Amazing that this sport, so incredibly fun, keeps getting more so.
I’m a pretty old guy with about 14 months experience. Can’t idle more than 4 or 5 cycles. Since a got my 20", I’ve begun to really work on hopping. I’m a slow learner, but I became able to hop curbs - occaisionally.
Today however, I found I could just freemount to a stillstand with pedals horizontal, and hop to correct my balance. I never could pogo stick too well, but I’ve almost got it on the uni now. I did this and stayed up fo 20 seconds a couple times. It’s feels great to have some way to idle, at least sort of.
Also, I can hop up and down curbs, and even once got to the top of the 12" high box, but didn’t ride out of it.
Fun fun fun.
Questions -
Are front hops harder than side-hop (which are mostly what I do)?
Should my uni have a lower seat for trials type stuff?
Yes, front hops are harder then side-hops, but doing something called a rolling hop will make those nasty front hops a lot easier. A rolling hop is basically what it says it is. A hop, while rolling. This has the advantage of already having forward momentum, so you only have to hop up. Anyway, jumping onto large objects is usually done with a side hop, but really large objects, up to about a meter high, are done with a rolling hop. (Don’t ask me how they do it, I’m still baffled by it). Also, there are several techniques to get onto even higher stuff with a sidehop, look on the forum for ‘crankgrab’ and ‘pedalgrab’. I myself can get up to objects about 60 cm high, and maybe up to 1 metre with a pedalgrab (If I’m in the right state of mind)
That depends on what kind of trials type you are. There are two ways of jumping. Seat-in, and seat-out. In seat-out, you jump (logically) with the seat in front of you. This allows you to tuck the unicycle far higher under you, and pull the seat up to almost under your chin. Seat-in is the opposite of seat-out, and you just leave the seat under you. This has the disadvantage of not being able to pull the seat up so high, because the crown jewels are blocking the way. Now, for both methods, you’ll be wanting the seat lower, this is due to the fact you’ll always want some travel down there. But if you’re mainly a seat-in jumper, you want the seat even lower, so you can pull the unicycle up higher. For seat-out, you’ll want it so that when you’re hopping, you don’t put a lot of strain on your back. Though it usually comes down to personal preference. My brother is a seat-in jumper, and he only has his seat about an inch lower then I do, and I’m a seat-out jumper. We’re also about equal height.
Ah, the good old days. I remember when I was first hopping about, having the greatest difficulty with hopping onto the curb. Basically, just do it. It doesn’t hurt when you fall, if you even fall. Because that’s the easy thing with learning to bunny hop on a unicycle, there’s lots of ways to get off before you hit something hard, like pavement.
I could never pogo stick but after uniing it became very easy. I have one question, if you can only hop up curbs occasionaly, how can you hop up a 12 inch high box?
In the original post, I may have been unclear, but in the first paragraph “…I became able to hop curbs - occaisionally” was in the history portion of the post. This was meant to be followed by the recent accomplishment portion “Today however…<hopping breathroughs> …I can hop up and down curbs, and even once got to the top of the 12” high box, but didn’t ride out of it. "
So that particular day was when I sort of “got it” and could do curbs, and tried the higher box.