I had ankle surgery after a bad giraffe uni dismount. I couldn’t put pressure on it really for about 2 weeks and couldn’t drive for 5 weeks. No more giraffe riding for me after that. Sold it.
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I hear you.
A while ago I smashed my knees in a UPD off my 36er and though I have ridden it a few times I feel so much safer on my 26er which has become my go to ride.
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Agreed I go about the same speed on my 29 as I do my 36" and I like being able to stop much sooner. Also I figure more practice and I’ll just get faster on the 29
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I rode my 36er the first time in a long time and found emergency stopping was high impact on my ankle to the ground. Plus I still find freemounting it a struggle. Once i’m up and riding it on fairly flat reasonably straight ground though, that is fun. I was feeling spooked by random bumps on the ground with it, if I UPD, the fall is much more significant than on other sized unis. And I think my 29ers absorb those little bumps better (or I don’t notice them so much on them)
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Something I’ve had to do for the last 2 years is ride cautiously to avoid hard/uncontrolled falls on my right knee (waiting for my new knee).
I’ve been riding my 36" a lot and always keep my speed less than 70% of max.
The slow riding improves your skills and with any upd you have more time to react in a safer manner.
I’ve had about 5 upds in the last year and all have been safer because of the lower overall speed.
Kind of like having a 100km max speed limit on the highway.
Going off of the road at 100km, 110, or 120+ will have high consequences.
Going off of the road at 70km will be (on average) less serious.
Just because you can go fast on a big wheel, doesn’t mean you have to.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about my “go all out” riding style and think it may be time to shelf it for a more controlled and safer riding style.
A lot of babbling just to say don’t quit the big wheels.
Just dial back the risk while increasing the enjoyment.
This is just what works for me.
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If I don’t fall 3 or 4 times a day, I’m not trying.
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“You are not trying hard enough” or “You are not trying at all (to keep it fall-free)” ? 
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Talk about confidence dips! I’m in Montreal, Canada and I’ve been learning for 3 years now, on a no-name generic 24 incher. My excuse for slow learning is that I started at age 68, so now I’m 71. It took me a very long time to learn to ride. My only training was watching youtube videos. Now I can ride a bit, say an average of 150m (almost 500 ft), and an all-time high of around 600m (about 2000 ft). I listened to everyone’s advice to not get discouraged, and I didn’t get discouraged because I was improving. But now I no longer see any improvement, and the cancer of discouragement is growing within me, and I think seriously of giving up. I tried to learn freemounting with no success, and I realize that I’ve been practising going in a rectangle with each corner a right turn, and now I see I have a lot of trouble turning left. I see there is so much learning to do, and if it took me 3 years to get to where I am, I figure I will be able to ride well when I’m 120 years old. Is there an easy way to mount a wheelchair on a uni seat? Then I read the posts of (admittedly much younger) people who learned in days or weeks, and I wonder why I keep trying. I’m not even thinking of any tricks - just ordinary riding, perhaps on a bike path. I can’t really go anywhere without learning freemounting, so I practice in a hockey rink where I can take off from the net, or a parking lot where I can use my car for support. Friends & family tell me I should continue, but I haven’t seem a noticeable improvement in a year. I’m not really terrified of falling because I almost always end up on my feet when I UPD, so I guess the problem is something else, but I don’t know what. Maybe what I need is a good kick in the arse, or maybe someone out there has a less-painful idea for an old geezer who would like to learn. I would welcome all suggestions, serious or not. Who knows? Something might click.
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You’ve done really well to get where you are so please don’t give up.
Top of the head thought… sometimes it helps to have a few days off and then get back on again.
The other thing I would suggest is try to find another unicyclist near you and ride together.
Wishing you all the best.
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You are not the only one who is not making progress with unicycling practice. I’ve also been practicing for years, but with a similar result: only being able to ride very short distances, not being able to freemount, problems with making (tight) turns, in my case to the right.
As for age, I don’t believe that’s the main cause of the problems you’re experiencing. I have them too and am over 15 years younger. From what I generally read about learning to unicycle, most people pick it up with just trying, supported by some YouTube videos for example. They also discover what works and what doesn’t. And at some point it just works and it’s no problem. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to work for us. There is no method of learning to unicycle that works for everyone. Unicycling is a niche sport and as far as I know there is no unicyclist who would also be a good coach (at least not where I live). I have been successfully coached in other sports.
I only occasionally pick up my unicycle for some practice and have accepted for myself that what I can do on a unicycle is the maximum I can get out of it. There are so many other beautiful things in life that you can do that I don’t worry about my unicycling skills being mediocre. My advice: try to discover if you still enjoy unicycling as you can now. If not, just stop. Like I said, I still do it every now and then. But other sports are more important to me.
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I mean this with all-due-respect, and only in the spirit of trying to be helpful.
First thing, if you are spending years trying to learn one-off skills like freemounting, turning, or riding for distance, you are going about it wrong. Now, I’m not talking about refining those skills - that will take a lifetime. I’m talking about simply learning to do the thing somewhat reliably. Learning these skills should be measured in hours, not years - and that should be good news!
Here is my advice, and I stand strongly by it from all of my experience learning and teaching over my life:
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A lot of learning things related to unicycle is about muscle memory, and adapting your physiology. Most of it you can’t just “brute force” by marathoning practice sessions. With that being said, you can’t practice once every two weeks and expect progress. Think little bits lots and practice in small chunks often. I’m in an ambitious part of my learning, and I do 30 minutes twice a day, at least 6 days a week. Yes I time it, and track progress (don’t rely on your brain to keep track over larger time, as we often remember progression different from reality). Journal that shit in your phone. For comparison from my journal: to ride (10 hours), to freemount (about 5 hours), to ride backwards (10 hours, but still working on this).
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If your practice session is supposed to be learning to ride backwards, spend at least like 80% of that dedicated time trying to go backwards. And yes, in the beginning there are whole days of sessions filled with failure. You can’t lose the “having fun” part, but this is reality if you want to learn a skill, and want to learn it quickly. Rip the bandaid off, so to speak.
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Whatever you are trying to do, read about it. Read as much as you can on the forums and internet as a whole. I’m constantly surprised at clever tricks to further help learning (i.e. zip tieing your wheel to start learning hops, holding a grocery cart to start to learn to go backwards). Do they all work equally for everyone? No, but knowledge is often power. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
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In the spirit of this thread - not all days are good, and not all days show progression in the way we’d like. But, most training sessions help us further adapt our physiology. You can’t immediately see or feel that, but it matters probably more than anything. A few days of training that feel like nothing is being learned and then BAM you are doing the thing somewhat reliably
I also find that when I am learning a new skill, I need to be actively thinking. Learning a new unicycle skill is a series of little Aha! moments. Each moment makes you feel like you got a smidge further. These moments are addicting, and are what often keeps us coming back. But the important part is less these moments, and more that we understand the take-away message/learning from these moments. What was the mental note from that last bit of progression (i.e. leading with your butt when learning to go backwards, or learning to reposition a poorly-placed foot on pedal by sliding).
Just my 2cents.
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You may not see the improvement but the proof is in what you can do now.
You couldn’t ride before and now you can.
I’ll guarantee that you’re not as winded when you do a 150m now as compared to your first 150m.
Keep going.
It’s just lungs and muscle memory now.
I’ll suggest lots of practice in smaller amounts too. If you feel like going longer then great, but otherwise put the repetitive practice in on a regular basis.
A dare… start over and practice your rides with a freemount on every single mount.
Hover your free hand over the net as a backup and try your best not to use it.
Switch mounting with both feet faithfully.
I bet within a week you will be riding away the majority of the time.
Wear every bit of safety gear you have for the week too!
Keep it up.
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You might try a 20" unicycle - most skills are easier to learn on the smaller wheel, and freemounting is much easier. I’ve bought a couple of them locally for $20 apiece and use them for practice (and loaning out to folks who want to try riding).
Other than that, I think you’ve gotten past the hard part; I would just practice the things you want to get better at. Do left turning rectangles or figure eights; try riding on the sidewalk, then making the turn at a driveway to reach the street, and vice versa. Etc. You’ll get better at it.
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Based on your past post and video nearly two years ago, I see an improvement. It sounds like free mounting may be the one thing that is holding you back from greater distances. My suggestion is to concentrate on free mounting. Just keep after it till you can do one free mount, then simply repeat a thousand times to get relativity proficient. That method worked for me and I’m older then you. I learned to free mount a 36er but I still am not good at doing a normal mount a smaller uni (I rarely ride one either).
As far as riding greater distances, a suggestion would be to always look and concentrate on riding to a distant point rather then looking directly in front of the uni.
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Thought of this thread again while listening to a MTB podcast. Pretty interesting talk with a sports
psychologist, maybe a few of you can gather a few tips from it for your own riding. (I certainly did).
Especially interesting for me is the idea of using sports psychology to get more enjoyment from your riding, so far I’ve mostly thought about it as a performance thing…
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