If you are teaching a newbie to unicycle when do you usually recommend learning to freemount?
I learned to freemount after I could ride about 10 m (30 feet). It is the ultimate skill to learn if you wish to get into some distance riding. Ihad been unicycling for about a week and a little over that when I started to learn freemounting. I rode the whole day, trying to make the distance I could ride without falling a bit bigger. At the end of the day I could ride a few hundred meters and make some turns. This is why I recommended learning to freemount to my father and sister right after they could wobble a little less than 20 feet.
>If you are teaching a newbie to unicycle when do you usually recommend
>learning to freemount?
>
>I learned to freemount after I could ride about 10 m (30 feet).
That feels about right. If you follow the skill levels as guideline
for a learning sequence, you’d have to learn freemounting at the
latest when you can ride 50 metres. But since cross training is good
(you just provided more evidence), 10 m is probably better.
> It is
>the ultimate skill to learn if you wish to get into some distance
>riding.
Maybe it is your English but I’d say that freemounting is a MINIMUM
skill for some distance riding, not ULTIMATE.
>I recommended learning to freemount to my father and sister right
>after they could wobble a little less than 20 feet.
Aha! Another uni family in the making. Good work.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
Grizzly bear droppings have bells in them and smell like pepper spray. - UniBrier
Dang I don’t feel so stupid for pushing it now. I had read that
freemounting came after a few months - I just couldn’t wait that long.
Had nowhere to ride without freemounting.
>
>If you are teaching a newbie to unicycle when do you usually recommend
>learning to freemount?
>
>I learned to freemount after I could ride about 10 m (30 feet). It is
>the ultimate skill to learn if you wish to get into some distance
>riding. Ihad been unicycling for about a week and a little over that
>when I started to learn freemounting. I rode the whole day, trying to
>make the distance I could ride without falling a bit bigger. At the end
>of the day I could ride a few hundred meters and make some turns. This
>is why I recommended learning to freemount to my father and sister right
>after they could wobble a little less than 20 feet.
The best reason to learn: necessity. I learned pretty early in to riding because there was nothing to hold on to where I needed to start.
I would recommend trying it out on grass or other soft surface in case you fall off while learning, anything other than pavement.
This is why I wanted to learn it too. I could start holding to a tree but if I pedalled something like 30 meters there was nothing to hold on to. So I had to walk back to the tree and start all over again. I got fed up and learned to freemount. It was surprisingly easy for left foot on ground, but I still can’t do it well with right foot on ground (I don’t usually have to remount but I wobble quite badly at the start).
The time from being able to ride 10m to 50m or 100m might just be a few good
practice days. I concentrated my efforts on going 50m several times in a
session before I started really trying to freemount. The reason was I felt
practicing freemount was taking time away from feeling comfortable on the
uni. My practice area had a mounting post every 50m so I never really felt
pressured to freemount before I desired head to the track.
YMMV,
-Cubby
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You need to learn to freemount as soon as you want to start riding from one place to another. Befor that you don’t need it. While learning, you are near whatever support you are using. It’s never too early to start, though it’s better to be able to ride with some control before working on the freemount. Otherwise you have nothing to mount into.
Generally I advise people to ride and do turns first. The better you can ride, the easier it is to ride away from a mount. But if you want to get somewhere, and might be stuck without supports on the way, that’s when you have to learn.
i learnt to freemount before i could ride
it was very confusing
i only discovered this forum much too late to save me from myself.
i started off with the help of charlie dancey’s book and decided to learn to ride and freemount at the same time
i would try riding for 10 minutes and then try the freemount for 10 minutes
i kinda figured if i managed a freemount, i’d figure out what to do from there
a ‘crossing the bridge when u get to it’ kind of approach
landing a freemount and then not being able to ride out of it makes u feel real stupid
( i realise that the concept of a ‘free-mount’ before u can ride is slightly questionable - suffice it to say that i fell off after the same average number of revolutions after my attempted freemounts as i did after an assisted mount, for a while anyway)
I would recommend only trying it on pavement this makes it a hundred times easier to ride away i never fell on anything but my feet when i was learning but if you do then you should propably purchase armour early.
I just want to point out that you have to get onto the unicycle before you can fall off. I also assume you can look around for a flat hard grassy surface or cinder track or compacted dirt field or something. I wouldn’t recommend just going out an choosing the first spot of grass you find.
Given the correct choice, if you fall off on grass, it isn’t going to hurt as much as on pavement. Also, the grass seems to slow down the movement of the wheel making it easier to get on without the unicycle moving. This is my experience in my first attempts at almost every mount I have learned.
Same here. I just mounted and saw how far I could ride. This was cuz the pole and unicycle track were generally crowded or occupied by other, less devoted or patient unicyclists. I agree, freemounting comes from neccessity.
I agree with the whole being able to ride before you freemount thing, it just makes sense, not that I have expericance. I can’t freemount yet, i’ve tried a few times, feels good to be on the unicycle for a couple seconds before having to jump off cause your falling. Kinda like the feeling I get when I let go of whatever i’m holding onto and can pedal a bit.
a freemount is the ability to get on and start riding a unicycle without holding onto anything
there’s a great variety of different kind of mounts
the ‘roll back’ and the ‘static’ arguably being the two most popular ‘first’ mounts that u learn
this forum has a very handy ‘search’ feature
it is one of the blue buttons at the top of the page
if u click on it, u’ll be taken to a screen where u can enter the term u r looking for and it will return a list of threads where that term was used
so, to find out more about freemounts, hit ‘search’, type in ‘free mounts’ and start crawling your way thru the threads the search will return
if u find that something is unclear and/or u have a particular question u can’t find an answer to, post your question here and someone will help u out
(someone will also crack a joke, make a smarmy comment or post a funny picture - that’s all part of the fun of this forum)
the other way to get more info is to hang around other unicyclists
