Although it may be expensive and you may not think it to be necessary shin guards when learning the art of the unispin is absolutely 100% suggested by me. I was one who thought i could go without, avoid the wraith of pedal pins. I will tell you right now, you cannot avoid the wraith of the pedal pin. I have a plethora of dime sized scabs/holes in my shin, or whats left of my shin. If you were to run your hand along my shin it would feel like the rocky mountians, no part even but very bumpy. So a tip from experience use pads when doing unispins, please. I am just wearing soccer shin guards now but hey better than skin shin guards. Happy trails to you my friend.
Well, fluffinator007, since no one else seemed to notice your kind warning, I am here to tell you that it was not in vain. When I try to learn the unispin I will consider the use of shin guards.
Merry Christmas/alternate December holiday!
thank you, i spose im noy popular
I’ll take that into mind.
I should’ve done the same when trying to ride seat in front. The pedal bit me real hard the first time I tried.
good advice!
i started to learn without shin pads and never really got anywhere because i didnt have the confidence to land them. when i got some shin pads it didnt take too long to learn.
then one fatefull day i was attemting a unispin infront of some trials bikers, with my shin pads on, and all went terribly wrong:(
my shin pads leave about a pedal sized gap from my foot upward and unlucky for me this is where the pedal struck! the pedal burried itself under my shin pad and got stuck leaving a 3" gash in my shin 
since then i’ve invested in some sixsixone shin pads which go down to my foot.
i can post some pics if u want, i dont want to offend anyone with the gruesomeness without their consent:D
merry christmas by the way
iain
Feel free to offend me with any sort of gruesomeness you choose. Seriously, always post gruesome pics, just tell people they are gruesome so they can choose whether or not to look.
Merry Christmas!
Come on, ObiWan, if you tell people that they’re gruesome then they have to look, but if you don’t tell them that they’re gruesome then they have to look anyway. If they’re there, anyone will be forced to look at them.
Anyway, I’m trying to learn unispins and have so far been hit in the shins once. I’ll wear shin guards from now on, thanks for warning me!
What are uni spins?
You seem to know what your doing, any tips?
P.S. your video didnt work for me, i tried it in three different formats/launchers.
The video is compressed using Motion-JPEG (MJPG or MJPEG). Some video players (like Windows Media Player) won’t play all flavors of MJPG unless you have the magic codec installed.
Try using Apple’s QuickTime player. Apple includes an MJPG decoder and their decoder handles the different flavors of MJPG better than Microsoft’s. I was able to get Max’s video to play using the QuickTime video player.
Re: A single tip for unispin attempters
You might want to try practicing such tricks with a different set of pedals…? 
Additional advice: if you don’t have the pads the first time you destroy your shins, think about getting them before the second, third, fourth time, etc. 
i learned unispins with no pads, nasty sharp platform pedals, and a reeder handle.
now i try to practice freestyle with plastic pedals.
i think i learned something there.
in my opinion pads make freestyle more dificultbecuse of thier bulk, and limit the ammount of time that you can pracice without discomfort because they rubb agaist your legs.
your milage may vary.
the psycological “invincible” factor my outweigh the disadvantages.
currently i cant do unispins fron the tyre when wearing pads, but can do it without. perhaps i should pracitce more.
John Foss’s comment made me appear very stupid and idiotic, and after reviewing my sayings and my actions in the atttempts to learn i realize it is all true…Yet, i can still not do a unispin.
If it makes anyone feel better, I only ever learned to do a 180 unispin. After that, I realized that nobody but other unicyclists would ever care how many degrees there were in the spin. Since my intended audiences were (mostly) the general public, the 180 served me well.
And it worked as a good excuse to be a wuss on ever getting the 360. 
I learned that and other tricks, in the early 80s, with usually no safety gear. But I was very conscious of what type of pedal I was using, for obvious reasons! I remember once when my Semcycle freestyle pedals left a shin impression where you could make out the tread pattern very clearly in red and purple. But at least they didn’t rip my legs open.
Today, now that I have a pair of roach armor, I’d put those on to practice any tricks potentially hazardous to my lower legs…
I think I’ll learn the 360 as soon as I perfect the hand wheel walk… 
Perfect the hand-wheel-walk…you don’t need to even learn the 360 unispin if you can perfect the hand wheel walk…I attempted that one time in my life, the only walking i did was to the bathroom to wipe the blood off my face from my massively bloody nose.
To you and all others who can even hand wheel walk for 5 meters, i salute you.
Re: Re: A single tip for unispin attempters
i should start reading the forums more thoroughly… then again common sense should have told me the same thing. none the less it took 4 failed unispin attempts yesterday sending bulletproof pedal pins into my left shin before i decided it might be a good idea to A) stop and 2) get some sort of saftey gear… but i’m paying for my stupidity today. oww.
cool!!!
Good job on the uni spins, it’s also cool to see other people unicycling to, I don’t have that where i’m at, at least none that i’ve gotten to hang out with much lately.
Andrew