Finally got some one-foot riding going on last night. As I learn new skills, I am forced to learn certain little lessons from scratch - which is part of the appeal. I’m wondering if any of you have noticed or have practiced these little tricks that I found to be very neccessary.
I knew putting all the weight on the seat was important, but my greatest successes came when I actively thought about jamming all of my weight on the saddle and none on my feet.
The second biggest thing was when, after I got my right foot off the pedal and locked snugly on the crown, I started putting a lot of weight down on that foot. I found that my weight is pretty equally divided between the saddle and the foot up on the crown. I think this both helped with keeping the weight from my pedal-foot and also kept the weight side-to-side balanced so I don’t lean.
I’m thinking that the next time I go out, I’ll switch to picking my left foot off the pedal until I’m just as good with that side.
I think you should start learning both left and right one footing instead of just your dominate foot. My friends and I learned our dominate foot without even considering trying our non-dominant foot, but a month later we tried our to learn on our non-dominant foot, and it took hardly any time at all. Once you get one its easy to get the other, so I guess you could learn both at once too.
P.S. Us unicyclists in Richmond would really like to go muniing with you Nick some time. We saw a picture of you with Kris Holm, and hadn’t realized you were so prominent in the unicyclist community. I bet you could show us a thing or two about muni.
-Hugh
For tricks like one-footed, could you get away with learning on a trials uni, rather than a freestyle?
Hey, how about that, guys? I’m prominent now. I’m an eminent figure in the field. That must have been a Moab picture. I made a lot of great friends at Moab and Seattle (UNICON last summer). They’d all be nice enough to back up my “prominent” status, I’m sure. But, they all know that I’m one of the weakest riders out there.
All these real prominent people are such great folks. All you have to do is show up to these gatherings, no matter how skilled you are, and your one of the tribe.
I can talk a good game, and I could problably teach you some “theory”, but I don’t think I could show you too much.
That’s funny. I posted that same question months ago. I’m learning all my freestyle skills on a trials uni.
This guy, with a Miyata saddle and a MUCH longer seat post 
-> http://www.unicycle.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=585
Anyway, some of the conventional wisdom says that the wider tire helps, and doesn’t have any drawbacks. Since I practice all my stuff outside, I think this uni is great for what I’m doing. The yuni/nimubus II frame is great for one footed stuff. Flat crown is very important for what I’m doing. One day I’d like to try this stuff on a real freestyle uni to see if its any harder.
I find my 24" x 3" Gazz quite good for one foot riding (which I’m only now starting to get the hang of) because it takes more pressure in the wrong direction to make it fling out from underneath you. I’ve never tried one foot riding on a freestyle uni, so I can’t compare the two.
Andrew