As the title says, I’m a 48 year old uni newbie and I just wanted to introduce myself.
I became interested in unicycling after my two daughters joined the Redlands YMCA Youth Circus. Last summer I bought unicycles for the two of them and they took to it right away. This past season they were able to perform in the show as part of the intermediate group and this season my younger girl (10 today) qualified to be part of the advanced group. This past season there was around 60 riders in the show and as always it’s crowd favorite.
I had such a hard time with not being in on the fun that this summer while recovering from shoulder sugery I ebayed much of my RC hobby stuff and bought a Torker LX Pro. My doctor would kill me if he knew what I’ve been up to. So far I have log only about 5 hours on the uni, but I’ve been able to freemount, and side mount and ride. My best distance has been across the school grounds (around 50 yards). My girls are thrilled that I’ve been riding with them and I’m having the time of my life.
Well that’s it for now. I’ve enjoyed lurking around the forums and learning about the sport and thought that I would just say “hello”.
There are a lot of riders here just like you. I learned in the month before I turned 50 last year. I am certainly more cautious than the younger rider in learning to ride and develop new skills as I can’t afford to injure myself (takes too long to heal). But, unicycling is a sport I intend to continue doing for a long time. You’ll find this forum great for getting ideas. Welcome!
I’m having a great time learning. welcome! My grandpa told me age is mostly in the mind, so I feel quite young still but I have given up sucking my thumb!
Good luck. Sounds like its going well for you. I started learning to ride at 48 years old as well. I started about four months ago. I can ride up and down the street now and manage to free mount, though not very well yet.
Welcome. I also begun unicycling when I was 48 years old, but it took me a couple of months to be able to do what you have achieved already! You will soon be a professional!
Thanks to all for the welcome and words of encouragement.
I took the family camping over the weekend and of course the unicycles went too. My girls amaze me, they seem to be able to ride over any terrain. My youngest was hopping over rocks and small logs, and even riding on downed trees. I on the other hand was struggling with riding in the dirt. The smallest dips or bumps would cause me to stop. But I didn’t let that discourage me, I know that if I just persist I’ll be able to keep up with them soon.
Grizoo, your grandfather was so right. I often forget that I am 48. We had our girls later in life than and since I am busy playing and doing activities with them, I feel very young. It’s only when I get a reminder from my muscles or joints that remember my age.
Tonight our 2012 circus season starts and this year I am going to perform with the kids in the beginning unicycle class as well as juggling. No more being just behind the scenes.
Good luck with your riding! I’m so jealous of these families who ride together.
My dad is always so interested when I ride in front of the house and he’ll ask me “oh, how do you go about doing that?” Or normally he’ll just shake his head and laugh and call me crazy.
He just turned 50 and I keep trying to convince him that he should learn, but he just says “I break easier than you and don’t heal as well.”
Kudo’s to you for manning(womanning?) up to the plate and learning something new.
Hey KOS! Thanks for the Kudos. Our family is very close knit and we enjoy doing everything together. I’ve always enjoyed the non-traditional sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking, rock climbing etc., (they have become more mainstream now then when I was a kid) and I passed my love for them on to my kids. Unicycling falls right in line with these sports and it can be a bit intimidating. Many people have a difficult time balancing on two moving wheels let alone on top of a small pole bolted to only one wheel. I think we are a bit “crazy” as your dad says. But that’s what makes it all the better. I like not being the norm and being a little off. When I’m told by someone that “I’m crazy”, I agree with them and thank them since I think it’s a compliment, and an acknowledgement that I can do something they can’t, or are not willing to try.
I believe that age is simply a number. As so many other’s have said before me, “you are only as old as you feel or think”. I often forget that I am 48 (49 next month) especially when I am doing an activity with my daughters and their friends. But I have been pretty active all of my life and while I have my share of aches and pains, and getting out of bed in the mornings isn’t as easy as it use to be I still see myself the way I did 30 years ago. Your dad may be looking at it as something that only kids or younger people do, I know that when I was in my mid 20’s I was ofter as “when are you going to grow up and stop playing on skateboards?” For some reason running a ball up and down a field chase you, or running around a set of bases while others try to tag you is acceptable behavior for adults, while bicycling, skateboarding, snowboarding, etc. are not. What I’ve seen here in the U.S. is that a sport can only be accepted as mainstream and okay for adults if a person can sit their fat butt down on a couch with a pizza, some beer and be able to watch someone else participating in the sport on their television while they grow fatter. If your dad hasn’t been exposed to others his age that ride, then it may not seem as much of a possibility, or acceptable. Last year I sat on the sidelines while my girls took their unicycle classes thinking I couldn’t do it. Then one day one of the other parents rode in on his uni and that changed my thinking. Maybe exposing him to others his age who ride might plant that seed needed to get him to try riding with you. Has he seen people other than you ride? Or have you shown him any of the Unigeezer’s videos?
When it comes to “breaking easier than you”, he is right! I completely understand his thinking here. I know that I don’t bounce as well as I use to. Small spills take a bigger toll on my body these days. And if he is the main income for the family having an injury could be a big problem with work. I fortunately have the advantage that I my wife is the breadwinner in our family and I am a stay-at-home dad. So if I have an injury that prevents me from working, we won’t loose our home.
Good luck with getting him to try riding. Be persistent about it, but not annoying and remember that he has a lot of responsibilities on his shoulders.
Oh yeah! As for manning(womanning?) up, if you haven’t been able to tell yet. It is “manning” up to the plate. And again, Thanks for the Kudos.
I have the opposite issue - getting my 10YO kid to commit the effort to learn to ride.
As far as age - my philosophy it to treat each year as a sort of acquired skill that needs to be used regularly. I reserve the right to act any age up to and including my current age (50).
My 10 year old was a bit shy and withdrawn around her classmates until someone saw her on her uni. Then she became an overnight superhero. The other kids are amazed by her and even the teachers have asked her to come put on demonstrations for the others. Her confidence sored and her public speaking skills improved ten folds.
Hopefully your kid will join you soon. All you can do is expose him/her to the sport and see is they take to it. Good luck.
Well it has been a stellar week for me. I have increased the distance that I can ride to six times around the basketball court and I am now doing rollback mounts (what I mistakenly referred to earlier as Freemount) 70%-80% of the time and even getting the side mounts 40%-50%. I’ve been doing great at controlling my speed and really working hard at riding at slower speeds with hopes to be able to stop and idle soon. What I am having the most trouble with is my right turn. I can go left whenever needed, but going right is extremely challenging. I am left-handed, so I assume that would have something to do with it. Well that’s it for now. Cheers to all.
Hmm as for turning… for slight turns (like avoiding hitting someone) you can just look at where you want to go. It sounds like are able to do this now.
Here’s a trick that I used when I first started being able to ride and wanted to make U-turns. You could keep doing the slight turns, each time looking at somewhere more to the right of where you were looking at.
After you get used to the above method, you could try putting more weight on the pedal you want to turn with, to make faster turns.
Experiment with the amount of weight you put on it. It will feel like you are going to fall to the right, and you may if you put too much weight. So start with a little weight.
I’m a beginner like you, and find the “weight on pedal” method to be quite effective. Someone please correct me if I got anything wrong
Thanks for the tip LoneReaction. I’ll give it a try tonight. I haven’t really taken the time to breakdown/analyze what it was I was doing to accomplish the turn. I was just doing it. But what you said makes sense.
Good job all round. You’re working on the natural aspects of riding and it will come to you. The turning advice (above) is spot on, you seem to understand it and now it’s simply a matter of applying it. (This won’t be as easy to do as it is to type, but you’ll get it sooner than you think, hang in there.)
Remember that the secret to riding/idling/riding is to stop leaning forward, ride the uni in underneath you, over-balance backwards, ride the uni back, regain balance and then ride forward while maintaining balance. It looks complicated on here, just keep practising until your mind gets tired of being in your way and allows your body to ‘just do it’.
I’ve been reading your thread for a bit. I’ve been absent from the forum for several weeks and have just reved up my practicing again. Various things got in my way, but I’m back on the uni… and back on the forum. Come on over and read the “New Female Rider Age 57” Thread. Spread throughout are some great tips from some of these great forum participants / Uni experts… You will find a lot of nonsense fun as well.
Also read NotSoYoungOne’s “The Learning Journal.” That one is packed full of great advice.
I think my main issue has been that I am not in great physical shape in general, but I’m getting there (slowly)… and what better way to do it than on a uni.
I just love the fact that you ride with your family!! I can’t get anyone interested. My husband is quite a bit older than I am, and he won’t touch it. My friend that really wants to do it is too busy taking care of all four of her parents and in-laws, but I still have hope she will eventually get some time for it. No doubt, having someone to work with provides lots of fun and motivation.
“I’m not an ambi-turner. It’s a problem I had since I was a baby. I can’t turn left.” --Zoolander
Last night went well. I had great success with my turns. I had completely forgotten about the “follow your nose” syndrome until LoneReaction reminded me to look where I want to go. I have become accustomed (through mountain biking) not to look or focus directly at a spot or object (such as rock) because you will go right to it. However I found last night that if I picked a spot on the floor and looked at it, I naturally leaned that way putting weight on the foot needed to turn. I was able to do figure eights rather than just circling the courts in one direction.
I also had some notable success with idling. However, since my left foot is the one that is down in the 6 o’clock position, I am making counter-clockwise rotations as I idle. I’m guessing that if I shift my weight to the right a bit, and maybe twist a bit at the hips, that I should be able to compensate for this.
Thanks for all the help everyone, you are a wealth of knowledge. I try not to bother our class instructors since they have their hands full with 40 other students that are between 6 and 12 years old.
Very cool. I’ve read about the Redlands YMCA in old unicycling newsletters from the 70s. They’ve been doing it a long time! I wonder if they still have some of the old custom cycles they had back then, like a small giraffe with tiny wheel, etc.
Attitude is everything in learning to ride the unicycle; it sounds like your mind is in the right place. Of course it helps to have two daughters to keep setting an ambitious example. Too bad so many other people our age have already written themselves out of so many things.
Sounds like fun! Your avatar picture shows clown shoes. Are those yours or is that just a stock image? Don’t forget to allow for comedy in unicycle routines. Often youth performances take the riding too seriously, and end up with boring drill team-type products that are less interesting than a little fun (even if at a lower skill level).
I don’t accept your theory on that. While some of us are not interested in chasing balls around, I still see plenty of other people our age on the local bike path (we have an exceptional bike path). That said, I don’t see many middle-aged people on skateboards. And I’m okay with that.
Shorter version: In the US a sport can only be mainstream if beer companies sponsor it. Follow the money!
…I am now doing rollback mounts (what I mistakenly referred to earlier as Freemount)
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A rollback mount is a type of freemount; perhaps the most basic. The other basic ones are a static mount (pedals level) and a dead-spot mount (beginner version of a static mount–much harder).
Oddly enough, I still have this problem when riding fast on my geared 36". I actually quoted some Zoolander during a big relay race where I was passing another team’s car while flailing my arms around a sharp curve.
Another pointer for making turns; twist your upper body in the direction you want to go. For a right turn, bring your right shoulder forward. Of course the vision thing works as well. The body tends to go where you focus. That works better for wider turns, while the twisting works better for smaller turns, or continual turns (circles, spins).
Don’t worry about your rotating idle too much. Try doing it with your opposite foot for a break (maybe you’ll rotate the other way). And with things like that, the easiest way to figure out the problem is to try to do it in the opposite direction. Try to make yourself rotate the other way with your left foot. Once you’ve gotten that, all you have to do is cut the effect in half, more or less.
They have been at it since 1929. It is now the oldest community circus in the world. Anyone wanting to know more about it only needs to visit our family site at http://beymer.com/circus/
Yep! They still have that one. I think the wheel is four inches. There’s quite the stable of unicycles there. A giraffe welded in the shape of a Z, a twenty-footer, even a two person uni in the shape of a crescent with one rider positioned at the top of the crescent over the other rider on the bottom, and they have to peddle in unison. It’s been a number of years since they have had two people that were able to ride that one. Last year there were two that had a couple of successful runs, but just could not get it together well enough to put it in the show.
Them be mine! I found them in an antique store this summer and had to buy them.
Thanks for the advice John. Coming from a person with your expertise I know that it is all good. I’ll be sure to put it to use tonight.
