The dreaded wheel-walk: People say it takes longer to learn this skill than it does to learn the free mount. I haven’t been able to wheel-walk in over a year of half-hearted attempts.
Yes, I’ve read the 1,001 threads with WW tips and tricks, pictures and videos, etc. I’m fairly sure I know where I’m going wrong… I’m not leaning back far enough!
I had an breakthrough last night while riding to my car from class on my 20er. Even though I hadn’t tried in a few weeks, I was easily able to wheelwalk 5m and even get my feet back on the pedals. 2x in a row, even!
What was the difference here? I had on a backpack with two thick books in it. The weight of my backpack moved my center of gravity back far enough to compensate for my lack of leaning.
Yeah, it’s just a crutch… but being able to WW even a short distance brings back the feeling of those first few free mounts! Hope this helps some of you aspiring wheel walkers…
That’s an interesting observation about the backpack as a learning aid. Seems to make sense.
It’s the learning of the foot control that is the hardest part of learning to wheel walk. It has to become muscle memory so you don’t have to think about it.
The problem is that when you can’t ww in control for more than a meter while learning you don’t get a lot of proper foot control practice. You end up practicing as much poor foot control as bad foot control.
If the backpack lets you ride free (not holding on a wall or rail) several meters at a time then you’re getting more practice in with good foot control. Hopefully that will kick the good foot control into muscle memory more quickly.
It took me more practice time to learn to wheel walk than it did for me to initially learn to ride the unicycle. Learning to 1-foot ww took me even longer (I was really slow at picking up the foot control necessary for 1-foot wheel walking). I’m not one who picks up new uni skills quickly.
I remember a few years ago trying to free mount while wearing a backpack… the change in CG made it impossible until I was better… I should try that for wheel walking…
When I was learning 2 foot ww I was always falling off the front of the uni (except for that one time I landed flat on my back). When I was learning 1 foot ww I was falling both off the front and the back (but always landed on my feet). With the 1 foot ww it was more about learning the foot control rather than center of balance and posture. I already had the center of gravity and posture thing figured out after learning 2 foot ww. So I suspect it might help some for 1 foot ww, but not as much as when first learning 2 foot ww.
I can’t test it out cause I already know how to 1 foot ww so I wouldn’t be a representative sample of a learner.
Now if this backpack idea helps with learning to glide I’m golden.
I’m close to having the glide.
