Best type of unicycle for muscular exercise?

If your primary goal is exercise on one wheel, get an Ultimate Wheel.

If you want the day to day practicality of a conventional unicycle, try uphill muni or cross country.

So sad, the state of our beloved Unicyclist.com Forums. Virtually all the Trials and Street riders are gone!

I believe the correct answer to your question, as far as unicycling goes, would be Trials, with Street as a secondary. Basketball should also be mixed in for some muscle balance in the core, shoulders and arms. Muni is good as well, but doesn’t compete much with trying to leap up high things, over and over, until you can leap up even higher things.

Probably not as effective as a balanced and even workout routine with free weights and other tools, but unicycling is much, much more interesting. As with any singular activity, there is risk of muscle imbalance that can lead to injury. That is, working muscles in one direction a lot, but the opposite direction very little. This is true for many/most sports.

Don’t believe me about Trials? Look at pictures of people who are good at the “Urban” disciplines of unicycling. Ripped!

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Do trials wearing a 5-10kg weight vest. That will be decent resistance training for you.

or do long road hill climbs with a 5-10kg weight vest on.

or play hockey with a 5-10kg weight vest on.

Really just add weight to make it much more difficult lol.

Or do resistance training at a gym.

How to unneccessarily risk ankle injury, lesson 1. Terrible idea.

If trying to jump your max height isn’t enough strain for you, you are not at your max height.

Find a steeper road.

No easy solution from me, I guess I’d say try shorter cranks.

If you unneccessarily add weight to your body, you increase your chance to get injured. As I pointed out, there are better ways to increase the strain on your body, to get better training results.

Weight vests are for doing training exercises (like burpees or pullups) in gyms, where there isn’t anything unforeseen happening. If you play hockey with a weight vest, you can get into a collision, step on someones unicycle, and your ankle breaks because of the 10 kg you added.

Is zeusophobia1 even real?

Why do you ask? 3 posts and the first one was an intro

Looks real enough to me

I missed that one, the other 2 posts looking like any robot of underpaid exploited person in a click-farm could have written! That plus the fact that he never followed up… :smiley:

Go for incremental increases instead. Like regular resistance training increase your resistance slowly.

If a 100kg rider can step off their unicycle without breaking an ankle a 90kg rider can incrementally increase weight until they can quite easily handle 10kg.

It still makes more sense to just do resistance training but the OP doesn’t want to do that.

Do trials wearing a 5-10kg weight vest. That will be proper resistance training for you. Or just add weight to make it much more complicated. That’s how my brother does all of this stuff. I honestly don’t know how you guys resist doing all this. I’m just limiting myself to some facial yoga exercises. I think I’ve been doing them for about 3 or 4 years, and I feel good. LOL. But it is interesting to me, what else would you propose for such exercises? Maybe in addition to yoga, I will try this one time.

Ahhh… that might help me hop higher and wider too… I would have to just use small weights first though, don’t want to hurt myself. Cheers

Why not to go to the gym and have some good coach teach you the power clean or power snatch? Explosive strength gained by training these exercises should be transferrable to unicycle jumps. Plus I think it would be a lot safer (if done correctly that is) than wearing weights while unicycling.

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I don’t have a gym membership and cause I actually only want to jump higher on the uni. :slight_smile:

I used to be a volleyballer, and if you train your jumping with ankle weights then take them off, you feel like you are amazing once they are off! ps. I am now happy with my hopping on my 27.5. I just don’t hop with any height on it though right now.

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I guarantee you, your high jump is not limited by your strength at all. Strength really only comes into play above 75cm-ish (on a 19" uni) , it’s pretty much all technique up to that.

Don’t mix the skill training and the strength training, doesn’t matter if someones cousins neighbours hairdresser swears by it, it’s not a great idea. Do some off the unicycle plyometrics if you think your strength is what is holding you back - you can wear a weightvest for that.

Muscles/strength is only one of the ingredients for jumping with your unicycle. It’s a complicated movement, that involves balance, compressing your tyre, and a coordinated, well-timed movement of your body.

If you want a distinct exercise, I’d recommend straight jumps, upward jumps and especially tuck jumps.

Agree. It’s not my strength that’s the limiting factor at this point in time, but it’s more balance and technique on the uni. I possibly have to shift weight better and work on the preparation for the hop.
And going to a gym doesn’t help that.

Reckon a weighted vest might help get more tyre compression though :slight_smile:

And gravity it will cancel it in the upward motion :slight_smile:

Anyways: this thread is 2 yaers old and the OP was online for just one day…

The best type of unicycle for muscular exercise that I have owned would have to be a 24" Torker DX from the late 90s. Who needs free weights when you have a 40 lb uni? :wink:

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Do you ever get to a point where climbing while out of the saddle isn’t arduous? Despite being overweight, I’m usually pretty active and have pretty good endurance, but I find that climbing while riding out of the saddle simply kicks my butt even over short distances. Climbs that would barely raise my heart rate on a bike have me gasping for breath on a unicycle.

I’m wondering how much of this is due to technique. Does climbing while standing up on a unicycle ever get to be as easy as on a bike? Since it weighs less you would think so, but there’s something about getting it past those 6/12 dead spots that is way more difficult.

Very curious! I never imagined that unicycle could be considered a sport. It’s funny! Like, we see those munis at a circus, where clowns ride them very quickly, and it looks pretty amusing. Where can I practice? Is there a club or group that does this activity together? It will be so strange if I ride it in a park, haha. I would instead do flutter quits, Russian twists, abdominal crunches than cycling. And if I add the universal nutrition animal pak 44plicuri, my workout is successful, as I have more strength and resistance.

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Make unicycling part of a healthy lifestyle that includes other forms of exercise and diet. You will see results. The fitter you get the better your unicycling will get.