Gliding Queries

General
1

Some questions regarding gliding. I’m learning to wheelwalk, can go probably about 8-10 paces. I’m learning to one-foot wheelwalk as well… I’m getting the mechanics of it. I can one-foot ride.

I was watching gliding vids and it seems that it’s possible to go from one-foot riding to a glide. Question is, is it possible to learn to glid from one-foot riding or is it impossible unless you get your wheelwalking up to scratch? From the looks of it, gliding seems to be at a faster pace than wheelwalking and since wheelwalking is all about controlling your speed (which is the hard part), wouldn’t gliding be slightly easier to master? Oh and where are you likely to get hit at when learning to glide? I went a rev yesterday without feet before I crashed both pedals into the back of my feet and tumbled into a wall.

2

Good question.
Hopefully this is a good answer:

I’m sure it IS possible to learn to glide without being able to ww 1ft’ed.
But, for gliding you need to be able to dose the braking force of your foot.
This deserves some muscular power plus most important control/experience.
The way you train yourself to get this control does’nt matter.

Usually each unicycle skill you can control your speed.
Coasting is the only skill where you do not control your speed at all (you only manipulate the direction of your constant fall, by constantly changing the position of the unicycle under your body).
At gliding the only control you have is braking, but no accelleration.

Learning ww 1ft will benefit your gliding as it will practice your foot and mind.
Or see it this way: what are you doing if you skip the proppeling part of a ww 1ft? And so a good archievement of ww1ft will benefit, but certainly is no requirement.

3

Thanks lots. I’m still quite unsure of the mechanics of gliding so that helped a lot.

4

I’m having tons of problems trying to go from 1 foot riding to gliding:( does crank length make a difference for that?

5

i waz jus wondering if it would be easier to learn to glide by holding onto a rope and being towed by a car or person, rather than going down a hill or slope. ive seen some people do it this way.eg xavier collos and yoggi.

6

get your mate to ride or walk backwards and tow you with his hands at first and then a stick or something, that way you can get the feel of the gliding without concetrating on all the ballance stuff too. it can help the learning process but you will quickly need to get used to doing it yourself, find a small slopeing hill to practise