As of yesterday I’ve been experimenting with doing freestyle with bare feet. This gives a much better feel for what you’re doing. The problem is that I’ve got metal pedals with pins which are rounded off but still hurt after a while of riding and prevent me from doing any small hopping. I just found the perfect solution. I now use those flexible shoes that are made for walking on coral and so on. I’ve started working on gliding which is really fun even though I’m only going about 3 revolutions of the wheel at best and haven’t got the other foot onto the frame yet (so it’s not really gliding yet). The shoes work great for that particularly. If you can find some shoes like these get them because mine were only about $10 Australian I think.
I did wonder about that looking at your photos and the video. “Cor”, I thought, you must have feet of steel!
I think my feet are southern pansy feet; for years my bed was aligned that way, I think that’s why. Standing on any pedals would be painful, let alone ones with pins in!!!
those things look like water slipers, heh. I guess whatever floats your boat.
I didn’t know riding barefoot gives you a better feel for what your doing, all it did was hurt my feet. I dont think riding barefoot is very safe tho, i just do it when i’m lazy, but i dont do any tricks. One slip and you could loose a toe, yipes! Yeah, stick to shoes man.
I’ve always thought of mine as being more like feet of tissue paper. Compared to a lot of my friends my feet are also pansy feet.
I think the shoes look great! (in a goofy sort of way). They’re now almost worn through after about 30mins of practicing the thing where you pedal with one foot and put the other foot onto the wheel. I’m getting alright at this and I think I’m pretty close to getting that other foot up onto the frame and turning it into gliding!!! The right side of my tyre is now grey from the shoes wearing down. I got up to 12 full pedal revolutions down a hill and it was surprisingly even (ie. not putting much pressure onto the foot that’s pedalling). The problem is that I keep turning to the left :).
Here’s a little photo of the grey you can see on the tyre. You can’t see very well how worn down they are though. How could I go about reinforcing my freestyle shoes with something? Some sort of a coating or something. It guess it’s not really possible to do a good job of it.
I did wonder about that looking at your photos and the video. “Cor”, I thought, you must have feet of steel!
I’d thought he had feet of steel too. Like Superman.
I got “Sure-grips” on my unicycle and if I ride bare-feeted,
It hurts. I’ll be upgrading something different soon, Probably Metal one’s. I have to browse at Unicycle.com soon.
David.
One slip and you could loose a toe, yipes! Yeah, stick to shoes man.
Yeah Speeedj your right. I’ve lost two (2) Big Toe nails in my feet. Both Left & Right Foot due to an accident with those dreaded Old Twin Concrete Laundry Tubs. I’d had them ingrown til up to 1984. (1980 I had the accident) I Simply cannot ride barefeeted. I’d stick to shoes were I can. Don’t wear Thongs too, They do get caught, Particularly if you going to ride a Chain Driven Giraffe Unicycle. They do get caught in the chain if you not too careful too. David.
I have a pair of wrestling boots, but they were $60 and I got a deal. If you live near a national sports you can get an ok pair of boots on the tables for cheap. The only promblem I can see with the boots would be you couldn’t have pins in your pedals and if it’s wet your feet will just slip off. A definate advantage is that if you buy split sole boots you can flex your foot a lot more, you also have a fair bit of ankle protection. I’ve used my boots for about two wrestling seasons (about 6 months) and haven’t had a problem with them bracking down or anything. If you have any questions about the boots just ask.
