Well…I can get down the street now, but am still not free mounting. I’ve been working on it for a few days now. Is it really that hard? I keep launching myself right over the darn thing.
Freemounting is pretty tough when you’re starting out. I don’t remember how long it took me exactly, but I know it was more than a few days.
The static mount is the easiest one. The beginners I’ve seen who had trouble with it all pushed too hard on the pedal when they hopped up. That made it more like a rollback mount. The wheel should stay still and the cranks should stay horizontal. That’s why some tutorials recommend putting something behind the wheel to keep it from rolling backwards. It teaches you what it’s supposed to feel like. There’s a balance point where you put a little weight on the back pedal – just enough to keep the wheel from rolling forward. If you can maintain that balance point, then everything will stay nice and still, and you can step onto the other pedal with control.
The rollback mount is a little harder. When I was learning it, I’d get stuck with one foot at the bottom and one foot at the top. All my weight would be on the bottom foot, so I couldn’t turn the wheel. I couldn’t really do it consistently until I learned to idle.
What worked for me, and what I’ve seen work with others is to stand on a curb and use the curb to keep the wheel in place as you do a static mount. Having the wheel kept in still while you try and mount will give you a feeling of how to swing yourself forward over the wheel. Once you can do it somewhat consistently you’re ready to try it without: position the seat in place, lean into the seat, put just enough pressure on the rear pedal to keep the wheel still, then jump on just like you did with the curb.
A quick youtube search gives an example:
Thanks y’all. I tried the curb mount and was actually successful with it a few times! We don’t actually have curbs out here, but a piece of landscape timber did the job.
It is tough initially, but once you get it, you feel GREAT! Just stick with it. Every failed freemount is one closer to success!
fkb hi, welcome to the forum.
That’s one more of us and one less of them.
In short, yes, freemounting is difficult.
Like learning to ride in the first place, it VERY difficult to learn but once you can do it, you can’t understand what took so long.
For starters there are essentially two basic mounts.
The Static Mount - examples of which include the curb-mount and the tyre-grab, and
The Roll-Back Mount.
I think you have a grasp on the Static, so allow me to tell you something about the roll-back.
I like the roll back because it teaches you a snippet of the skill you’re going to need to learn to idle.
And you are going to want to learn to idle.
Figure out which one is your dominant foot and place that pedal at the bottom, but pointing back towards you.
About 45degrees to the ground is a general indication, but play around to find what works for you.
“Acquire the seat” (a fancy way of saying 'get frankie-and-the-twins out the way and put the seat between your legs - if you’re female, please ignore previous description and go straight to “acquiring the seat”)
Once on the seat, step on the dominant foot’s pedal.
This will now roll the uni in underneath you.
You don’t want it to roll too far, because then you’ll simply UPD (UnPlanned Dismount - in case you haven’t seen the expression around here yet - we’re unicyclists, we don’t fall off, we simply have UnPlanned Dismounts) off the front.
Ideally, once you’ve stepped on that pedal and rolled the uni in underneath you, your balance-point should still be just behind the wheel.
In other words, you’ll fall off the back, oops, UPD off the back, unless you do step two, which is…
“Acquire the second pedal”, making sure you had it all nice and flat so your foot can just slap right onto it is really helpfull. (Actually, having it tilting forward at a slight angle is good, since it tends to help with the next portion of this step.)
Once you have this pedal, draw it backwards, rolling the uni even further in underneath you.
As a matter of fact, you’re now going to go just that little bit further and roll it out behind you. Just a little bit, just enough to cause you to overbalance forward.
In such a way that you would have UPD’d off the front if only you don’t do step three, which is…
Ride away casually, as if you do this every day.
Which you will, in about a week.
As in (almost) all aspects of uniing, keep your weight on the seat - this frees up your feet to make smaller and more controlled movements - and keep looking at the horizon, and not down at what your feet are doing as this makes the balance envelope very small.
It takes a little while to get that second pedal without looking, but stick with it, it’ll come.
You are under the impression that mounting is free. It’s not. Every time you mount you must send a dollar to me.
I used an old pair of crutches to learn to free mount - my friends were tired of me running over their feet.
Despite you sending them dollars?