I am just wondering how long it takes to learn to ride and free mount a unicycle. I have only had mine roughly 6 hours and can already free mount and ride with extreme ease. I am just curious if thats normal?
Welcome to the forum. I know this has been asked and answered much in the past so you could do well to search the forum for the answer. I’ll try to help if I can, but a little searching could probably get you the answers you need without relying on my ability to recall information.
If memory serves the number is around 15 hours. So, If you are riding and mounting easily with only a third of that time I would say you are doing well.
I also learnt all that in about 6 hours
Dang dude! I learned how to free mount after roughly a month.
I’ve multiple theories like between10-16 hours or a week for everyday it took for you to learn to ride a bike.
And congradulations
my pocket answer is 6-10 hours of practice : ) took me about 6 over the course of a week, during IJA : ) and I learned on carpet ; )
it depends on if you learn with a wall or not. i learned w/out a wall and it took weeks to be able to go 20 ft
Klaas Bil has a database somewhere that shows how long it took various people to learn with info on age and wheel size. I think the overall average was around 10 hours.
I cannot give a precise answer in hours, but on the first day my biggest success was riding ~20m freely. I estimate I practised for 5 or 6 hours that day…
On the 2nd day, it went far better. Hundreds of metres, and sometimes about a kilometre, before I had to dismount. And I did my first freemount quite early that day.
So I think, at least in the early phase, I learned about as quickly as you…
I still haven’t managed to idle or ride backwards though.
Idle??
Thanks for all the help and I learned without a wall or anything thanks! Does anyone know of anything to help me learn to idle?
6 hours seems to be pretty quick. It took me about a week before I could ride over 20 feet. I would learn to hop up curbs next so you can go exploring. Welcome to unicycling.
I agree. I’ve been riding over a year and still can’t hop up a curb. It can be limiting (though I find ways around it).
Really depends on you, your devotion to practice and determination. I’m sure there are some who will tell you that they learned, not only to ride in just a couple hours, but that were doing ww, crank flips and unispins in the first few days, lol! That may be true in rare cases, but that’s definitely the exception, not the rule.
Bottom line is, if you can ride a bike and have an average sense of balance, you should be able to acquire the basics of mounting and riding in a straight line, on smooth, even ground, within a week or two. I would strongly suggest learning to freemount asap, rather than use a wall, poles, or someone’s shoulder. Initially it’s ok, but once you can freemonut, everything else will come from that. 
The free downloadable booklet “Learning to unicycle” has a chapter on how to learn idling. Get it from Tips for beginners
if you look at any list of tricks, by difficyulty/level, it will help you decide what to try next. some who dont look at it learn hard stuff like one-footed before they can even go backwards.
In my experience 15 hours is about average. I’ve seen people ride unassisted in a couple of hours, and I’ve known people who took over a year to pass Level 1.
BTW: the section on cranks/hubs still lists cotterless (NOT Andy-less, nor Connie 
) as the ideal crank. You might want to update this to include ISIS.
Thanks for the tip. ISIS was not used in unis when the page was written. The page shows its age in several other small ways too. However, the page is specifically aimed at beginners, for whom I still think that splined cranks (which includes ISIS) are overkill. Cotterless is cheaper and strong enough. So from that perspective I think the information is correct.
I vitnessed something quite amazing yesterday. All the neighbors were gathered outside in the street celebrating the norwegian constitution day, so I took out som stuff for the kids to play with. Slackline, pogostick, stilts and a few unicycles. There was a boy there about 13 yrs old who I hadn’t seen before. He picked up a 20" unicycle and it was obvious that he didn’t know how to ride it. Within an hour and without any instructions he could ride 50 meters in full control. If we hadn’t blocked the street, I’m sure he could have gone further. His father told me that he was a good skier and a fast learner in general.