Newbie here, trying to learn how to ride. Been practicing for three months and having difficulty with left-right balance. Making 100 ft. runs but once I get out of kelter, can’t seem to recover. I’ve tried about everything I know of, so thought someone could give me a new tip. I realize it’s hard to explain in words something you do subconsciously, but at this point, anything may be helpful. I know I’m a very slow learner but I’m gonna get it one of these days. Thanks very much.
Keep your weight on the saddle. Common beginner’s mistake to put far too much weight on the pedals.
Look a reasonable distance ahead. Common beginner’s mistake to look at the floor a few feet ahead.
Keep your speed up. Common beginner’s mistake to proceed one step at a time, trying to regain balance after every step or every few steps.
Pedal smoothly. Common beginner’s mistake to keep slowing right down or stopping. You should only ever fall off the front.
Bon chance, mon brave!
If you are having too much trouble, you can practice in a long hallway. Just run one fingertip across each wall as you ride to help you stay up straight.
There are two ways that you will eventually recover from falling sideways. The first is by shifting your hips left and right in order to get your weight back over the wheel. The second is by slightly turning the way that you are falling. If you are falling, then you shift the uni so that it is pointing the way that you are falling: Falling to the left, then shift-turn the uni to the left. Thus, you will now be falling forward, since you are now facing the way that you were falling. Now all you have to do is pedal a bit faster to get the wheel back under your weight.
That’s all unicycling really is: Falling forward, and then pedalling to get the wheel back under your weight. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Practice.
I too am a slow learner and what that means is you need loads of patience and practice.
But keep going and you will get there. Don’t lose hope. Just keep going.
Cathy
Explain “out of kelter.” Does it mean you can’t go in the direction you’re trying to go? If you’re making 100’ runs, it’s time to start choosing your path. Try turning right on purpose, then turning left on purpose. Getting the turns under control may clear up your problem. Also use the advice above.
Re: Left-Right balance?
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 13:00:40 -0500, spenoit wrote:
>someone could give me a new tip.
Good responses so far. One to add: Contrary to what many people think,
the point in keeping balance while riding a unicycle is not so much to
keep your centre of mass above the wheel. The reason for this is that
you can’t directly control where your centre of mass goes. So what you
do instead is to keep the wheel under your centre of mass. That means
e.g. that if you tend to fall to the left, you need to steer the wheel
to the left so that it gets back under you. You do this steering by
twisting your lower body. It may help to spread out your arms wide,
that way your upper body will provide more ‘reaction momentum’ against
which you can twist your lower body.
Sorry if all of this was too obvious.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
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I think that the ability to balance left and right will come naturaly. When i was learning, i didn’t concentrate much on keeping my balance left and right, but forwards and backwards. Then when i started riding longer distances, i could already balance left and right. And it took me 3 days to learn to ride this way
With me (so far) side to side balance hasn’t been near the issue as controlling front to rear. Except when I go to turn that is. On a straight run when I felt myself starting to lean to the left I ended up doing a disco-type pose with my arms to recover. Eventually that went away as I was able to go longer distances between UPD’s. Just put in the hours. I have put in over two hundred hours so far and am nowhere near what most people can do in that same amount of time. I just keep plugging along though. 
Thanks for all the great replys. After a short practice today, I felt I had a little more control. I was concentrating on keeping as much weight on the seat and pedaling smoothly. Easier said than done.
It might also be worth visiting www.unicycle.2ya.com for tips on learning to unicycle.
Good luck,
Andrew
My “breakthrough” was steering in a zig zag on purpose.
In my mind, I was “forcing failure” and it resulted in the ability to ride.
I found it best to steer sharply simply to go in a straight line.
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