when i try to hop i always fall off after a couple bouces. does anyone have any tips on how to mend my problem.
Make sure you’re putting all your weight on the pedals, and also make sure the pedals are completely parallel to the ground.
Also remember to hold the seat tightly. Beginners should learn to hold it with both hands first, before you try one.
uniononewheel
when i try to hop i always fall off after a couple bouces. does anyone have any tips on how to mend my problem.
I’ve only recently picked up hopping, previous intermittent attempts ended in falling off like you after a couple of bounces.
The first improvement came when I started hopping higher. It felt as if when I pushed myself to hop higher that the uni came up beneath my center of gravity, so when it landed I was in a position of balance and so could hop again before falling off.
My previous hops were too low to allow this to happen so I’d fall off, in turn this meant I didn’t have confidence so the next set would be too low till I’d give up thinking it was too hard.
Secondly, I often find myself in a position of balance and instead of hopping I keep a kind of bounce going but without a actual hop i.e. the rhythm continues in my body movement but I don’t actually hop. I think this is useful especially when learning cos at the early stages hopping is very intense exercise.
Lastly, I keep in mind advice from Kris Holm’s hopping workshop video clip about thinking of hops as corrections between still stands rather than pogoing i.e. don’t just hop up and down continuously as if you are pogo sticking.
Agree re ensuring your weight is equal between the pedals.
Also, for me, I started with small hops in place. It helped to not just try to bounce straight up and down, but rather to think of each hop as a balance correction in the direction I was leaning/falling. In other words, you use the hop as a recentering movement. Sometimes you’ll get too far off center and fall, but many times you’ll be able to hop longer by correcting. Then with practice, you won’t have to think about that anymore and hopping will become natural. Then go for height. The reason I didn’t go for height initially was that the extra energy I had to put into going higher would throw me farther off center and make it difficult to restabilize. Different strokes, but this was what worked for me.
Mostly, just keep practicing. You’ll get it.
Jerry
Re: need help with hop
uniononewheel wrote:
> when i try to hop i always fall off after a couple bouces.
> does anyone
> have any tips on how to mend my problem.
I learned by pedaling to choclate foot forward and hopping once or twice
and then pedaling away. I gradually added hops until I could do 10 or
so. This way you can usually tell when you are “losing it” and can
pedal away and try again without a dismount. Hey, it worked for me!
Mostly just practice. When you are sick of it practice something else
and try again later.
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http://web2news.com/?rec.sport.unicycling
Tire pressure can make a difference too.
I used to be a maximum-pressure, hard tire rider until I started to learn to hop.
Keep enough pressure that you don’t bottom out. I went out with too low pressure last week and ended up with a "snake bite” (double pinch flat from landing too hard on both sides of the rim, looks like a sidewinder attacked the tube).