Going to learn how to ride this thing!

Riding Advice
1

My Nimbus 24" muni came in last night. :sunglasses:

First attempt was this morning… wow this is going to take some time, now isn’t it.

Made it about 20 minutes. The first hurdle seemed that I wasn’t going to be able to ever get on that thing, even while holding onto my fence. Eventually made it up there and was able to rotate the wheel about 1/2 a revolution back and forth while continuously holding onto the fence.

My brain needs to come to terms with the fact that the hub is fully engaged (doesn’t spin) at all times. It’s only been one attempt so far so I’m sure that’ll come soon enough.

Going to try for an hour of practice a day. Gonna be some good stuff. :smiley:

2

Did you skip the game?

It takes a week of daily practice to get down the driveway, another week to get down the block, a few weeks more before you can actually ride the stupid thing, so give yourself a lot of time, maybe time the uni practice with beer-thirty :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s worth it, very worth it, but gawd is it a pain to learn, I’m not sure I could do it again…

3

No! I was drinking a little bit so first time on the uni would have been pretty ugly anyway.

Went out again and made a full revolution. Pretty happy with that so far.

Now to work on two full revolutions…

4

Last night I was fooling around a little bit without pads and took a nice dive frontwards. Lesson learned? Wear pads! My wrists are pretty sore now because of that, but I’ll live.

Okay, day 2. I found that I couldn’t surpass the one revolution mark so I got a couple of stool chairs from the bar inside and staggered them so I could “walk” my way a little further. While I could make it through the chairs (sometimes) I couldn’t get very far at all after that. More chairs, right? My wife wasn’t going for it.

I walked down to the school down the street and found a nice ramp with high handrails for our handicap friends. It’s about 120’ long and has a slight grade. I held onto the handrail for dear life and went down. It wasn’t pretty but I made it without killing myself. A little bit of blood, but no death. (yet!)

Ended up going down it 10 times in all, and I’m absolutely winded.

I noticed when my feet are at 6 and 12 o’clock I stall pretty bad and heavily lurch forward, which is definitely why I haven’t been able to make it past the one revolution point.

Have 45 minutes in so far today and I’m going to try and go back later.

5

Pads are your friends. I highly recommend wrist guards.

I remember doing that. Too much weight on your feet: sit on the seat a little more, and spin your feet around instead of stomping on the pedals. You can also work to balance more left vs. right, so that when e.g. your right foot is all the way down, your left foot is still holding some of your weight - but eventually you want to wind up with your weight on the seat anyway…

– UniT

6

Sounds like you’re not entirely uncommitted. Go for it, you’ll get it!

7

Try some ski poles or hiking poles, use them as outriggers, or head over to a grocery store and use the concrete wall along the back of the store.

8

Haven’t been able to get any seat time for a couple of days, but made it out earlier for about 1/2 hour.

I found some old PVC in the garage, made a couple of trekking poles out of them. :sunglasses:

I had a couple of good runs, one with the poles and made it about 20’. Felt really awesome!

I then went back to my other method, which is placing a bar stool to my left about 2’ in front of me and another to my right a few feet past the first, so I can walk myself about 10’ with the stools as help and then off to the races. I made a 12’ run past those, completely unassisted!

Felt way better than the 20’ run with the poles. :sunglasses: :sunglasses:

Might try another 1/2 hour tonight…

Thank you all for the tips and stuff, it really helps!

9

Okay, I’m at the 3 hour mark now.

Last night I was doing the wall in the back of my house, it’s only about 20’ long but definitely had some great success. It’s finally starting to sink in that the hub isn’t going to free spin when I stop and that I have to stay in continual motion.

Also it just clicked a little bit that I have to keep peddling. I know people say that, but for whatever reason I’ve been wanting to go a few feet and stop. Last night I just kept going and noticed the faster I went the easier it was.

I have had a couple of small successes before, but last night was the first time I felt that this is actually doable.

My wife has made it a habit of not watching me because she can’t stand to watch me fall so much, the first couple of hours were pretty brutal. Last night she came out and watched for a bit and said I looked tons more confortable on this stoopid one wheeled beast. :smiley:

Progress!

10

Nice work. It sure feels good when you start making those connections and you’re making progress in such large steps!

11

Try some hiking or skiiing poles, of a some cutoff broom handles, use them as outriggers, gradually lean on them less and less as you get comfortable spinning.

12

About the 4 hour mark now.

Seems I’m able to to mount with a support behind me and then go forward about 15-20 feet occasionally! :smiley:

Not every time, but a couple times out of 10 pretty consistently. Haven’t been able to get a long one in yet but I can feel it’s going to come at some point in the near future! I think I’m going to try this only from now on, no more holding onto stuff or using walls.

I’m pretty out of shape so I’m only really able to go about 1/2 hour at a time, then my lower back starts to kick in. When that happens I seem do nothing but fall so I haven’t really been pushing it.

Also found out that going uphill is pretty damn difficult. Actually pretty much impossible for me a this point.

13

Reading this really takes me back to when I started learning to unicycle back in elementary school. It started to become and obsession to keep practicing till I could break the distance of my previous attempt. Everytime I tried I felt I could go just a bit longer.

Keep at it, from what I’ve read it takes about 10 hours of practice to learn how to unicycle. I don’t remember how long it took me but I recall practicing constaintly.

14

I know that you’re feeling the pain after about 30 min. of riding but the longer that you can stay in the saddle for any given time adds to the chances that you will learn to ride sooner.

Unicycling is a physco motor skill. the longer the brain is involved with the given activity the faster it will remember what it is supposed to do to keep the muscles performing in that activity.

If you feel major pain stop!!!. If it is minor pain try to keep going & you will soon be riding away from the fence & the poles.

Keep on keeping on. :slight_smile:

15

Keep it up! I remember that progress from that 20ft benchmark went much faster. Now that you’re somewhat comfortable on it and have gotten away from the hindrance of a wall or fence, you can only improve. Just keep practicing and you’ll have it in no time!

16

5 hour mark now.

The plan to mount with support and go forward without any support didn’t go as well as I would have hoped. Every time, have a turn and down in about 5’. I made 10’ a couple of times but it just wasn’t ‘clicking’.

Went back to my wall for a bit and noticed that I could use the support for about 5-10’ and then I could go without support sometimes. On Tuesday I made maybe a few runs of 10’, and a couple of 20’.

I set a goal for 30’, but never got there.

Last night I started mounting with my non-dominant foot every other attempt as an experiment, that seems to have helped a bit. Last night when I went out it seemed to go well, probably 2/3 of my attempts I was getting to the 10-15’ mark, with a few of them going to 20’. I’m getting close to outgrowing my patio, it’s probably about 40’ long so hopefully soon I’ll have to find another spot!

One thing that seems to help is a thing I do for golf. When you set up for a golf swing you need to get yourself lined up, so I count the number of things I need to do as a setup procedure. (1) Feet square, (2) knees slightly bent, (3) firm grip, (4) chin up, (5) etc… I actually count them out before my swing, it keeps things consistant.

I’ve started to do those things with the uni. (1) mount foot centered, (2) sit straight up, (3) head high, (4) find something to look at in the distance, (5) arms out for balance, (6) other foot on the uni, (7) lean slightly forward, (8) go! So when I get on the uni i’ll count, 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8…!

Still on the lookout for that one big run, but I’m definitely getting a little more consistant on the shorter runs. I’ve found myself correcting myself a little bit instead of falling.

Soon…

17

Went to the Berkeley Juggling & Unicycling Festival today for a couple hours, not really all that interested in the juggling part but it was good to hang out with a few unicyclists for a bit.

Also, have my longest run to date, a whopping 33 feet! (felt like a mile!) :sunglasses:

18

learning

Sounds silly, but if you have a grocery store around close. Go over after hours and push a shopping cart around. I put many a lap in a parking lot pushing the cart. Gives stability and you can let it roll out of your way and be on your own when ready. Keep it up.

19

My wife caught a picture of me riding yesterday, thought you all might enjoy…

Caution, fat guy on a unicycle!

20

We’ll say I’m at the 6 hour mark now, maybe 7 but I’ll stay with the lower number since it could be going better.

Yesterday I found a guy down the street that had an old 20" Schwinn street uni. Things happened and it’s now in my stable. :smiley:

Wow, that 20" is a lot smaller than the 24" than it sounds. Seems like it’s going to be a lot easier to learn on. I was on it for about 45 minutes yesterday and while I wasn’t necessarily going farther I did feel a lot more confidence. Probably the biggest mental hurdle was that if I start to fall and put my foot down the ground is there. This isn’t so with the 24". I’m going to stick with the 20" for a little while to see how that goes.

My biggest problem right now is side to side balance. Seems that the front to back balance has gotten better, when I fall it’s almost always to the side. Occasionally I’ll fall off of the front, but the ratio is much greater when falling to the side.

Can anyone make any suggestions on things I could concentrate to help me with left/right balance?