad cycling trails. 
For me (total riding experience: 7 months), it was a combination of two “breakthroughs” that got me from an average of 10 attempts per success to hardly ever missing the first attempt.
First, as I step up (smoothly, like climbing from one stair to the next), I keep as little weight as possible on the lower foot.
Second, I advance the wheel a bit just before beginning to step - this seems to help offset the tendency of my lower foot to roll the wheel back.
Yes! This is one of the great things for me about unicycling - it feels like flying!
Onwards and upwards - it’s the only way to go…
I guess I take for granted that I live in a very-low-population area. Also here in the UK we have the Sustrans cycle-path network. So I am gearing (no pun) up to using this with a 36er.
Point taken about cars on off-road trails. Thats why I have put out a post asking for info on MUni’s. I sense a growing intrinsic personal desire for off-road and this place is just down a few miles from where I live:
http://www.mbwales.com/en/content/cms/Centres/Coed_y_Brenin/Coed_y_Brenin.aspx
I have down several runs on the easier trails but I love watching the faces of crowds of MTB’ers as they prepare their gear for a ride and I come along on one wheel!!!
Much appreciate your feedback.