Falling is what unicycling is all about. While riding, you are constantly falling but never hitting the ground.
You and your unicycle must fall forward (not backward) simultaneously on flat pavement with no obstructions. Riding while holding a rail, wall or car may be educational for one or two minutes, but after that, all it does is build fear. You get comfortable in the saddle, and the idea of falling off becomes more and more terrifying, partly because you recognize -correctly- that the object you are clinging to could really fuck you up.
Falling on unobstructed flat pavement, on the other hand, is quite safe. 99% of the time you will land on your feet. If you just push off and start pedaling across open pavement until you fall, and do it again and again, you will be riding very soon. The two-hour maximum mentioned above by OneTrackMind is about right, or even perhaps overly generous.
When i started riding I slowly bought all the gear usually after falls shin bites etc. Now i mainly ride 36" and always wear a helmet and wrist guards. I think wrist guards are the single most important item. When you do fall you will instinctively put your hands out and it is so easy to break or fracture your wrist.
I wear Demon wrist guards and i find they do not impede grabbing holding etc. I think they are intended for ski’ing but i am not sure.
I have found i need to go a size up from what i would normally expect.
I have lost count of how many times they have saved my wrists and palms of hands when coming off at speed.
Like others have said practice stepping off ie ride away half a rev and step off let uni fall or catch behind you, then progress to a full rev etc, you will find your confidence will improve because stepping off will become second nature.
This is exactly what I would have written, but you were quicker! It is also my experience that getting rid of the unicycle is important, so you don’t land upon it. Push it backwards between your legs or jump forwards from the pedals when you feel you are going to fall.
It took me two weeks to ride ten metres from a backstop. I had nobody to guide me, a unicycle that was too small, with a narrow tyre on grass that was too rough.
My students used my trials with a 2.5 inch tyre on smooth grass. The seat is set at an appropriate height. It also has Onza cranks with a wide Q-factor but I’m not sure if this helps. I have a second trials uni with an Impact wheel and zero Q cranks now so I will be able to compare next time I teach someone.
Rather than a wall, the ideal backstop is a step. This provides somewhere to stand with a bit of extra height making the mount easier. Aerobic exercise steps are great because they are mobile and not quite as high as a full step which is a bit too tall.
My fastest learner needed about twenty minutes in the saddle before he could ride ten metres, but he was exceptional.
I absolutely agree about actively dismounting. Leap off and run when you feel it going wrong before you lose control of the dismount. The uni won’t go far on its own but you must get away from it. It is a much bigger risk to you than the ground.
My worst injuries came from trying to stay on too long, feet coming off the pedals and having the uni run into the back of my leg as my foot got to the ground. Ankles really don’t fit well between the crank and the spokes.
Shoes with covered ankle protection are important. Ankles are bony and swell up like balloons when hit.
Oops I always wear sneakers that are below my ankles. I have never had a UPD where I hurt my ankles though. Most UPDs happen with forward motion and the wheel blocking, so I fly off the front. I did once manage to get entangled between the frame and spokes, but as you say there is not so much space, so certainly can’t get in so deep that my ankles get near it.
The only gear I wear is a helmet and wrist guards (before I had hard plastic ones from rollerblading, but I couldn’t wear gloves together with them) Now I have KH gloves with wrist protection, but they feel too soft I doubt they will protect my wrists from breaking if that would be the case.
Over time I will get new gear based on new falls I will make > not quite the proactive way
I rode in low shoes until I was badly injured. Now I try to institue protection before injuries.
When the wheel runs between your legs because you didn’t get away fast enough, the crank can rotate down the outside of the calf. It stops when the crank reaches the outer ankle bone with the leg firmly wedged between crank and spokes.
The last time I did it was on the 36 when I lost control down a hill while dodging low vegetation and ran off the narrow footpath and into the gutter at a sharp angle. Fortunately I had high top boots by then, preventing serious injury.
I have also had simple ankle hits on badly executed UPDs.
Another vulnerable location is the Achilles tendon which can get whacked by the nose of the seat. I have been hit there a few times. One poster on this site had their Achilles ruptured in this way and another had their heel bone smashed.
I have had a few occasions where I was grateful for that well padded section of my Puma boots.
It really depends on the kind of riding you do and how far you push the boundaries. I have to deal with many obstacles so it is unusual for me to not have at least one UPD on a ride. The only time I can remember riding the whole route without a UPD was my last ride where I took it easy because I had been sick.
Try getting the beak of the seat in the back of your Achilles tendon some time! Other than that, I agree, except I have occasionally clonked my ankle bone on the handlebars as I’ve flown past them.
I’ve conditioned myself not to let go with the hands, too soon, during a UPD, however. If the first reflexive motion in a UPD is to throw the hands up in the air, there’s more chance of getting caught on the seat when the feet bail out. One hand on the seat, for an extra split second, helps to guide the unicycle away from the rider.
This will only be in the forest right. You don’t want to push away the uni when riding in the city with traffic or even just with cyclists behind you, who might tumble because of crashing into your flying uni.
Sure, but Up Rite describes himself as “a wall hugging beginner”, and in this situation I wouldn’t recommend to ride in the traffic. I think that getting rid of the unicycle is good beginner tactics. The better you get later on, the better you will be grabbing the uni behind you in an UPD.
The high speed exits I focus on saving myself, pushing off with a big leap into a sprint which both helps me keep upright and get away from the falling uni. I have come off at over 20 kph and I can’t run that fast so it is left hand superman slide after the first step.
Never been seriously hurt from a high speed crash but they have never involved collisions. As they say, it isn’t the speed that is the problem but the sudden stop.
The low speed ones are more often a problem. Falling straight down from a failed takeoff was among the worst. (A very sudden stop.)I didn’t have wrist protection on because I was only on the 20 inch going to work after dropping off my car for a service. Plus I injured a rib. I hurt for weeks.
I have helmet, wrist guards, QUAX elbow, and Kris Holm leg armour. My stamina and recovery ability is better but still very limited for this unicycling activity. So for now I put in as much pre planning and strategy as possible to make my training sessions count. The main thing is that I need to be as fresh and rested as possible before I take on a unicycling practice session. Otherwise I just fall off. In contrast, I can take on weight training, hiking, callisthenics etc. while tired and sore.
I know that as I get leaner and lighter I will be able to train longer and more frequently. I am also certain taht somewhere on the way it will just click and I will be able to ride unassisted in a straight line. Once I get to that point where the ability is internalized it will be much less of an energy drain regarless of my level of conditioning.
After that I will start to work on getting better at other unicycling skills.
Don’t underestimate the benefit of spontaneous training. I actively tried working on riding backwards for ages with little improvement.
I’m still not very good at it, but one day last year all of a sudden I could just do it.
This was on the first day riding after a break of months (I mean a break from unicycling, not just a backwards-riding-break)!
After I was pretty good in a straight line the next biggest fall-avoidance improvement for me was riding with one or both hands on the handle (and then on a handlebar setup).
It forces you to transfer some balance control to your hips and gives you extra leverage for 'surging' the pedals if you need to pedal hard to avoid falling forwards.
Pushing with my full strength on a pedal just unweights the seat unless I'm also pulling hard on the handle.
I'd never tell an absolute beginner to hold the seat before they developed a good arm flailing action though!
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a good arm flailing action. It may be necessary for beginners (and for me while wheel walking), but it seems more like an act of desperation rather than a proper technique.
My neighbor, an athletic teen, learned to ride 30 feet in less than 30 minutes of practice. His technique was consistent; he kept one hand on the seat and flailed with the other arm. He sacrificed the balance of one of his arms flailing for the stability of one hand on the seat. And he learned very fast. Granted, he was learning on a cheap unicycle that didn’t help keep his bottom stable. So, he was compensating for a less than perfect setup.
Mounting, in my experience, is more difficult when the mount starts with both hands in the air. I think it’s easier to start with one or both hands on the seat, then once I establish weight-in-the-seat, one or both hands can be removed for balance. My acquisition of a proper static mount happened when I started placing both hands on the seat during the mount. Mounting without a hand on the seat seems more dangerous to me. A failed mount may cause the unicycle to go shooting out in front or behind.
Hands on the seat is a game changer. I encourage beginners to take whatever baby steps they can toward riding this way. I suggest trying to balance with the elbows pointed out, rather than the hands. That puts the hands closer to the seat.
I suppose you’re right. I certainly didn’t mean elegant flailing! Just being able to ride while making large arm waving corrections was my first step. This is how I teach people. Controlling the desperation and then pursuing the calm, handle holding stance (where most of the balance comes from the hips) came later for me.
I tell beginners that the key is to bias your arms roughly in the middle of their movable range and use this as the neutral position. This way when you expose yourself to the feeling of being unbalanced you have a really good range of motion available and can make large corrections in any direction.
This is why I think holding on to something while learning is counterproductive after about the first ten minutes. I learned to freemount no hands straight into riding.
It’s also a lot easier to help a learner if you can get them to employ the arms because you can see how they react once they start to tip. If they keep falling to the right, telling them to punch an arm out hard to the left instead of just stepping off really starts to join up the synapses! They’ll probably still fall off but now they have felt the effect of a rapid shift in weight and will have learned a new tool to control their CofG.
The next step is calibrating the effect caused by this weight shift:
Once riding, you can see what happens when you move your arms to one side or the other when you don’t need to. A corresponding opposite weight shift is then required at the hips to compensate.
I think this is the bit that was ‘good for the core’. Non-riders always seem to mention this. For me, simply riding is now no better for the core than walking. It all just happens automatically!
I think I’ve gone off-topic here. Back to the original question:
[quote="Up Rite
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Is there is anything in the world of falling to be aware of?
Before I could with both hands on the seat and elbows sticking out, I focussed on having my hands on my chest. Once that went ok, I moved them downwards to the seat. I don’t balance so much with my elbows, but more with my hips now. Also handlebars help against flailing, but that shifts the balance point somewhat, which is not something beginners will get into yet.
As for mounting, I always mount with one hand on the seat, but occasionally I mount with both hands in the air and at those moments it seems easier somehow. When holding the seat with my right hand especially on a 36", I tend to hang too much to the left. With both hands in the air, I will automatically be more in the center.
I guess for 30 years, that is pretty good overall. Interesting that most were low speed, and you went for teh safety gear after most of the injuries. So far I always wear Kh leg armour, QUAX elbow protection, and a helmet. When I attempt to get away from the rail/ wall, I wear wrist guards, I find they interfere with grabbing the rail.
After I can ride away from the wall, I will invest in KH gloves. Somwhere along the way, probably when I am leaner I will get some good padded cycling shorts and spine protector.
