I agree with this. Two really important skills are getting weight onto the seat to counter pedal pressure, and making a quick low-speed balance correction to ride away from a not-quite-perfect mount–because they’re never quite perfect. Get some months of experience riding, using whatever aids you find as much as you need them, and I think you’ll find that mounting gets easier and more dependable too.
I remember the feeling well as a beginner, that there must be some secret trick to free mounting that wasn’t being shared with us novices. But the only secret I know is that it isn’t a big deal once you’re generally better at riding because it draws so much on abilities you’ll pick up as you ride more.
ElpuebloUNIdo, wheel walking, that is awesome, congratulations on your progress. I read a very recent post by Mikefule. He mentioned his dominant foot was the one he would kick a ball with. Being in the military for more than 26 years, it is ingrained into me from marching, to start off on my left foot. I saw lots of posts saying, to determine your dominant foot, put your feet together and take a step forward and that that would indicate your dominant foot. Well I’m not sure I got it correct, as I have been mounting with my left foot on the lower pedal. I do kick a ball with my right foot. Anyhow I’m going to start learning to mount with my right foot down as suggested by you and Canoeheadted.
My free mounting attempts have been disappointing. I only get maybe eight in an hour of practicing. Not much for several hundred tries each hour. Agape and LargeEddie agree with each other, they suggest that I focus more on riding and honing those skills for a while and try free mounting less diligently than I have been. It sounds reasonable and worth a try. The freemounting exclusively is frustrating. Anyhow, I’ll give that a go for a while and see what developes. Thanks for the tips.
The dominant foot plays a role in that, but there’s another factor too. When you’re on a regular bike and you’re coasting, standing on the pedals, which foot is the one forward? Personally, I’m confortable with my right foot at the front. That’s also the position I’m most confortable with when sitting on the unicycle and holding to a wall or a fence. So when I taught myself to free mount, I aimed to end on the uni with my favorite forward foot. I started with the roll-back mount as my dominant foot is also the right foot, it felt more in control. I also learned, at the same time, the static mount, as in Unimyra’s video:
Like him, I ride right foot front. But on the mount, you can see that it starts with the left foot, my non dominant. It felt very strange to do that but after a while of practicing just the first part of the move (as seen in the first 45s of the video), my left foot began to have more control.
As with all my advice, it’s based on how I learned. And there’s the caveat that I kinda sucked at free mounting until I got a 20" (and you’re riding a 26"?). LargeEddie and others may be correct that you should focus more on riding and less on mounting. I personally don’t see how riding more helps with mounting (not to say the connection doesn’t exist). I’ve been on group rides with some riders whose mounting skills are not at the same high level as their general riding skills. I don’t want you to get frustrated and quit. Reading your posts, however, gives me the impression you have a strong work ethic and can handle delayed gratification. As I mentioned before, when your free mount improves slightly, you’ll be spending more time riding.
I put my aluminum saw horse aside and tried using just the patio stone behind my wheel for mounting. It took a bit but I can mostly mount this way now. I don’t know if it will be helpful in learning to free mount, but it does give me practice in mounting without tipping over to the side. I’ll try this for a couple of days then try some more free mounting and see if it helped or not. I also tried to dismount from the back of the seat several times, that is a bit tricky too. All saddle time is good practice time I guess. ‘I’ll be no quitter I’m gonna ride this critter.’
I still have probs mounting my 36". Especially when not having ridden it for 2 weeks, I have a big problem again. I noticed that when riding a bit with the 36" I get used to how it behaves and how far one pedal rotation rolls. This helps in freemounting it. After a few kms or riding I am better at mounting than just starting up. My main problem is not hopping far enough to have the momentum to roll.
Naturally riding 5km or 10km doesn’t have any influence on better mounting, just a few 100 metres is enough.
I have had almost two weeks off from my uni practice. There was an early snowfall of 16 inches on October 1st. That lasted about 9 days before melting off, then cutting winters firewood etc. The snow is usually back in early Nov. to stay for six months, but for now I uni.
My free mounting attempts have been hit or miss, mostly miss, with no understanding why I do or don’t get a free mount attempt. Yesterday I read a post by another new rider, zacocast. He was also having some free mounting issues. Mikefule made a detailed reply to zacocast on how he learned to free mount along with some other tips. I tried this method today and had great results with a Lot more free mounts than ever before. I thought I had it figured out a few weeks ago so I’ll wait a couple more days before I tell the world I can free mount. Thanks to zacocast and Mikefule as well as everyone else for the continued help.
Ok uni world, I can finally freemount, sort of. My average is about one success out of three tries. I get a bunch in a row then blow a bunch. I have been practicing free mounting for an hour a day over the past three days. I broke down the hour into fifteen minute sessions. I have been able to improve each session. I do about sixty mounting attempts each fifteen minute session. Soon my success rate will be acceptable and I won’t find myself stranded in some flatlands. Thanks to everyone for the input and encouragement while I learned to ride and to freemount. Unicyclist.com people are awesome.
I definitely chose the wrong tools to learn to ride on. A 26” muni and a gravel driveway I believe made the experience much harder and longer than it needed to be. I’m thinking I should purchase a 20” uni to learn other skills such as, turning, idleing, hopping, as well as other ways to mount up etc. Do you think this is a good idea and would a 20” Club be ok for further learning on or could you suggest something more suitable? Thanks again.
Everything is so much easier on a 20". Get one! =) If you are going to be mainly riding on gravel I would get a “trials” unicycle. The larger volume of air and wider tire make it easier “off road”. If you were just riding on pavement / smooth surfaces it wouldn’t matter so much.
Congratulations on your swift progress! I can’t imagine learning at 65, because I learned between the ages of 14-17 (long story). I’m 56 now, and wonder if I would be tempted to try a unicycle at all if I hadn’t done it as a youngster.
Anyway, freemounting is probably challenging you because of your less than perfect riding surface, but mostly because freemounting is not easy. From your hit and miss results, I would guess your technique is the way most people learn to mount:
[LIST=1]
Start with pedals at whatever angle
Press down on bottom pedal to get the wheel under you
place other foot on the top pedal and hope your center of mass ends up a tiny bit ahead of the bottom of your wheel
If that happened, ride away
[/LIST]
I call that a Dead Spot Mount, and it's hard to do it any other way when you're still figuring out how to control the wheel. The problem with this method is you're always ending up with one foot at the bottom, and no easy way to get going.
What to do? In step 3, bring your second foot up in front of the pedal and push it 1/4 turn to the rear (or so). All other things being equal, the bottom of the wheel is now definitely behind your center of mass, and your pedals are relatively level, which makes it easy for you to start pedaling. Which you have to do or end up stepping off the front.
But pulling the wheel back, even a little bit, is terrifying! Yup, that’s what stops people from trying it. At first. But eventually, you know you’re going to want to pedal that wheel in both directions; that’s one of the cool things about unicycles. So a preliminary step you can work on is to practice idling, while holding onto something.
Idling is controlled by the foot at the bottom. The top foot doens’t do much, while the bottom foot has all the power. All you have to do, at first, is keep the wheel moving back and forth, without getting stuck in the dead spot, and without going past horizontal. Let your body figure out the rest. Feel that pendulum action. You can’t push the wheel the opposite way until your weight starts to settle in that direction. You’ll get it after doing it for a bit.
Anyway, doing that will get you more comfortable with the idea of letting the wheel go backward. Quick, before the snow & ice covers everything! (Do you have a basement, perchance?)
Is riding in gravel any way like riding in soft sand? I think it is mighty difficult, but if I have some momentum and stand up from the seat I can plow through. We don’t have thick gravel around here to ride in, but soft sand we have aplenty, especially after a dry summer. Also riding uphill in soft sand with bumps here and there is quite a challenge.
Today as I went riding I had put the seat a bit lower on the Nimbus 29" and while riding noticed the tire was a bit too soft, but I was too lazy to ride back to the car. I found that riding with 20PSI is not so easy and the tire sticks to the ground. Also found that mounting a 36" with 20psi is quite difficult. Normally I ride with 30-35 PSI.
Setonix, I have not tried riding in sand, I ‘m not up to that level yet. I think loose sand would be be an absolute leg killer. I do have some loose gravel in my yard but I try to avoid it. Mostly my driveway is hard packed dirt with lots of loose stones and pot holes. That’s gonna keep me challenged for quite a while. I hit a pothole while riding the drive way two days ago and had an upd. When I ran it out I pulled a hamstring muscle, wow that got my attention. Just a bit tender today so I’ll be good to go. So a tip from a newbie, ‘don’t get old’.
We have had another pretty good snowfall so I guess it’s here until April. My uni practice is going to be somewhat limited. I did see a very good post from Saskatchewanian a while ago about studding tires, so I may try that to keep me going for the winter. I finally had pretty good success with free mounting and can get going on most tries. Thank you all for helping with that, it was tough, a few pedal bites and some exciting high speed sprints off the seat but nothing serious. My riding is still lousy, the driveway is uneven and full of potholes so most of my runs are only a few hundred yards. I also have a hard time going up inclines of any sort. I think it’s because I can’t get a lot of speed up before I have a upd. I know I should be hanging onto the seat with one hand, but I seem to need it to flail the air. My riding slowly is not too bad though. There is a piece of seldom used paved road nearby that I should try again as it was quite helpful for learning to ride. Anyhow I’m pleased with how well I have done so far and still keen to get good at this.
In snow (especially cold dry snow like you get) you may never need studs in your wheel. I’ve ridden 100s of miles on snow and ice and never used a studded wheel. On a 36 freemounting on ice or on a 36 wheel in a rut on ice will give me issues. On a 24, 26 and 29 without studs I regularly ride steep single track downhill in snow and ice without studs.
Bungeejoe, wow all that riding on snow and ice is impressive. I just went out to have a practice, I missed my first freemount and when I came down on my right foot there was a click in my right calf. I don’t ‘t know what that is, probably because I didn’t stretch before going out and it’s -6c. It is kinda sore and seized up at the moment so I hope to try again tomorrow. Anyhow your information is good news for my winter riding.
I don’t have studs on my tires either.
I would run at the lowest pressure you can handle for grip.
Try and keep the riding as smooth as possible to avoid harsh tire torque (slipping).
A few more days of this cold weather and we might end up with snow free frozen lakes up here to ride on.
Nothing like a frozen surface to encourage smooth riding.
Hi Ted, way back at the beginning you suggested a tire pressure of 22 psi, which is where I have been since. It seems to be a good compromise for dirt and paved roads. If we do get clear ice for a while I’ll drop the pressure down and try using the lake as a parking lot. A large smooth surface would be a first. The lake in front of my house usually freezes about 19 November but i’ll wait till almost the end of the month for some thickness. Riding on the lake sounds like fun, swimming, not so much.
Pad up, because ice is an unforgiving surface to fall on. Even if you have a studded tire, remember your footwear still might slip out from under you on a dismount!
