I have gotten pretty good at peddle grabs/jumps, but I was wondering if you guys have any tips for me for jumping high WITHOUT the peddle grab. Thanks!
Have you played with tire pressure and pre hops?
Try doing them SIF (you’ll prob want to raise the seat), and work on your tuck.
Maybe I’ll do a ‘jumping tutorial’ tomorrow. For now though I’ll post a link to an old tutorial I put on my youtube channel by Ryan Atkins who back when I started riding was one of the best trials riders around. A little more information on what type of hop you’re doing(seat in or Seat out in front) would be helpful for us advice givers.
I’ll Start with a few tips for both methods first. For seat in front hopping you want to start a distance away from your target; not so far that you’re having to make a really long jump to get there but long enough to give yourself some momentum to re-direct. Lean into the jump and spring towards the object you’re jumping onto really push the tire into the ground with your legs, all your hand should be doing is holding the seat under you to keep the unicycle with your body. This first jump is called a pre-hop; you’ll want to land the pre-hop pretty close to the object but not so close as to catch your pedal onto the object. When you land you want to use that ‘bounce’ to redirect yourself upwards as soon as you feel the tire squish you’ll want to jump straight up. Try to bring the wheel up near your head without bringing your head to the wheel your body should look almost like a greater than symbol. Land the tire on the object and straighten up your body to regain balance. Start with shorter objects that you know you can land your tire on and work your technique until your feel you could go to something a little high and just work up that way. As your technique improves you’ll need to raise the pressure in your tire to get more bounce; that may seem backwards but at one point having a soft tire just takes away potential energy(the higher the pressure in the tire the more forefully it will resist compression and bounce back).
Eventually with Seat in jumping you will hit a limit where you just can’t get any more bounce or fold any higher. This is when you’ll want to start doing Seat in front hops. These will take a lot of getting used to; you wont have the seat and frame under you to support yourself so pedal pressure is very important. You want to keep pressure even on both pedals or you’ll fall to the side. The principle of the jump itself remains the same with seat in and seat out hopping other than the lack of support from your legs and instead of folding you’ll now need to ‘tuck’ When you bounce up you’ll bring the wheel as close to your butt as possible and bring the seat up near your chin. This will feel odd at first; To get used to the squat while riding normally just stop, pull the seat out, and bend your knees until you either fall off or feel unbalanced.
Once you can do that try standing back up again and putting the seat under you. Once that is comfortable start on a small object again; something you know you can easily jump up(like a curb) and when you jump squat as much as you can. That will get you used to jumping and squatting on something higher. Work your way up and eventually you’ll pass up your highest seat in jump’ hopefully you’ll go even higher after that, but it’s all about practice and determination. Even with perfect technique you’ll have a hard time landing anything if you don’t commit to doing it.
Here’s Ryan Atkin’s video from forever ago(it was a few years old when I uploaded it 4 years ago)
