Schlumpf Cross/Complimentary Training

Riding Advice
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Now right off the bat - I’ve searched the forum and found some useful and interesting posts about what folks have trained in that has helped their unicycling prowess - martial arts, fencing etc.

I’ve been doing calisthenics strength training for about 9 months now - ~4 times a week and it helps a ton in terms of making me feel a bit more secure in upper body resilience if I were to wipe out badly.

Interestingly the skill of hand-standing which we’ve been working on systematically - and where I’m seeing success, has a very similar sense of mental barrier (fear factor I guess) akin to shifting up into high gear for me on a Schlumpf.

With the Schlumpf. I can actually shift and do it pretty well when my brain lets me.

We also train in ring work doing Skin The Cat variations - and this is also good for going past what feels physically possible.

But for shifting up - I know it needn’t be such a struggle so have been looking at ways to help this via some non-obvious cross training or quirky ideas -

On a side note I recently saw a video (that I can’t find again!) - that was about soviet style athletics training - or perhaps we should say mental conditioning whereby an athlete would be set a range of movement exercises that wouldn’t say “heavy” in terms of strength or instance fatigue but were there to - I think they termed it: neural psychology - whereby the premise was that your body no matter how strong won’t do a think it doesn’t have direct experience or pathway exploration of movement wise.

Repeated movements via high intensity that pre conditioned the somatic system to then know what was possible.

I guess now I’ve typed this, this is basically what practice is of any sport or art form. But this soviet system was more hyper intensional.

It got me thinking with my shifting fear - aside from riding tons more in 1:1.5 where I’ve been helped into it from stationary - I could try:

  • Standard one footed on yoga blocks with my eyes closed while I pop a ballon near my ankle with stick - so I get the shock factor and stay still

  • Transition weight from rear foot to front foot while atop a stack of yoga blocks per foot

  • Force myself to half trip and run down steep slopes (conditioning fast run outs from UPDs)

  • Forward rolls at speed

  • Having someone try to trip me up with a long stick while I bound over it with the grace of a young gazelle

Granted my gym training is helping in the push up area which I think would help with a bad smack to the ground but doesn’t really resolve in a cross training sense the movements of the body for shifting up and then maintaining high gear riding.

To be clear I can ride in high - yet the metal side still creeps in and is probably what fatigues me more than the unicycling.

Lastly - my freemount is rubbish and basically nonexistent and I wonder if the absence of this ability in actual fact is a general unicycle skill set weakness. As in it isn’t just useful for getting up on the darn thing, but also helps with weird shifts etc…

Anyway. These are my musings and I’d welcome any input from those riding Schlumpfs or just unicycles where a fear factor was over come.

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I remember not so long ago being afraid of riding in high gear - right before Unicon 20. Not that I was incapable of, but my brain would stop my body from riding whenever I hit some speed (between 20 and 25 kph). At the time, I had to dismount instantly. The same was happening on a bike… It was due to an actual injury that hit my mental more than expected :face_with_peeking_eye:

How have I trained against this fear? Well… I think I have “simply” forced myself to ride, again and again and again, until the fear wasn’t anymore. Is that the answer you were looking for? :sweat_smile:
Otherwise, something I have found useful to learn how to confidently shift is to ride a freewheel. It helps in not being afraid of this little moment when the gear is not totally engaged.

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That’s a perfectly fine answer. And already being tackled via long twice weekly rides.

I’d been simply curious about non-unicycle training that could help compliment the muscle activations needed in riding.

Funnily enough while this can be disconcerting at times. With the new hubs I don’t find it nearly as prominent or impactful.

It’s the going for it - the pre press hesitation that is harder to push past.

Today’s ride I’m on now - had two directly successful shifts and rides with one failed one in the middle.

Doing more of it is key of course. I’d however love to find a why to simulate the process so I could do this at home every few hours and get in extra practice that way.

I think my next port of call will be a simple circular cycle track that doesn’t present tons of direct challenge. But just a space to go round and round. Then aim to go round and round in high gear for 45 mins plus. To programme the body to the base line movement.

Where I ride current has lots of track hurdles and mini challenges. Easy is 1:1 but slows down exposure to high gear riding.

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I mean it’s a topic that I actually wanted to cover in a tutorial on a bit more detail (whenever I find the time to make some again, but the gist of it is:
Overcoming fear is a skill that you can practice and learn and that translates from one area to another. So I think to practice that, you can find any kind of challenge that scares you but is realistic to achieve with your skill.

I’d say find more of those challenges, such as handstands that you mention and get more practice with the process. Whatever it is (examples from me personally would include walking up closer to the edge on viewpoints since I’m somewhat scared of heights, or making video tutorials where I speak to the camera to break some fears of public speaking), you can find challenges that are scary but realistically doable.

A few tips of things that help me in the process from me:

  • Rationalizing: Objectively looking at the risks and your motivations, weighing them against each other.

  • Visualization: Envision yourself doing the trick and what doing it will feel and be like.

  • Preparation: Find challenges and practice working up to it that may be of lower difficulty or less intimidating. In your case I think practicing on an athletics track with smooth surface and no distractions is probably a good first step, then you could up the difficulty there. Maybe shifting right after a corner or quickly after mounting.

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Maybe it helps to identify what exactly is it that causes the mental barrier.
In my case the main mental issue with shifting is the sudden change of conditions: Slower pedaling, less leverage (like suddenly riding with way shorter cranks) when trying to keep the balance. And the fact, that I don’t know when the shift will be accomplished; I would have to mount shorter cranks to be able to reliably shift on the first try. So in my case I’d have to look for exercises that give me confidence in my ability to cope with those sudden changes.

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If you are less comfortable, and more likely to dismount in high gear or when changing up, I do wonder whether this is a playing into the mental barrier quite a bit. If you mess up and have to get off (even if it’s just an easy UPD onto your feet), if getting back on isn’t trivial, you’re going to be more risk-averse.

Is there a specific reason you can point to around why your freemount isn’t very good/consistent? Does this apply across all wheel sizes, or just the larger ones you happen to have Schlumpf hubs in?

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You’re really onto something I think.

Last ride - I was literally grinning from ear to ear as I’d shifted up first time directly after I’d started my ride. A relief was sensed.

But when this run of high gear riding ended - the chore of mounting it again was a right pain. So it probably does play into not wanting to mess up a shift - so added pressure to nail it every time. Like I was trying to remount for about 20 mins!

Uff - it’s probably due to a few things:

  • Having once been able to freemount even 36ers and it now having been lost as a skill (I find relearning a lot hard than learning for the first time)
  • Not enough practice and relying on a rollback type bad practice issue
  • Plain old impatience - time to ride these days feels very precious and limited as when I’m out and about my wife is looking after our two young kids - so I tend to simply get fed up trying to freemount and just find a tree or branch or something and hoist myself up so I can enjoy my riding
  • Infuriating contrast of skills - when in the zone I’d say my riding is pretty efficient and streamlined technique wise - so by contrast my free-mounting just feels so basic and beginner-eque

I think it does currently apply to all wheels really. Smaller ones are just easier to get away with a rollback “it’ll do the job” freemount.

Of course the aim or want is the fixed starting foot to leap up and start pedalling type - slick style and practical.

I am sticking these days to just one size so my brain doesn’t get confused too much changing types - and that’s 29”.

To be clear it’s basically another mental block as I can often leap up onto the wheel where it will be in a kind of standstill - balanced state - but I just don’t manage to pedal forward.

I will take the two clearly useful points that’s come up from this thread - one tyre a distraction free cycle circuit for high gear exposure, and two do a solid bit of free mounting practice using a nongeared wheel just for the skill set and the liberation.

Thanks for the bouncing of points here and leading me to some kind of self revelations :folded_hands::heart::gear::crossed_fingers:

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I wanted to just air and share some follow up observation from today’s ride -

This was more focused on a force-myself-to-push-past-fear type approach. And by and large it was definitely helpful. Shifting is more predictable and muscle memory clicks in nicely.

I had one shift that nearly ended badly, but I managed to wrestle it into a successful progression to high gear riding.

I think I saw the direct connection between the freemounting skill and shifting at that point.

When trying to improve my freemounting - I have had similar experiences as I had with the nearly bad shift caught and saved - and more often than not my freemounts aren’t saved.

So I realised for me as the effectively beginner Schlumpf rider and beginner at freemounting - I need to actually think about shifting the hub and more like mounting a new wheel.

This might seem like a bit of a basic realisation but I think the term or mental picture of shifting gears conjures up something easy or casual. On my normal bikes gear changes are speedy and something I hardly need to think about. For me on the Schlumpf I need to think about it practically speaking as mounting a new wheel while riding the first.

Just approaching it this way ended up having me handle the shift-movement more readily as I was thinking about the next challenge more like mounting a unicycling - not just shifting a hub to high gear.

No doubt those who are experts at geared riding and can ace every mount, would probably see no need or benefit to re-term a “shift” to a “mount” - but from today’s ride I recognised that there is a connection between the skill of freemounting and shifting/mounting up to 1:1.5 from 1:1

So I’ll be enjoying more stationary to 1:1 freemounting practice as well as secondary mounting to high from 1:1 on my next adventures :gear::flexed_biceps::star_struck:

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Just out of curiosity: At what speed did you do the shifts?
I noticed that I’m doing them at a very slow speed, about walking speed infact. Even when shifting from low to high gear. I think that’s because I fear to UPD if I shifted at higher speeds. Of course, if shifting down it makes perfect sense to first reduce the speed as you have to be able to pedal fast enough in low gear after the shift.

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You’re dead right. I am probably doing the same and I’d bet money on the shifts that are most successful being those where there is a bit more speed and flow to the whole thing.

I’ve become fully aware that ideally I’d be shifting when the revolution rate in 1:1 starts to feel too much. But I definitely do it more carefully and slowly so as to not have to deal with a speedy UPD.

This is why I’d says the pros out there would call this a shift - plain and simple - but for us learning mere mortals, as slowly speeds it is like a new mount from say 6mph up to a massive wheel.

Key to all of this is one needs lots of exposure to high gear and how to get there, to get there - and there in lies the rub.

Pushing through fear is probably how many unicyclists learned but with this task it hasn’t stopped me from hoping that perhaps learning another skill would speed up this Schlumpf shift-mount learning process too.

Time to get that old jump rope out perhaps?!?

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An important issue in my case is the fact that with my current setup the only way to shift predictably and reliably is to use motorcycle shoes (for ankle protection) and shift using the ankles. I‘d need to have shorter cranks or zero Q cranks in order to increase my success rate when shifting with the heels. I’ll probably try shorter cranks later this year, but I‘m not in a hurry - Schlumpfing is rather low on my list of priorities, at the moment.
It‘s not surprising that if you don‘t know whether it‘ll click and shift at your third attempt or at your eighth your not gonna try to shift in „full speed“.

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It seems to be something really common for newcomers. I remember doing so as well. It can be frightening to try and shift at high speed… And this is probably one of the reasons why it is much easier to train on a small wheel: when at low speed after the shift, you won’t have to “re-mount” your uni with a really big effective wheel. You’ll be able to push as required to keep the wheel turning. Au contraire, on a big wheel, you’ll have to push a lot to keep the wheel turning if you were riding at a low speed.

On another point, riding at a slow speed also makes the shift easier to happen because you don’t push as much on the pedals, so you can relieve pressure much more easily and the mechanism can then shift gears with no pressure :person_in_lotus_position:

To conclude, you’re doing things right! Keep going and you’ll master this wonderful hub :flexed_biceps:

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