That’s it! And to add: it makes some trail easier.
Imagine a flat way. You allways pedal forward, your pedaling force goes forward. When you hit a root, you just put a bit of more force on the pedal and go over it.
Now imagine the same thing going downhill. You allways pedal forward, but your pedaling force goes backward to brake and not going faster. When you hit a root, you have to change the direction of your pedaling force from backward to forward to go over it, just to change again to backward shortly after. If you have a brake, you can avoid this by “flattening” the downhill with the brake.
Hand Position Using Brakes
Here’s the link to a previous, good thread on using brakes:
I am still searching for more information on hand position while applying brakes. I have been experimenting with this, and have not yet settled in on a particular way of holding the brakes. I have two brake setups:
- Magura rim on my 29" road with Shadow Handle
- Disk Brake on 26" Oracle with KH T-bar.
I have been making various adjustments to the bar setups, and this has affected my hand position on the brakes.
The brake has the effect of making the frame move forward and down (the beginning of a face-plant), so an equal but opposing force must be applied to the handle/bar-ends, pulling back. Add to that, riding down technical, bumpy terrain during which time you must maintain this hand hold. Also add hills that require sustained braking for long periods of time, and trying not to lose strength/control/cramp-up in your hand…in other words, a sustainable hand position.
I have really big hands, so I have more options for braking. I think I should post some pictures of my hands on the bar ends, rather than going into a long-winded discussion of hand-position. I will sum up by current position on both the MUni and the Road unicycle.
MUni: typical close T-bar setup; the brake lever is loosely attached to the t-bar, and can be pushed left or right (good for UPDs). If I’m planning on braking with my right hand, I push the brake lever to the left, then reach under the handle and pull to the right with all four fingers of my right hand. The crook of my right wrist is hooked around the outside of the right bar end. This hand position allows me to pull hard on the brake, while cradling, firmly, the bar ends.
Road: I am not yet ready to cut down my upwardly-curving shadow handle to have a closer hand-hold; so, instead I turned the bar-ends around so they are now pointing back at the unicycle. I noticed that the palms of my hands are now facing more toward the sky; my understanding is that this is a better ergonomic hand-position. Anyway, changing the bar-ends changed the braking technique. The Magura brake is more prone to seizing-up than the disk brake, so a reliable braking technique is going to be important to help me avoid eating the pavement. If I am braking with my right hand: I start with my left hand in it’s normal bar-end position. Then I reach over with my right hand and grab the crook of the left bar end. So, my right hand has crossed over to the left side of the bar setup, with the right hand wrist facing the ground, and my right hand is covering the brake. I can hook the thumb and first couple fingers of my right hand around the crook of the left bar, using the middle-ring-pinkie to operate the brake. Once the braking hand is in place and correctly feathering the brake, I can take the left hand off the bar end. For the road unicycle, ‘relieving’ brake pressure can be more scary than applying it.
Prior to unicycling, my main form of exercise was playing kendama (Japanese traditional ball and cup game). The Japanese have a trick, ‘moshikame’, involving juggling the ball between two of the cups at a sustained rate of at least 130 BPM. Expert level players must sustain ‘moshikame’ for 1000 cycles or more. Any excess hand-tension is going to limit how many cycles a player is able to achieve. My experiments with braking hopefully will result in a hand-position where I can brake comfortably and safely for long periods of time.
I will work on the pictures…
The site administrator at my school blocked unicyclist.com with their firewall. This is after months of being able to access it. Jeez, it’s like they expect me to work, or something!
If deciding between an Oracle 24 vs Oracle 26, I’d say the 26 hands down. If I were to get a 24 (and its the only size I don’t have, and I own two 26ers) I would get the cheaper Nimbus without a brake. I took the brake off my 26 and ride without one because I like the simplicity, connection to the trail, and feelin’ the burn on the ups and the downs.
That being said, I saw an interview where someone said that the energy savings of a brake means the difference between just riding today and riding today and tomorrow. So when you get your 29er too, get a brake on that one 