I am interested in learning to backwards wheel walk but am not certain where to begin. Should I learn to Koosh-koosh first? Or can I learn them at the same time? I can wheel walk confidently, 1 foot wheel walk, and do a bit of gliding, but I am having trouble figuring out what I should be trying to do. Any tips would be appreciated. Thank you.
I would recommend learning koosh-koosh and backwards wheel walk concurrently, at least to begin with. You will find after a while that one comes more naturally than the other. You may want to focus on getting the eaiser one down first once you’ve experimented with both.
Backwards wheel walk feels like a VERY slow trick. Practice wheel walking forwards as slowly as you can to get the feel of the kind of speed you will be dealing with.
The learning procedure is the same as for forwards wheel walk - it just may take a little longer! It also doesn’t feel as safe and you are more prone to falling over without landing on you feet. For this reason wearing a helmet may encourage you to push yourself a little beyond your normal safety zone without worrying about injury. People tend to learn faster when they are pushing themselves just beyond the limit of what they can do - but you don’t want to crack your head.
A great exercise when learning to wheel walk backwards is to have someone hold one or both your hands so that you have an added balance point while you focus on getting the footwork right. The spotter can be either walking or riding and it is easy for them as they get to go forwards since you are going backwards.
Peter –
What about ww stillstands and ww idling? Are they good gateways into bw ww? They were good for me to get into backwards riding.