I just bought a unicycle after years of having not ridden one. One thing
I’ve noticed is it’s just not comfortable to ride. My body feels generally
strained and my knees are not too fond of it (they start to ache after a
bit). I can’t ride that far without taking a break.
It’s a 24" Schwinn, and I know the seatpost is too short. I need about
another inch of seat height. I’ve ordered a new seatpost, it’s supposed to
arrive on tuesday.
Could the seat height be my only problem? Any other things to look into? Or
will I just get used to this in time? I don’t remember riding being like
this in the past.
If you are just riding distances on flat surfaces you should be relaxed and the only discomfort you should feel is soreness from the saddle. If you have not ridden in a long time, maybe you’re flailing about and doing alot of work to maintain your balance. Your seat being too low is likely to hurt your knees. Review the past threads for references to this. It is generally accepted that your seat height is adjusted correctly for riding distances if your leg is fully extended (knee straight) when your heel is on the down pedal. You should ride with the balls of your feet on the pedals. If you are working on skills you might want to lower the seat an inch or even more.
If the unicycle is a new Schwinn it is OK quality although a bit heavy and is probably not causing you any problem. If it is old, used, rickety, rusted, or in otherwise poor condition you may be doing some work to compensate for the inadequacies of the unicycle itself.
Harper described the consensus about seat height just fine. If your
seat is lower by “only” an inch, it shouldn’t have to matter too much
for your knee pain and certainly not cause straining in your body.
Still, it’s more comfortable to set the height OK
Maybe the knee pain is primarily a matter of failure to observe the
old adagium “Weight On Seat”? The body straining may be caused by your
working to keep balanced. If so, it’ll go away with more practice.
Klaas Bil
On Sat, 20 Apr 2002 18:11:37 GMT, Matt Greer <matthew-greer@uiowa.edu>
wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I just bought a unicycle after years of having not ridden one. One thing
>I’ve noticed is it’s just not comfortable to ride. My body feels generally
>strained and my knees are not too fond of it (they start to ache after a
>bit). I can’t ride that far without taking a break.
>
>It’s a 24" Schwinn, and I know the seatpost is too short. I need about
>another inch of seat height. I’ve ordered a new seatpost, it’s supposed to
>arrive on tuesday.
>
>Could the seat height be my only problem? Any other things to look into? Or
>will I just get used to this in time? I don’t remember riding being like
>this in the past.
>
>Matt
–
“To trigger/fool/saturate/overload Echelon, the following has been picked automagically from a database:”
“SLI, Razor, BLACKER”