Hi Elpueblo, Thanks for your ideas around freemounting. I have attended the flatland in Pasadena on occasion but it hasn’t happened in awhile. I will look for it…
The same group also does muni rides in Orange County…Aliso woods or something like that…do you muni and have you heard of that trail?
Setonix, I have a Numbus Muni 29" and you also have one of those (from a previous post)…what sized cranks are you using on that one? Mine came with 150’s and am considering going to smaller cranks…
I live right next to Aliso and Woods Regional Park. The riding here is awesome. A month ago there was an attempt to have a ride there, but it was stopped by rain. Aliso and Woods has a great variety of trails from easy to really hard.
Thanks for the info on Aliso and Woods Park. I’d like to get down there sometime this summer. Since I haven’t used my 29" muni on any muni terrain, I’ll probably be doing the easier routes.
James
Advice, I’m full of it. I suggest, if you don’t already, learn to put one hand on the saddle handle. Yeah, it’ll suck at first. Avoid the urge to throw both hands up in the air. Even if this results in a loss of balance and a UPD, you will be safer having the control of one hand on the handle while bailing out. While you’re practicing holding on, I think it’s all right for you to be standing out of the seat. That will accelerate learning to control the uni with your fully-in-control hand. Weight in the seat will come later. Also, practice riding on resistant surfaces, such as grass, before working your way to crashing over obstacles. If you have a brake on your 29", start practicing using it on flat grass. You will learn right away to compensate for the brake by pulling back on the seat handle, sitting further back on the saddle and leaning back while braking.
Then you’ll be ready for some light muni.
The day I knew I was officially hooked on unicycling was when I rode down the trail behind my neighborhood. It might as well have been the happiest moment in my life! With some focused work, Jfwdc, you will increase the fun-factor of unicycling. Good luck, and keep practicing!
Hi Elpueblo,
Thanks for the advice…I’ve already been trying to hold the saddle with one hand and will continue with that. Standing up will be a good thing to start. Did you start muni with protective gear? Or is it something added later?
James
When should you wear protective gear, when you are likely to fall because you are doing something new, or when you are doing something you are already good at…?
I don’t think you need to wear a full body uniform of pads, but a helmet, gloves and kneepads are what I recommend.
Helmet because I’d still like to be capable of making sarcastic remarks on forums in the future, your brain is nothing to play with. If you are buying new, I recommend a MTB helmet, not a roadbike one. The “pointy” backside of a roadbike helmet can apparently twist your neck in very unhealthy ways if you fall backwards.
Gloves because you will almost always end up on your hands in some way when falling, and cuts there are very annoying. I sometimes use simple work gloves (the thin type), and think they are just fine. Or some cheap bike gloves, I only want a bit of material inbetween my palms and sharp rocks.
Kneepads, because the knee is a very complicated joint, that can get messed up easily if it meets a rock. It tends to hit rocks quite often aswell. Aside from that knee wounds take forever to go away.
I’ve learned from experience to buy protective equipment once, and in high quality. (Well, except gloves, with those I don’t care) Mostly because high quality pads fit better, and don’t annoy you. Which means you will be less tempted to not wear them.
So my recommendation would be: for your first few rides, find people you can borrow stuff from (everyone has a set of skateboard pads hiding somewhere I think). Then, when you are sure you want to continue your Muni journey, buy some really high quality pads and helmet.
Hi! I think this is good advice for free mounting and I tried it the first time today. I think it might help me be more consistent when mounting all different unis. Hopefully.
I have gotten so used to holding the saddle with both hands while mounting…that, as a result, holding it with one hand is awkward, and not holding on at all seems a really difficult trick that’s likely to land me on my ass.
I think arms-in-the-air is the truly most sketchy thing about learning to ride unicycle.
Depends if you’re planning to commit to it. Then it goes one of two ways:
Teenager or younger (or someone from skateboard culture): Pads are for sissies. Broken bones make you stronger!
Grown ups (1): Let me just try this and see how it goes. Ouch! Ouch ouch! Then when your brain catches up with the ouches, or you’ve missed enough riding due to injury, you buy some.
Grown ups (2): Understands gravity, reads the forums, doesn’t like being injured, buys something first.
What to buy? This is what I use, which is not necessarily what’s right for you.
Gloves: I use padded bike gloves, with open fingers. Minimal protection, but saves you from those abraded palms.
Helmet: A bicycle helmet that fits properly, and is the right color (your preference). Virtually all helmets that have passed the Snell or other safety standards will offer good protection. However, if you do lots of really hard stuff, like Big Street, Trials or anything hardcore that can lead to falls in awkward directions (namely the back of your head), I highly recommend a skate helmet.
Legs: Before today’s leg armor was available, I used volleyball kneepads for pavement (they basically suck, but meet the requirements for knee protection in competitions). I also used hard plastic skate kneepads of various types. But now I don’t mess around; full leg armor for me; my old pair of KH ones are wearing out; time to get some new ones. I see that many improvements have been made over the years, so I’m going straight for Kris.
I’m trying to learn to freemount because I can’t go anywhere without that skill - Handy-dandy walls are not available everywhere I want to go, and I can’t assume everyone will be pleased with me using their precious car as a starting support. I still can’t ride for more than 2 - 3 minutes without UPDing, so I really need to be able to get back on. I’ve been learning to ride for 3 years, and trying to freemount for a few weeks. My excuse is that I’m 72 years old. The first thing I did was to buy a protective cup for the boys, and that eliminated one source of fear. but I haven’t managed to succeed even once yet. Someone told me that I should learn to idle first, and it would be easy to freemount after. I suspect that I just don’t have the “knack” for uni, and the alternative is simply a HUGE AMOUNT of effort. I will try a lot of the suggestions here, and hopefully something will click. Anyone who wants to make further suggestions, or simply commiserate with me is encouraged to do so. I would like to see some progress, because I’m starting to get discouraged (I know that’s a no-no), and thinking about abandoning the uni.
Thats it. Practice twice a day for 30 minutes each session. Time it and journal it. Don’t dally around. Don’t skip days. Only practice one or two skills. You’ll have it down in about two weeks. It will feel like its not working and then you’ll get it.
Thats what I did, and continue to do. I hit my one year anniversary in 4 days.
Now, with that advice, make sure to read strategy on how to actually freemount easier. Like, use a curb to hold the wheel from flying back to start. Things like that. Theres lots of tips you can find.
Good luck, but if you follow that advice, you won’t need it
Thank you so much! There’s no way I can devote that kind of time to uni. During winter, I have no place to practice, except for once a week for a short time. Outside is out of the question. Now that spring has sprung, I hope to be able to manage 2 - 3 times a week, for an hour at a crack. I still blame my paltry progress on being 72 years old. I tell people I’m well past the “Best Before date” for learning these skills. I will post progress when it happens (at least I didn’t say if it happens).
Right on. During winter I practiced in my living room before we bought a home. Then it went to the basement for all winter 2022/2023. Actually, for a lot of the first six months I practiced in a parking lot of an abandoned McDonalds lol.
What I will say is that working at this off-and-on for 3 years and not being able to freemount sounds like it sucks. If I were you, I’d rip the band-aid off and put the time in over a two week period. Get it done.
Mount with a support. Over and over and over. Don’t ride more than 20 revolutions after mounting (if you are trying to force yourself into learning free-mounting).
Use your support. Over and over and over.
Then, mount with your support hand above the support (ie. A mailbox). After mounting, use the support hand to steady yourself and re-place your feet if you have to. Then ride. Keep doing this.
You will be able to free-mount soon.
Then, keep mounting the same way, with your support hand OFF the support structure, only cheating, if you have to.
I’ve been having the same problem for over five years, so you’re definitely not alone. Contrary to what many other unicyclists say, unicycling is just very hard. The big problem is that there is no proven method with which anyone who wants to can learn how to unicycle well. Most learn by just trying and figuring out what works or doesn’t work for them. If that doesn’t work, like it did with me, you won’t make any progress. All my attempts to freemount failed.
The only solution I have for myself is that I could practice with someone who already knows how to unicycle well and who could act as a coach. Unfortunately unicycling is a niche sport and there is no one around here who could really teach me how to unicycle properly. The reason why I can’t freemount is that I’m not really able to ride my unicycle, as I see it myself. I can only keep the unicycle under me with great difficulty for a limited time.
I still practice occasionally, but now learning how to unicycle is no longer a priority for me. I almost exclusively do it in the gym. If I had known that unicycling would be so hard I probably wouldn’t have started it.
First successful freemount took me 2 months to learn. 9 months before I free mounted a giraffe. 36" freemount took over a year to get to a reliable point and still mess it up on rare occasions.
I’m in my forties and I’ve been leraning to unicycle with my kids. Since they and their friends are now in their 4th year of practicing regularly, and I acompanied them whenever I could, I’ve seen some different ways to how learning new skills can happen. And also, just by doing stuff with the unicycle without any plan of what we would aim for, we are now able to ride things we wouldn’t have dreamed about some years ago.
I would think about, what is the most motivating thing for you to do with the unicycle? Would the biggest achievement be to freemount? Would you get back more, if you could ride with less UPDs, so you could enjoy the skill to ride better? If you think about your motivation to practice being a limited resource, how would you invest it to get the most out of it?
I think about physical skills in the shape of a pyramid, or any kind of building. You have (unicycle specific) basic elements like riding straight, making turns and learnig to ride over small irregularities. The better you manage those, the easier it will be to manage the next challenge. And then there are higher elements like freemounting, riding backwards, hopping and a thousand other things.
We all have our own “unicycle-buidling” big or small, and we all built it in our own way.
When I take this picture and read your story, I think your basic skills are still someting to develop. So, for just practicing to ride straight, choosing an area that supports what you need right now, maybe trying with different road qualities, mounting with what ever works, you could develop a better motoric foundation for unicyclinig. If you would arrive at the level to be able to ride as long as you like to, with no (or few) UPDs in a normal range of road conditions, I believe the learning time and practice effort to master freemounting would be much shorter.
You probably have lot’s of ideas how to support this, fist things that come to my mind are
Mounting with a sturdy stick as support
Looking for a tree, where you have branches hanging down you can reach and that are strong enough or fix a rope somewhere above. This can give you some support, but it still moves around and the challenge is higher than holding on to somthing solid and less difficult than full freemount.
Mounting downhill is easier than level ground is easier than uphill
If you look at the time spent and how to get the most out of it, I would argue for smaller units. If you practice 10 minutes a day for three days I would expect more progress than with 30 minutes on one day.
I have seen beginners having a benefit by using wrist wheights. Something around 400g to 1 kg added to both wrists. Maybe you have something available to find out if this is any help for you, I’d be happy about feedback if you try this.
If you keep on trying, you will manage it. I have great respect for taking on this challenge in your age. And I am a 100% sure, it is possible to learn to unicycle. And actually I think, you are almost there, as you already can ride for some minutes without a braek, the hardest part of learning the basics is behind you. Just put some more miles on your unicycle, and your skills will follow.
By the way, which wheelsize and which crank length do you ride?
My first freemounts were roll back mounts which was terrible at and felt it held back my riding, I was hiding away in carparks and only riding short distances before fatigue kicked in. I started to venture out of hiding but my roll back mounts were no better and getting back on again was taking me 10 plus attempts which was frustrating.
I couldnt get my head around static mounts so i went back into carparks and did statics using curb to prevent unicycle rolling backwards. That was helpful in a way but i just had to work out how to do statics properly, Now that i can im back out of hiding and ride out and about in public with not worries on getting on.
Im back in hiding again trying to learn freewheel but thats another story for another thread!!
From memory about 4 weeks after I was able to ride consistently from a static object, I started on a 20" and practiced for a few weeks before trying on a 24,26,29 etc.
I have a very static style free mount, I do not feel like I roll the unicycle back under me, as soon as I am over the balance point and my front foot contacts the peddle I am off riding. The penny dropped when I found a technique that worked for me in regards to what I need to do with my back foot in regards to angle and pressure before pushing off.
TBH free mounting can still be a challenge I can go weeks being able to mount almost every time and then on the odd days with no rhyme or reason I am all over the place and I still hate free mounting in front of people even though I am proficient and ride lots of muni.
On the odd occasion I speak to someone about unicycling I often say that in my mind riding and Unicycle and free mounting is almost two different skills…
I think it is quite well known that I took 6 years to learn to freemount… But how was I meant to know it was a thing? No YouTube, no Internet, no books, no other Unicyclists…
There is a 6 year old in our club that can solidly free mount for about three weeks before he could ride!
