Found a good learning tool...

Riding Advice
1

My 11 Yr old son (Drew) got a Unicycle for Christmas.

He has been holding onto the neighbor’s fence to steady himself.

Suddenly a thought occurred to me - he can’t ride in a straight
line anways, so why not hold the end of the gate and use the swing
of the gate to follow him. The gate is fairly long & only about 3-1/2 or
4 ft tall. Maybe this is already common knowledge? Of course, you have
to have the right situation for the idea to be of any use to you.

It worked really well. Here are a couple of pictures:

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2

That’s awesome…
I found that the inside of a tennis court works really well too :slight_smile:

3

That’s great that he’s learning to ride. When I did at one point use a swinging gate like that, though it was difficult for me to get it just right where it was effective. I tended to opt for a tennis court fence and even used crutches (like the kind you would use if you broke your foot) when I wasn’t able to use anything else. Whatever works. :slight_smile:

4

We live out in the country.
There is actually a neighbor down the street with a tennis court,
but I don’t think they’d want us hanging on their net.

If I could talk them into putting up boards for roller hockey,
not only would we have a practice site, but I could start a roller
hockey league too!

I did see pictures in his Unicycling book of people using shopping
carts and wheeled trash cans. I may be able to come up with something.

I wonder if he could mow the lawn while he’s at it.

Somehow I think an accident involving a lawnmower and a unicycle
might make too good of a news story though.

5

learning aids

It is very important that the learning aid will not be 100% stable, because otherwise the learner tends to “listen” less to his body and learn from his mistakes. holding on to a rail for example can really help, but it can also get you to use it too much and lean on it, you’ll unicycle in the end, but it will take a longer time to get the mind to learn the skill.
The fence seems to me quite a nice solution, since it has some stability, but you can’t really just lean on it and get your balance from it.
very nice idea!

6

It also forces some directional control because you have to follow the arc
of the gate - but it’s still a lot easier to aim yourself when holding on.

7

I have that book, it’s very good. To be honest, he’ll (hopefully) be riding unaided within days rather than weeks so hopefully you won’t have to go borrowing people’s tennis courts :wink:

8

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too.
The biggest thing keeping him from learning fast is the constant rain.
I sent him out there as soon as there was a break in the rain, but
that method only gets him a practice session every other day.