I can crank grab but i want to learn to pedal grab.I can do the grab but i am unsure on the swingy up bit.Some seem to swing the wheel loads like Kris Holm in universe 1, when I do this I miss the pedal and catch the crank and land unbalanced.Or if i try the method were you hold it flatish and hardly move it like Ryan Atkins but when i do this i seem to land with the cranks vertical.
HELP!!!
Ben
Also looking for advice.
David
yeah, that would be more than helpful to get some tips on that,
Jas’o
i can’t find any info that i need i know how to crank grab already.
Ben
Alright, I’ll do this one… First, it would be helpful to know if you hop to the left or right, right foot back or left, and if you do it seat out or seat in and if you hold with your right or left hand. I hop to my left, hold the seat with my right hand seat out, with my right foot back. With that in mind, there are two kinds of pedalgrabs I know how to do. The first kind is normal, like how Ryan Atkins does it, and the second is a crankflip, like how Mike Middleton does it. I will describe the first kind.
Background: It should be mentioned that it took me over 3 months to learn to crankgrab, and it took me about 3 to learn to pedalgrab, but just due to lack of practice. I learned crankgrabs on a cement ledge with sand on one side and concrete on the other. The ledge was about 20" off the concrete and 6" off the sand, and was about 11" wide. I practiced pedalgrabs on a box that was 2’ off the ground and had a top that was 2’x2.5’. I landed my first ever pedalgrab on a concrete ledge that was 16" high and had a top surface of abot 8’x30’.
Now onto technique: Here I assume you can already crankgrab. If you can’t, learn. Also, I assume you prefer to hop seat out. If you don’t, all is not lost, but things may be a little bit harder. Find a large ledge, preferrably about 10’x10’ or bigger. This is for the mental aspect. If you never feel nervous, ignore this. The ledge should be relatively low to the ground, so no matter how you fall (which you will), it’s a light, easy fall. Now, ignore the first part of the pedalgrab, where you get up to pedal. You should already know this from crankgrabs. There was a time for me where I’d land on the pedal and then go to crank and then rubber, like muniracer.
Climb onto the object and place your pedal on it, so that when you hold the seat and let the uni hang by the pedal, the crank just barely doesn’t touch the ledge. Now, put your foot on the pedal, and put all your weight on it. Move the seat back and forth so that the wheel begins to swing back and forth along the pedal’s axis of rotation. Now, stop the wheel from moving when the cranks are in the orientation that you would normally hop with. Here comes the hard parts. Put your outside foot on the pedal, trying not to look, as this may throw off you balance on the pedal.
Once your foot is comfortably on the pedal (doesn’t need to have any pressure), pull up on the seat so that your rear pedal is a bit higher up than your front pedal. Now for the hardest part. In one movement, pull in and lift up on the seat, so you end up jumping up off of the outside part of your pedal. Your pedals may approach vertical, and once you’ve gotten them as close to vertical as you dare, shift your weight onto both pedals and push back on the back pedal so you rotate the pedals back to horizontal. You may land on the object before this motion is complete. If so, treat it like a high seat out hop and just hop forward to adjust. You have completed a pedalgrab.
The proccess is extremely difficult to explain, and the best advice I can give is to do what feel right. I still can’t do a pedalgrab like what Kris does in U1. I just lifted the wheel a bit and went for it on the ledge. It was a low-stress move because of the size of the object, so I had no reservations. I landed it on my second try. Don’t be surprised if it takes you a while to land it. Common problems I have is that I end up landing with vert. pedals, or goofy footed. Just getting used and accustomed to the move is good. Eventually your on a ride and you just feel like you can do it, and if your already accustomed to trying the move, you’ll land it, I guarantee. Within a week of landing my first pedalgrab I had pedalgrabbed onto a column 32" off the ground that had a kinda crowned top. Three days later I pedalgrabbed over a chain link fence. Basically, once you can pedalgrab, a whole new world of obstacles opens up.
Good Luck.
I’ll try to answer more questions later. I may have missed some concepts, or be inaccurate on some stuff, so feel free to correct me.
P.S. thinuniking: Thanks for the punctuation! It’s infinitely easier to read.
Wow thanks.
David
!!! Like, grab the fence a little bit up, then jump and grab higher on the fence?!? I didn’t think that was possible!
i dont think thats what he meant, tho i suppose with bevan (i hope i spelled your name right, forgive me if i didn’t) anything is possible.
it was probably just a fence short enough to pedal grab on off of one hop.
-grant
Thanks a lot, I’ll get Peter to add the tip to the site.
Andrew
Success!
Well after skimming through this thread I decided that, after two years of unicycling, it was about time I tried a pedal grab…so I did. I successfully landed the going to rubber part of it on my second attempt but haven’t been able to successfully link the whole thing together yet (I only spent about 5 minutes). I did it on a rock in our garden with a reasonably sharp edge on it. It was fun.
I used the ‘swing the free pedal up as high as you dare and scare yourself before only just landing it’ method. I started with the free pedal at a little below horizontal.
So I’m happy now. 
Andrew
Congratjulations for landing it, Andrew! I also do the barely land it way, except on top of poles.
Thanks for the complement, but I just do all the way to the top in one hop. You can’t really cheat around that, unless the fence is angled.
I need some help guys…
Hey,
First of all, it is extremely hard to do the second “to rubber” part of a crank hang or a pedal grab for me, and, maybe, all females. Probly has to do with the upper-body strength issue. Do any of you know any females who can do this!?
Okay, so I can crank hang just fine (I grind backwardz!!) and I can usually pedal grab pretty good. Just onto a low object, mind you. I am very comfortable in the crank hang position, as I can do seat drop and stuff like that. But I have yet to make it up to rubber on anything from a grab or a hang. I got very close…but didn’t quite make it. Damn!!
So, I would like to know if you guys (and maybe girlz!) think its easier to get up to rubber from a pedal grab or a crank hang…just for the purposes of practice, I have heard that pedal grabbing is more accurate and stuff…but which would get me closer to making it to rubber? Also, if I DO do a pedal grab, would it help me at all to do the thing where you swing the uni (with the seat still in your hand) around the pedal 360 +/- degrees, like they did in Under No Influence? Or would it just be best to swing just a little, like you’re rocking or idling? I jump with the seat out in front of me, with my right foot back (I think I’m “goofy”) and hop to the right. Is this a good setup? I also use both hands on the seat, unless I’m just doing it seat-in, which seems a lot harder to me. Is that okay? Well, I mean, it’ll have to be okay, cuz there’s no way I’m getting that height using just one hand!!!
Another thought that occured to me was to use a smaller wheel (like a 16") or a lighter unicycle. Does this make sense? Has anyone tried it yet? I could maybe just use that for learning and then graduate to my KH20".
Oh, and, another question: when ppl pedal grab up onto something and then just keep their cranks horizontal the whole way through and hop up to rubber in this way, are they just pretty much pulling up on the seat as much as they need to to keep their cranks horizontal, like with grinding on the pedal, or do they actually just swing a little and I missed seeing that part?
Any tips on how I could get to rubber or gain more upper-body strenght would be much appreciated. It sucks to be a chick in this regard cuz, even though I can lift a 150-pound person up off of the group, I still can’t get this down!! Also, any tips on how to get my courage up to continue to do this with higher obstacles? I also thought about using my mini-trampoline to launch to get higher, use it to land on, or even do a kind of set-up where I grab or hang up onto something, and then have an obstacle over to the other side as the side that I just grabbed on which is not quite as tall (big a jump/hop) up to. And then try to land on rubber on that. It seems like it might work…give me some practice on hopping from the crank to rubber…??
Thanks so much guys,
L8er,
Well, I know you’ll see your other thread, but I replied to it and tried to describe a technique that you could use. You could also use the advice I state here, but that’s a different technique. It’ll work. For the advice I gave in the other thread, don’t listen to what is say here:
. That’s not correct when it comes to the move described in the other thread.
As for how people do pedalgrabs where it seems like their pedals are horizontal and they’re just jumping off the pedal, it’s an illusion. We lift the uni up past horizontal, and then do a quick swing up as we jump and then swing back to get back to horizontal, so we land with horizonatal pedals and start somewhere near horizontal. It looks like we don’t swing, but we do. Ryan Atkins and Kris Holm both do it this way. You never learn to just jump off the pedal. It’s just to hard to balance.
Hope this and the other post help.
Yeah it’s not about strength it’s all about technique!I mean gerblefranklin is like 15 and i am 16 so i am probli more muscular(not saying you weak gerblefranklin k!) and from what i have seen he can hop far higher then me!
Ben