I don’t do a lot of road riding, but offroad I’ll manhandle the bar if necessary. If it gets me pointed in the right direction or over an obstacle I don’t see the reason to finesse it.
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I have noticed that leaning forward and into a curve at the same time as pedaling hard is the key to a smooth tight armless turn. If I stay upright I make a jerky segmented turn.
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Yes, I partly agree. At low speed. And on even ground.
But that is not what I meant. I’m talking about leaning too much.
And that’s another thing: cycling and balance is such an instinctive thing that almost no matter how you try to explain it, someone will read it in another way - maybe even everyone will have their own take on the text.
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A distinction needs to made regarding handlebars and steering. One form of steering with the handlebars involves turning the uni to the left or right. The other form of steering involves leaning it the left or right without actually turning it.
Either of these two methods can be used to deal with camber. We can rotate the handlebars to the left if the camber is pulling us downhill to the right. IMHO, this is a crude, beginner way of dealing with camber. Or we can lean the handlebars (thus leaning the entire uni) toward the camber, so the unicycle, when viewed from behind, rises up at a 90 degree angle to the cambered surface (and our body’s center of gravity shifts to the other side).
The challenge is to lean toward the camber without simultaneously steering into the camber. I have accomplished this, personally, by keeping my butt firmly on the back of the saddle while holding onto the bar ends with both hands (“four points” position). Then, when I push to the right or left with my hands, my butt stops the uni from rotating, and the uni leans rather than turns.
A beginner may fail to isolate these two methods. If they try to lean the uni (IMHO the “correct” way to deal with camber), they may inadvertently rotate the uni in the direction of the camber.
I use shorter bar ends. I am accustomed to pushing / pulling twisting with a lot of force on the bar ends. If my handlebar setup were suddenly longer, I would have to be more gentle with my hands. The leverage of the bar ends would outbalance the leverage of my butt on the seat, and if I tried to lean the unicycle, I’d inadvertently turn it instead.
I have no mechanical skill and no tools, but that doesn’t stop me from making wild suggestions on the forum. Consider the seat and seat-post. Since the beginning of time, when grab handles didn’t exist and Kris Holm was a single-celled organism, the seat-post was situated about 2/3 of the way back on the seat. When handles, then bar extensions were added out front, the interface stayed in the same position. With added handlebars, much more than 2/3 of the setup is now in front of the interface. Since I’ve learned to ride in the “four points” position, I wonder if there would be some benefit to changing the seat-post interface point (moving it forward) in relationship to the entire saddle / bar setup. It would increase the control in my butt/hips and reduce excess leverage in the bar-ends.
Just a thought…
I don’t think it would. It might make for a stiffer or lighter unicycle, but your center mass is going to be in the exact same location relative to the saddle, the axle and the handlebars regardless. Just like the frame on a Hatchet rotates the fork backward without affecting other geometry. You could reverse a Hatchet frame and aside from knee strikes it would ride the same.
When you turn the axis of your turn is the line straight up and down through the wheel and the center mass of your body, not the line made by the frame or the seatpost.
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Thanks for the explanation. Seems like you are correct. I have experimented sitting backwards on my unicycle / bar-setup, sitting on the bar ends and holding the butt-end of the seat. The differences I felt seemed more profound than just a matter of comfort or change of position. The geometry of riding seemed different.
There probably is some noticeable difference and there might be good reasons for attaching the saddle further forward, it’s just not leverage from the bars or the saddle. It should allow for shorter bars and that should make things marginally lighter, stiffer and stronger. I doubt it would be a huge difference, but small improvements add up.