Brake coasting

That usually occurs when you brake too hard regarding your butt position: it should be much backward. :slight_smile:

But ur not brake coasting then I reckon? You just pedal and hit the brake and hang back so hopefully you can step off the back. How about you already take your feet off the pedals… (please take a video when of your first try :smiley: )

No, I’m taking both feet off the pedals as I dismount and riding the seat until my feet hit the ground. It’s not actual brake coasting yet, but rather a dismount with no feet on the pedals.

I figure that I’ll just keep doing it on a daily basis and try to coast a little further on my way down each day.

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Here’s a video for you. Just baby steps so far, but I’m getting comfortable taking both feet off the pedals and coasting for a revolution or so. Tomorrow I’ll try it on a grassy slope to try and get more distance.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0mrhV2bFRhjgI_LstDzDpg7QA

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Very smooth :ok_hand:t3:

I reckon you can now also get off this way off a uni without brakes? Then you will def not get off the front and the incentive to keep rolling will be bigger, because of the speed you’re going at. Whenever I have time to ride again, I will try on my 24" or 26", but neither have brakes.

That would considerably trickier. I’m basically controlling my descent by modulating the brake and I’m braking pretty hard. Without the brake the unicycle would just fly out from under me.

so basically without a brake you should ‘just’ pull your feet up, so they are sort of in the middle of the uni, instead of with the feet pointing backwards, unless you hang forwards of course.

I don’t know what to tell you. When I’m doing this I’m taking both feet off the pedals and simultaneously applying the brake and seeing how far I can ride it and I’m kind of a coward, so when I do it there’s a definite puh-c factor going on. Without a brake, I just don’t see how it would work. You’ve got to have something to control your forward momentum and maintain your balance. But watch some of the Japanese freestyle videos for an alternate take

Coasting (regular coasting, not brake “coasting”) is hard, and it gets even harder when you don’t have a foot on the frame to control the unicycle. (On normal coasting, the foot/feet on the frame are used to push the wheel under you to adjust balance.)
I’ve done what you describe on a 19", and it’s somewhat possible to get to one revolution reliably, but there is almost no possibility to adjust balance at all in that position, you just have to start in a balanced position and hope you don’t fall off before you can get the feet back on the pedals.

Brake “coasting” is a very different thing. I put quotation marks around “coasting”, because it should actually be called brake gliding - gliding is where you have no feet on the pedals, but use one foot on the tire to brake. I find gliding about 10x easier than coasting.

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You, sir, are absolutely right. – Thanks for pointing that out. I shall thus call it

Brake Gliding

'cause that’s just what it is. It’s a particular kind of gliding, i.e. going downhill (or decelerating) with no feet on the pedals while maintaining balance with some kind of braking mechanism (here it’s a disk/rim brake instead of a foot).

While good riders can minimize the use of that braking mechanism when gliding, it becomes a whole different beast completely without it.

And that’s coasting. Coasting on the other hand employs a distinct technique to maintain balance – and happens to be more difficult as well. Variants of coasting are coasting on a freewheel unicycle or an impossible wheel.

It isn’t even new term. Some riders have been calling it “brake gliding” for years or maybe forever. It just nails it.

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Thanks for ur desciption. That makes it very clear. So brake gliding is also what you do on a freewheel unicycle. Even though the feet are on the pedals, you can only counterbalance with a brake. The last time I had a hard fall backwards with it gave me a scare and havent used it since.

I’m waiting to hear in from Corbin!

Usually on a freewheel you use the brake and “brake glide”, or at least that is the easiest technique (aside from permanently braking and pedaling against that resistance). It’s actually easier on the freewheel, because you can easily add energy back in by pedaling.
Really good freewheel riders can also coast a fair bit of distance in flat terrain, since you have the foot on the pedals you have quite good control of the uni. Again, much harder than gliding.

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Very smooth, and that’s exactly how I recommend people learn brake coasting, and how I suspect most people first started doing it (myself included). Drop off the back to stop while using the brake, and just slowly extend that period of time before you put your feet down.
It’s easiest on a downward slope, and when going a reasonable speed (to give you more time to adjust and get used to it when you’re still pulling the brake too hard and slowing down too quickly).

Once you can do a revolution or two, even if you’re not balancing on top of the wheel, you can then pull the brake sharply to get your feet back on and carry on riding. It’s probably my favourite trick to do on any unicycle with a brake now when someone asks if I can do tricks. I don’t even have to acknowledge them or stop riding to do it.

It’s also a helpful way to practise for brake assisted freewheel unicycling.

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