I can feel a little fear starting to build

Unicycles and Equipment
1

I have been learning to unicycle fer four days. I have only practiced about four hours a day because of time constraints. I have taken quite a few falls but only two were really bone jarring. I managed to ride about twenty feet the other day using the curb mount method. I woke up this morning and I am shocked that I feel a little fearful today at the prospect of another fall like the one yesterday where I stupidly hung onto the seat and landed flat on my back. I am surprized that I feel this because I usualy just bull my way through things like this without being afraid.

I would hate to think that I have met my match with the unicycle, considering the fact that I have conquered skydiving, scuba diving, dirt bike racing, and snowmobile racing. Were any of you a bit nervous when you started unicycling?

Steve

2

Re: I can feel a little fear starting to build

When I started I was 16 and feared nothing. That is typical for those who start younger. I believe many who started at older ages have expressed some concern about injuries and that is natural; the older you get the more aware you are of the potential for injury and the worse those injuries can be.

Falls are inevitable and some will hurt.

If you’re older than 29 (arbitrarily chosen) use safety equipment; helmet, arm, wrist, and knee pads. But don’t let fear prevent you from conquering the beast. Someone as old as 92 has learned to unicycle!

Keep at it. You’ll be riding soon enough.

Cheers,
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ

3

Re: I can feel a little fear starting to build

HELL NO! I was terrified. My first venture into unicycling was on Dave’s 20. I dragged myself up and down a wall and then fell over sideways so fast all I could do was hope for the best. The bruises on my shin took 3 weeks to heal.

Didn’t stop me padding up and giving it another go once I bought my own unicycle. Won’t stop me starting up again once my ankle is better - roll on October!

If the height of the seat is getting to you (and when you first get on a unicycle that seat seems SO HIGH) see if you can get to sit on a coker (36 inch wheel). A 20 seems so much closer to the ground after that.

Jayne

4

Wear a helmet, and any other protective gear you think you might need. After you can actually ride, you won’t really need anything other than the helmet (well, depending on what you do).

5

I’ve never been affraid to get on the unicycle, but I have been terrified of trying new stuff on it. I’m relatively new to unicycling, about 4 months now, and I’ve only taken four actual falls that involved touching the ground with hands, knees, or butt. When learning how to ride, I quickly learned that if you’re going to fall off the unicycle it is very easy just to stand up and let the unicylce fall without you on it. I learned by leaning against a gymnasium wall and just going around the perimeter of the gym. Later I was able to let go of the wall for more and more time until I could ride consistantly.

I’ve been trying more and more dangerous stuff, and there are certain things where I just didn’t feel safe, chickened out, and walked away. I was dared to go down some short, but steep hill after riding short and easy hiking trail. I rode up to it but just couldn’t go down it, so I dismounted.

Moral of the story is that you are in control and you only have try what you want to try and you can only go as fast as you can peddle. Unicycling is relatively safe if you are catious. Don’t do anything you’re not comfterble with (unless money or girls are involved.)

6

I just took my first fall* not to my feet on pavement that I can remember. It is unnerving, that’s why I got on and rode around the block as fast as could. But I was shaken.

  • First fall in a month of relearning to uni after 30 years. I’m turning 50 this year. (First fall not to my feet, not counting trying to ride across the rough lawn.)

  • Of course the neighbor saw me fall on my butt.

I plan to get back on this afternoon. Maybe I do my coffee before mounting.

But, yea older is harder, I still have not tried going down curbs, which didn’t even seem like a trick back at 16. The idea falling near on a cement curb scares the heck out of this old man.

Also I know I have not yet relaxed. My pedaling is is still too cautious. There have been hopeful moments, but I’m I’m making too much work out this.

I keep telling myself that on a uni, your not going too fast and your not going to fall very far. I expect that after getting a few falls in, we learn that were not going to get hurt badly. Then we’ll relax and have even more fun.

I wear a helmet, but it seems to be protecting the wrong end.

7

Re: I can feel a little fear starting to build

4 hours a day for 4 days is a LOT. Take a day off. I’d say practice less, too. Let your body have time to process what it’s learned. Also, I fell once really hard on pavement, and decided to learn to ride inside my house instead. I fell off on my butt a couple of times in the house, but it didn’t hurt because it was on carpet-covered wood. When I felt I was comfortable enough, I brought the uni back outside. Since then, I haven’t fallen backwards again.

8

Practice on grass, it’s more forgiving if you fall and don’t hang on to the uni. Uni parts are replaceable.

9

I’m with Jawnz on this one.

Grass is great to learn on as long as the ground’s not too soft (difficult to move off) or too lumpy (it’s ok to fall on, but you don’t want to be doing it every 2 yards).

I learned on grass and the other great thing about it was that when I finally got onto tarmac the smooth ride was great!

10

Grass is quite a bit harder to ride on than pavement (or a nice friendly gym floor). I don’t recommend it. It takes more energy to pedal through, and the texture underneath the grass is unpredictable.

I too learned as a teenager, and was not concerned about falling at the time. However, nobody likes to fall, so your reluctance to repeat a bad fall is easy for anyone to understand. One thing you can do is practice falling.

Not falling to your hands and knees, or back, of course, but practicing how to fall. If you sense the fall early, you can almost always land on your feet. Practice falling in every possible direction of the compass. Do each one several times. Having this background in your head will make it easier to catch yourself when the real falls come.

Also practice controlling the pedals in a dismount. When you panic, or make the wrong move, that’s when the pedals can nail you in the shins or calves. Make sure you keep the bottom foot on in most dismount situations.

11

i suppose the ideal surface to learn on would be a putting green. in my opinion, anything thicker than that would make it too hard to learn on. keep at it

-grant

12

I’m one of those teenagers which were discussed earlier, so of course I had little or no fear when first attempting to ride, but now I’m finding a couple of things rather scary.

  1. Downhill gliding; I’m starting to pick up speed and it makes me rather nervous.
  2. Handride; (I’m now up to seven cycles of the wheel) In this position I am constantly afraid of falling on my face or hurting my wrists.
  3. Whenever I get into the standup wheelwalk position, I get nervous and feel very precarious.
13

Re: I can feel a little fear starting to build

In article <digigal1.1chlot@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com>,
“digigal1” <digigal1@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com> wrote:

>
> 4 hours a day for 4 days is a LOT. Take a day off. I’d say practice
> less, too. Let your body have time to process what it’s learned.

I agree. I’m a newbie, but i’m up to a couple hundred meters as of
this weekend… I put in at most an hour and a half twice a day, usu.
once a day.

Your body is only going to be performing “well” for an hour at a time,
maybe a little more. In learning this skill set, we’re not really
working on building muscle mass – most of us are already pretty fit –
we’re training the locomotor part of our brains.

When you train a motor skill, you stimulate synaptic growth relevant to
your skill, “muscle memory” if you will. But, if you go too hard, too
long, you start to generate synaptic depletion, chaotic growth blah blah
–> your brain turns to mush, and you cease to learn anything useful.
You can even damage the useful synaptic growth --learning-- you have
already trained into your neural net.

I found that i would start out kind of shaky, then after a short 5~10
minute fumble session, make dramatic improvements for about 20 minutes,
which built on the previous day’s session. I’d spend another half hour
drilling and then would notice my performance start to deteriorate,
largely due to large muscle exhaustion in my legs resulting from poor
technique. OK, i was shaking w/ exhaustion and drenched w/ sweat.

At that point, i determined (through experience) that further practice
is a waste of time, that all i’d be learning is how to uni badly, and
how to fall off the seat faster. :slight_smile:

Tenacity is required for the unicycle, but 4 hours at a time, or even
spread out over a day, is pushing your organic capacity to learn to its
limit.

Some rollerblade or BMX/dirt bike crash gear might be a good idea.

And congratulations on your effort!

…max

–
I’m a moron so you don’t have to be! (one)

14

Getting back in the saddle

I learned to unicycle when I was 20, and rode until I was about 25. Then I took a 30 year break. I’ve taken it up again this summer, and I’ll be 54 this month.

When I started from zero this summer, it took about an hour of practice to get back the ability to ride. But that hour was broken into about 4 15-minute sessions, one per day. At this point (after a month), I can ride a 20" comfortably and turn sharply.
I’m working on idling and riding backwards. I used to be able to free mount without a second thought, but I’m still struggling to regain that skill.

I’m definitely concerned with falling. I’ve taken a few spills that resulted in abrasions to my elbow and knee, and I landed on my back once. Now I ride with helmet, knee, elbow and wrist guards. The falls weren’t serious, but they were unexpected and they unnerved me.

I love to unicyle, I regret not having ridden these years, and I am determined to regain my (modest) skills and add new ones. My general strategy is to practice 15 to 30 minutes a day. I’m still building up muscles and balance skills.

A few of the comments in this post that I’d emphasize are:

“use safety equipment; helmet, arm, wrist, and knee pads”
I learned this after a few falls.

“The idea falling near on a cement curb scares the heck out of this old man.”
I’m more nervous now then when I was 20.

“4 hours a day for 4 days is a LOT. Take a day off. I’d say practice less, too. Let your body have time to process what it’s learned.”
I agree. 4 hours is way too much. Your body learns a lot by taking a day off. Take a shower after you ride and reflect on the experience.

“practicing how to fall. If you sense the fall early, you can almost always land on your feet. Practice falling in every possible direction of the compass. Do each one several times. Having this background in your head will make it easier to catch yourself when the real falls come.”

This is great advice. Also, the first time I learned to ride, I made a conscious effort to learn to recover balance from every direction of the compass.

“Also practice controlling the pedals in a dismount. When you panic, or make the wrong move, that’s when the pedals can nail you in the shins or calves. Make sure you keep the bottom foot on in most dismount situations.”

When I have to dismount I’ve also learned to kick the unicycle away rather than try to catch it.
I like the advice about keeping weight on the bottom foot during a dismount. That is something I’ll practice.

“Your body is only going to be performing “well” for an hour at a time, maybe a little more.”
Absolutely.

“I found that i would start out kind of shaky, then after a short 5~10
minute fumble session, make dramatic improvements for about 20 minutes,
which built on the previous day’s session. I’d spend another half hour
drilling and then would notice my performance start to deteriorate,
largely due to large muscle exhaustion in my legs resulting from poor
technique. OK, i was shaking w/ exhaustion and drenched w/ sweat.”

That pretty much describes my experience.

I’ll add one note to all this advice:

One of the things I like about unicycling is not just the challenge of learning a new skill, but also the challenge of breaking the skill down into tiny little steps. If I can learn 10% of a skill in one 15-30 minutes session I’m happy. That way I don’t worry about pushing myself, yet I’m confident I’m making progress.

Sounds like you’ve got the time and motivation. You’ll do great! Good luck!

15

Re: I can feel a little fear starting to build

this ties in very closely with john foss’s ‘learning how to fall’ advice
to that i’d simply like to add ‘learn when to fall’
when the time comes that u feel yourself slipping out of the ‘balance envelope’, there is preciously little to gain from hanging on for dear life
except a nasty UPD (UnPlanned Dismount - unicyclists don’t fall… :sunglasses: )
rather step off graciously, keeping your lower foot firmly on it’s pedal to ensure the upright stability of the uni
getting off is then literally as easy as stepping off
ideally off the back
but that’s another story