Hopping with one hand holding seat out front?

Every unicyclist doing trials i see always only uses one hand to hold the seat and thats because of the balance the other one provides but i just cant seem to pull the uni up with me…is it because my trials uni is to heavy or im just to weak?..please give me some tips!!!

forgot to add that this is all when im holding the seat in front of me not tucked underneath…

Practice it I guess. Maybe get better at riding seat out without touching the seat to your body? I dunno… It’s not because of the weight, and its not because your weak.

Thanks but i already know very well how to ride with seat out front…i have a torker DX seat i use or my torker LX seat my friend has…any help now?

ANY TIPS!!! how many of you used to hold the seat out in front of you with 2 hands??? or how many of you just never did use 2 hands?

I used to press the saddle against me and hold it with both hands when I was learning to do seat out. I forced myself to use one hand, and slowly the balance came.

Practice riding seat-out, while trying not to put much wight in the saddle, just use it for control, and keep the saddle away from you, it’ll improve your SIF hopping greatly.

Really, the hand in the air doesn’t improve balance. Keeping it up there just keeps it out of the way and allows the rest of your body to balance more easily. Try to keep all your wight in the pedals before hopping, then compress and bend your knees as fast as you can while pulling up the saddle.

The hardest part of SIF for me is bending my knees to allow the wheel to move up.

For me i just tried it and seems like the whole exact timing thingy is whats not working but hey…thats what paractice is for right?..RIGHT??? so i guess it doesnt matter if you use one or two hands…i have been trials riding for 2 years and just now noticed that…i should kick myself

Hopping with 2 hands is not nearly as effective, and will inhibit higher hopping. Trust me.

I think the non-holding hand does help with balance. If I hop with two hands I can barly do half the height of what I could do one handed. It also makes it harder to ride with two hands.

Its pretty much just practice all right. When I first learned how to hop, (seat in) I had one hand in the front, and one hand in the back. After awhile I realized that although this felt the best way, there was an easier way to do it.

So how does one handed hopping help?

  1. Use the “search feature” of this site

  2. Go to a football field and hop across it seat out.
    Do this for 500 yards (several days)
    You will learn to relax your hand (and most of your body)
    The problem will be gone before you reach 500 yards.

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Your unicycle is not heavy, and you’re not weak.

Catboy: While that extra hand may not help with balance, it does help with directional issues, just like with seat in roll-hops. Watch Ryan or Zack and how they use their spare hand. It can help to throw weight.

Anyway. Don’t try pulling not only the unicycle up, but also your lower body. This doesn’t work!!

The hand you hold the seat with does do some lifting…but it mainly helps to keep your lateral stability.

Instead, think of bringing your knees to your chest. Way easier!!

Really all that’s involved in a hop, is a still-stand, a little lean (unless you are going further sideways than up), pushing (or “compressing” as what it’s really called) off from the ground, hopping up from the ground via the rebound of the forces you placed on the tire and by your body leaping into the air, bringing the knees to the chest (what’s called “tucking” the unicycle up under you)

The hardest part of what I just said is getting the timing right. The whole thing is a quick snap.

Keep in mind that it’s not just your knees that need to go up…but your WHOLE BODY.

This is just the ‘taking off’ from the ground part. There’s also landing, and aiming for your landing, pedal grabs, pre-hops, pre-hop pedal graps, sif roll-hops.

Hope I’ve helped. It took me a long time to realize the process, and how it’s really about timing and tucking (which is what zack baldwin has written for posts like this before).

Later,
one who rides sif trials.