Now that it’s mentioned, I also did more unnecessary dismounting.
1 is less of a problem for me now 
2 is something I caught myself doing more than I should yesterday afternoon. I should try those hills till they force me to dismount, rather than “I dismount at the beginning of a hill cause I think I can’t make it up”. It’s an issue for me for offroad single track and fire trail.
If all you wanted was an excuse to cancel your registration, you could’ve just asked 
But if you really want to achieve your goal, then stop making excuses for yourself and do whatever it takes to achieve it.
I picked up my first unicycle at age 41, that was 8.5 months ago after seeing a famous trial unicyclist doing amazing stuff on his uni.
I wanted to learn that too. Many people told me (as always, this is what the mass does) many reasons why I couldn’t succeed.
Well, I’ve not yet achieved my goal, but every day I’m getting a little bit closer.
Here’s a glimpse of the stuff I can do now:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSfHpY9ndXN/?utm_medium=copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CRLvDWxB_Dt/?utm_medium=copy_link
In the end it comes down to this:
UniJohn is not like you. Nobody on the forum is. You’ve become a unicycle pro from scratch within one year. Though I agree that if there is something you want to achieve, you should do whatever it takes to get there. UniJohn lives near Leiden by the way and went to a uni club in Almere. From Breda that is quite a long drive. Or from me in Arnhem.
I still have this. Though when I lose my footing or make a strange wobble while riding, I’ve learned that I can most often regain my balance. But when there is like a 5-10 cm bump, I expect before hand I won’t be able to make it and hop off the uni, before giving it a try. Even those times where I am annoyed with myself, it takes a ton of effort to keep rolling on anyways. So I would hop off, walk back try again, and right before the obstacle hop off again etc etc. It would be nice to just be able to ride without thinking. Maybe I should meditate and clear my mind before riding or at obstacles close my eyes 
My beginner’s goal was 400 meters around the loop of my neighborhood. It motivated me to keep practicing. I can also see how such a goal could backfire. For example, to achieve their goal, a straight riding path is chosen. The rider then learns how to ride 800 meters without significant turns. As they approach 800 meters, they get tired, start weaving and must effectively “turn” to stay on the straight path. But they didn’t practice turning earlier in their ride, and now they’re too tired to do it well.
My block is 1.2 km. As a beginner I couldn’t handle the turns so sometimes I needed a dismount for them. The worst bit of a dismount was my poor skills to remount!! But soon I improved and could manage the turns well enough. One long side of the block has a decent uphill and a decent downhill. And to top it off, a turn requiring either up or downhill control too depending if you are going clockwise or anticlockwise. Side note, I found that uphill turn really difficult on a 36er, when I sold my 36er (just too hard for me to freemount) I never really would say that turn and I got along on it. I think its reasonable to say, I could do the turn uphill, but my legs couldn’t cope with the rest of the uphill after the turn on the 36er. This was even after doing a big 36er adventure in Denmark doing quite a lot of kms on it there. But Denmark is flat :).
Anyway, as a beginner the very noticeable thing for me was my lower back muscles were very tense from this riding around the block. I wasn’t skilled enough to hold the handle so my back was doing a lot of fighting to keep me riding. One of the 2 longer sides side had an unrefined rough gravel sort of surface. I could notice that on the uni, and then I’d be a bit concerned, because if I UPDed that surface could cause a lot of skin damage. Thankfully, I never UPDed on that stretch of street. And anyway, after I mastered basic riding, the council had that street resurfaced with a smooth finish. That also incidently encouraged a local electronic skateboarder to then start doing loops of my block… before that he only rode on the other streets. Anyway, I had completely digressed. The distance was totally ok, and that’s basically the same distance as the ride to the train station. (Which has an even more substantial uphill!) I have 4 years of experience now, still trying to improve skills on unis. Eg. Backwards, hopping on larger unis, idling on larger unis, managing uphills offroad… I’m not the fastest improver but that’s ok. The below image was me riding my 27.5 muni recently, doing hopping practice.
My free mounts improved as I got better at hill climbing, leading to standing up in the saddle and riding slowly down to virtual still stands. I have heard some forms of the static mount called a “one footed still stand”.
The clincher is to learn to mount a bigger unicycle. It seems really easy when you go back to mounting a smaller one. 
Or you get back on your smaller one and then completely overshoot it…
In other news. I am happy mounting 20", 24" and 27.5… I give me a 9/10! 
20" I’m most likely to do a rollback now, the others a static. Only took me 4 years to get to this level… 
I do a rollback on my 19" too. Almost any pressure at all on that rear pedal causes it to roll back anyway.
I don’t agree - Everyone is like me, and so are you or UniJohn. We all started at the same level of not being able to ride 1 rev with a uni. Sure, I had some previous experience with bike trial which helps to some regard (hops), but even that was just for a year.
The only difference is that I made a choice to set a goal for myself and I will do whatever it takes to get there. That means living and breathing unicycling… I practice for around 1-1.5 hours a day as a real workout (that’s a high intensity workout, no time to chat or relax ), but usually I find some more windows during the day where I can ride short distances (walking the dog for example).
And when I’m not at work or riding uni’s, I think about how to improve myself, what I will learn next, how to overcome a certain fear, I even mentally practice certain moves if I feel it’ll add value.
Do most people do this whenever they want to achieve something? Probably not, only the ones who are at the current top or working their way towards it.
But that’s everyone’s own personal choice. I can do it, you can do it, everyone else can do it
That is sorta how I started to learn to ride uni. I read somewhere that everybody can do it, as long as you are persistent. I took up that challenge and won.
Within unicycling, I mostly like just cruising around and consider other exercises less important. If I master them, fine, if not also fine. The sway of riding is addictive to me and I get an itch if I don’t ride for a 2 or more weeks. Then I start dreaming of unicycling
And that’s absolutely fine of course, no one demands you to put in that much effort. The only reason I write it down is since I’m kind of allergic to anything which is described as special, or talented. That makes it sound like it is easy for some people to jump > 1,5m on their unicycle. But it’s not. Even for someone like Mike Taylor, Erik Winterfeldt, Tim Desmet, Mark Fabian, Mimo Seedler, Max Schultz or others, it didn’t came effortlessly. They had to put in a lot of work to get where they are now.
And I’m no where near their level of course, but I’m sure I’m putting in similar effort to get there. Who knows where I will end up, but at least I enjoy the process of it
I get the fact that virtually nothing worthwhile is free and thousands of hours of hard training are usually what is responsible for peoples athletic prowess, but at the same time, you’re projecting.
Try the same thing when you’re in your 50’s or 60’s and have half a dozen prior injuries and a health condition or two. As you age it becomes much more easy to injure yourself and you don’t recover as quickly or as fully. If I’m getting banged up on a regular basis from my own relatively wimpy training regimen I suspect that yours would have put me out of action early on.
Being a world class rider is not my goal however. I simply want to be pretty good and have the ability to ride intermediate trails, hop obstacles up to about 30cm and do drops of 60cm or less and if it takes me another year or two to get to that level, no problem. That just means I’ll have stuck with it and I’ll be skinnier with better cardio than I am today. 23kg loss so far. Maybe 15 more to go.
Edit: Just today my usual ~40 minute trail ride got shortened to about 15 minutes. I’d been riding really well up to that point too, completing some tough climbs on my second attempts. After that however I started to feel pain in my left knee with every pedal stroke and with that the ride was over. I have learned through experience not to try and push through that type of pain and it’s not that doing so would be difficult, it’s just that I’ll likely be injured the next day if I do. Such is the reality of being middle-aged.
I believe @UniQuest sort of pushes the uni under him, more than standing on the back pedal and have a normal static mount. When the uni is small this makes it much smoother to mount. I don’t do any roll-back mounts myself, they feel a bit awkward.
What can I say? I’m just used to bigger unicycles. I practice on my 19" but it still feels really tiny. If it weren’t for the fact that I can do just about anything better on it than on a bigger wheel I’d say it was a stupid waste of time.
Seems like, behind every good forum thread, there’s a crisis. I am sorry we didn’t provide the support the OP was looking for, but a lot of cool insights were shared.
Nice to see you back on the forum, OTM. I am unable to find an old thread regarding when we know we’re no longer a beginner. I wanted to add the following: I was a beginner when my riding was glitchy, and I was no longer a beginner when I could pretend to be glitchy.
I personally learned more about unicycling, as a novice, from riding out of the seat than I did from attempting to keep my weight in the seat. For example, standing up out of the seat accelerated placing one hand on the handle. Once I kept contact with one hand, then two, it was much easier to control weight in the saddle. So, the goal of weight-in-the-saddle was met, but not in a straightforward fashion.
I think problems can happen when beginners try to perfect their riding style with only a limited number of skills, for example, by focusing on smooth riding before moving onto other stuff. If you start with a larger wheel / shorter cranks, your success riding distance relies on a smooth approach, or else you fall off. I personally think a trials uni (small wheel / long cranks) is a good fit for a beginner. It may be twitchy as hell, but that, IMHO, accelerates the learning by giving more obvious feedback and by promoting the lower-body skills of guiding the unicycle under us.
A lot of riders on this forum are computer programmers. Maybe the connections are indirect; programmers are weird people, they frequently have leisure time, money to spend on toys. Or maybe computer programmers like challenges and are thus attracted to unicycling. The comments earlier in this thread seemed to suggest that being a computer programmer was a hinderence, rather than a help.
I was talking to a very smart friend about creative problem solving. He introduced me to the concept of “scoping”. In its simplest form, there are two forms of thinking: “Focused” and “diffuse”. Switching between those two states appropriately is a challenge. “Scoping” means we adjust the scope, between diffuse and focused thought, when approaching a problem.
I think both good programmers and good unicyclists must “scope”. The problem isn’t either thinking too hard (“analysis paralysis”) about something or not thinking about it at all (just “going for it”). Rather, it’s that we aren’t good at switching between those states, sometimes.
I have two competing visions of computer programmers. The first, when given a problem, puts his feet up on the desk and cracks open a soda and a bag of chips. The second programmer spends two seconds cracking their knuckles then starts typing at about 400 words per minute (they have 30 seconds to save the world).
I wonder if people who consider themselves to be above average in intelligence…are drawn to unicycling. And, if they believe they can learn faster by utilizing all the best learning techniques. And if that doesn’t sometimes backfire because their self-assured attitude blocks them from entering a “diffuse” state where they discover previously unknown aspects of the sport.
On the other hand, a rider who refuses to by analytical about their practice sessions…may not be able to distinguish between the relevant and irrelevant factors leading to their successes and failures, resulting in confusion, frustration, quitting.
I’m more of the second kinda programmer, but the first would be the better, as that programmer just reads the code while eating chips and figuring out he only needs to change a { by a ( and add a ; somewhere.
I don’t know how my programming skills influence my riding or learning new tricks.
Analysing unicycling issues is just thinking logically. Though I learned unicycling after learning to program, I believe my way of thinking existed long before I did either.
Look at this group of computer programmers:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ecJeuPUvsCU
What is not underrepresented in this forum: muni, touring, technical professions.
I mean, I also apply to all three of that, but we should be aware that there are unicyclists outside of that bubble.
Those freestyle unicyclists are clearly all programmers. There is a lot of analysing that goes into making that perfect! 
I love watching those freestyle competitions. They are very stylish and those peeps have very good skills. If only we had such clubs in NL. Last time I rode my freestyle uni was outside and I made a faceplant because the wheel locked up. Nowadays I only use the trials outside, because it has a fatter wheel that more easily eats bumps and pits.
Reading this thread has been really interesting while thinking about my own progression since I picked up a 20” el cheapo unicycle last June.
I feel I’ve been lucky, in that I have been satisfied just enjoying the small (micro) improvements along the way.
I guess my expectations of progression were not as high as my actual progression. So each time I could stay on a bit longer or instinctively correct a balance issue, I felt a twinge of delight. For me those micro improvement moments are all I want from unicycling.
I can relate to the two states of either over-analysis vs just doing it.
I’m more in the camp of just doing it. For me, I think If I just persevere and get-on fall off, get on fall off, repeat - I will have put my mind/body through all the multitude of balance positions and eventually the mind/body works out - which position work and which do not. I’m just amazed at the raw ‘learning’ power of the subconscious.
I must say, I’m addicted to the unicycling progression though. I’m a Mechanical Draftsman, working from home and have mostly done 10min sessions 3 times a day since I started. Starting in my small back courtyard, and progressing to quiet lane ways on my block. After achieving to free mount and stay on at will, I haven’t really set any distance goals. I just keep doing and enjoy all the micro improvements along the way.
I can now ride my KH29 up short 15% gradients, idle, ride backwards a bit. I still use 20” uni for most progression then try on KH29.
Such as unicycling on the hard sand at the beach, I found I could start backward riding, while practicing idling. Stripping down the El cheapo uni after the beach is easy. Also so nice to ride the uni without any protective gear riding on sand.
When I feel ready, I will start long distance and eventually commute 12km to work.
Cheers Norm
Ps. I did upgrade the seat post, cranks and pedals of the el cheap uni to a usable standard.
You can idle and ride backwards a bit on your 29er yet you don’t ride any sort of distance? Wow. I was the opposite. Distance (say 10 miles) was easy, I didn’t need any special effort or focus to do it.
Idling and backwards is/was heaps harder.
Though, I think a leisure 12km trip is very different mentally to a commuting 12km. And the areas you ride makes a huge difference. Bike paths, quiet streets, great! Busy roads, hilly terrain, horrible!
