Schlumpf learning journal

[mindbalance]

Ride 4 - High Gear has Clicked

Ok this is probably more like ride 5-6 but posting as 4 as today’s ride was the best so far as not just a mini practice session.

For those that don’t fancy reading all my thoughts below but are interested in one day trying a Schlumpf Uni -

TL;DR - I would wholeheartedly recommend it. It’s such a wonderful, exhilarating and enchanting feeling in high gear.

The core achievement today: riding the full path back (Saltford-Bath) in high and no UPDs or just getting off due to feeling nervous. And towards the end I could have gone faster and further. It all just clicked and the muscles were doing most of the actual processing / compute power.

This was for me a breakthrough as before this I had ridden several long stretches but I wasn’t ever feeling happy or in the zone. And it never really felt like an achievement but more a practice session.

Today’s 2 miles or so in high gear - while it is tiny I know, was still something I’m so pleased to have managed.

The path is fairly easy going if I’m honest. Nothing that challenging - however for some reason I’ve been having days where fear of UPDing in high gear was overpowering as I ended up backing off and going home “early”.

Not a great feeling.

But today I found that all the trying / fearing / practice has paid off.

Things I feel I learned so far:

KYT (Know Your Tyre)

What I mean by this is be fully confident in riding the GUni in 1:1 and with the tyre you’re going to be running in high.

I’d come to this 26”x2.4” unicycle from fixed unicycles with fatter tyres, and as such this was in actual fact a new feeling.

Getting super confident in the 1:1 ride and knowing how the wheel rolls and reacts has been key.
Today, I rode part of the way there in 1:1 and was imagining how it would feel, and how I’d react in the high gear mode. Odd approach and perhaps not really possible, but I think it helped. Like mapping out muscle memory from one ride and trying to push some forward learning to help when actually in high gear.

BITZ (Be In The Zone)

Sorry I had to keep with my theme. This relates to finding a way to be comfortable sitting on the uni in high gear. Before, I was helped up on to my G26er by my wife (Thanks Terez!) in 1:1.5 but then pushed myself to ride forwards. This sometimes worked for a bit but I wasn’t seated properly or connected to the unicycle. Taking the time to in effect sit and guided idle a bit gave me the sense of how the backwards / back pedal pressure worked and feel more “in control”.

The same process I’ve found is needed when going back to 1:1 after riding in high. (I’m not currently interested in learning to shift or freemount as at this stage I simply want to enjoy both gears and now I can ride without too much active thinking.)

CYS (Control Your Speed)

For me to have gained enough confidence to ride without worrying or stopping, I’ve realised I needed to work harder at controlling my speed. This doesn’t mean just riding slowly. But being deliberate in how fast I wanted to ride. This is more about, riding the unicycle than having the unicycle ride you (if that makes any sense). Sometimes I’ve felt that when not in control the unicycle is dictating the day’s ride, and really it’s better when it’s the other way around.

Knowing I can slow down and speed up consciously has given me a great deal of confidence - and today’s ride I feel this is the final piece of the jigsaw that helped me to relax and just ride!

RTBAM (Relax That Body and Mind!)

Before: I was 90% focused on thinking: worrying, fighting the fear, hyper analysing every bump and just plain tense, mentally and physically.

And let’s face it it just isn’t fun to ride like that. Nope it’s just plain energy draining.

However, once most of the technical stuff sinks into your muscles and the brain allows you to stop worrying about all the above - you are much more capable at actually riding and preventing 90% of the aforementioned fears or areas that cause the worry in the first place.

Today, that happened and it was such a relief. To actually ride like I’m used to when confident and in the zone, as like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders - and I was no longer riding with a gorilla on my back. To have the wheel be for the most part under your control - and where your body position starts to lean in the direction of travel rather than be tense and reticent - it is just amazing, and I love the sensation that came from today’s ride as it reminded me of when I first felt like I could ride a unicycle without actually over-focusing. The body was doing the bulk of the work.

I knew I could UPD or a mistake might happen but I put that aside as focused on riding and not worrying.

To sum up, this Schlumpf purchase and journey has only just begun for me - but I’m in the path now good and proper and it’s hands down the best thing I’ve decided to have a go at since, well - learning to unicycle in the first place.

Onward and, err… forwards, I shall happily go!

[Unigan]

It’s great reading your updates on your guni journey just be wary of overconfidence. I see you did mention controlling your speed. I’ve had a few stacks on my guni because of that but I mainly have trouble controlling my speed on the downhills as I’m just so used to riding flats I forget how much faster a slight downhill can make you move, you really need to be in control from the get go.

[mindbalance]

Thanks! And I can see what you mean. Thinking more about how my last post may read I can totally see the valid word of warning about being over confident re speed.

Happily I was on a measure of -10 confidence wise for ages and recently I’ve moved up to a level +1 - but my exuberance in my recent post came from the fact I never through I’d feel confident in high gear.

And yes your point about being weary of getting overconfident is a super important one. I think with guniing it can at times be hard to sense how fast you’re actually riding as it almost feels slow - perhaps due to the leg based cadence making you think it can’t be that fast due to the slower leg motion.

I currently ride very short distances as we (my wife Terez and our daughter in Urban Arrow) ride together and speed wise I’m only going about 8mph.

It’s been nice to finally ride at 8mph and feel steady and in that unified and connected zone. Don’t really know what switch is flipped but something tends to click and you almost become one thing - human and wheel, just rolling.

Hope to be able to get more rides in before it just gets total wet and miserable for our outings this season.

Happy guniing!

[mindbalance]

High Gear, No Fear - Video #2: It Clicked! - KH26 Geared Schlumpf Unicycle Journal

Hope this is the best place to post. Half a video in its own right but also a continuation of my detailing the experience of learning to Schlumpf.

Hope those that watch it find it enjoyable.

The most complex filming and edit I’ve done yet!

[Unigan]

I see you’ve removed the handlebar is that working better for you? You seem to be using your free arm to balance quite a bit. When I’m riding my 29" that doesn’t have a handlebar I tend to just keep my free arm in the same position hanging/pointing backward. Glad to hear your progress and updates keep us posted.

[mindbalance]

Yes I removed it as I found it caused a huge mental block for me when I was in fear of the high gear and riding in general. Sometimes keeping things as simple as possible helps when trying to focus on one core challenge. In effect I found myself thinking about where to put my hands and this was too much mental energy when I needed to focus on riding.

But I totally agree that a bar handle helps streamline the body position.

On my Oregon I should probably add one, as I find I like to grip the saddle handle with both hands - and only fling out my left if I needs a quick adjustment / correction.

At present I think I keep my left loose and directed out mainly as a slight safety precaution (it reassures me) for any UPD. But I have already been able to put both hands on the saddle and ride.

It still amazes me how helpful to balance it can be to have one hand out held up like a conductor conducting their orchestra. Micro shifts in hand position help with the ride, still surprises me how it can help.

Already feeling up for a session of shifting practice - going to aim for a manual swap from 1:1 and 1:1.5 and back many times. To keep shocking my body into the two zones. All this without worrying about freemounting.

Then I’ll go for it from 1:1 and try a shift in a nice safe and empty car park I know. It will be fun and interesting to see how I adjust now I’m that bit more confident with riding.

Seriously this is such a lovely machine to ride!!

[Unigan]

When I first tried a guni the owner didn’t have a handlebar attached and I was so used to riding a 36" with one. After I got the hang of some UPD’s on the guni in gear I asked if he could attach one as it really helps with hand positioning. Even now after months of riding I’m finding it works much more smoothly when you have both hands on the bar.

One hand balancing is really handy skill as there’s a lot of benefit to keeping one hand on the saddle at all times. It’s very rare I need to use both hands to balance at the same time, usually when I’m trying to ride very slowly but for most dicey bits I can get by one handed which makes it a little harder to adjust to 2 handed riding but when you do it really improves your riding.

[mindbalance]

100% agree on the bar for a 36er. I have one on my fixed standard 36er and it helps so much with that wheel. I can fully imagine how it works on your GUni!

I will try and add my spare TBar to the GUni again once I’ve played around with my trial and error shifting as I expect a lot of crashes.

I ride 100% of the time with my right hand locked onto the saddle and in the future I’d love to experiment with the Handle Saddle and alternative methods. I can imagine you could get quite a pace in with two hands on a TBar in high gear and the balance coming from core and legs alone.

So much to learn and I am itching for my next days off work!

[mindbalance]

After a near life threatening miscarriage for my wife over a month ago now - we were back out for a family ride again today, Boxing Day!

We were both so pleased to be out and riding again - and while my Schlumpf learning hasn’t been the most pressing concern of late, I’m pleased to say I wasn’t rusty and feel more confident than before.

Tons to learn but I’ll get there.

High Gear, No Fear - Video #3: Boxing Day Schlumpf Ride 2021

[Unigan]

Good that you can find time for your passions when your family are having trouble. Hope your wife is doing better and glad she’s still with you.

Is the UPD in the video shifting related or you just hit something? You have such a casual riding style there.

[mindbalance]

Thanks so much Totally agree …

That’s in fact a graceful dismount gone wrong
I think I mis-timed it or didn’t realise how strong gravity was or how fast the ground was coming up under me.

It really does look like a fall but I was trying to stop and get off nicely.

Did have one UPD earlier in the trip, and that was due to some people crossing the path trying to make way for me while I was also trying to mentally process a root or two under tarmac. I’m pleased to have had that UPD as it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it to be on a GUni

[mindbalance]

Musings on Geared Riding - inspired to get back to writing here due to reading @hillin post

This post is to allow me to share the realisations I’ve had that both speak directly to the process of shifting up, but also more generally on the art of this weird experience - riding a uni in high gear.

I’m by no means a great geared rider, but I’ve had lots of stuff whirling around my head about it and how it both makes me feel, and how I tackle areas I find either challenging or am fearful of.

I tend to use metaphor or simile or just plain odd ways to describe what I’ve experienced and that “eureka moment”, so please bear with

1– It’s all forward!!!

What do I mean by this? Moving forward on a unicycle is pretty essential as speed is your friend. I’ve recently realised (or my brain has finally transferred this realisation to my body, and disengaged its over-control) that focusing forward is even more important on a geared wheel.

I had a bad experience shifting when I was too behind the wheel and the free play of the shift led me to fall backward flat on my back. Not fun.

You want to fall forwards. Always!

2– It’s muscular

When it gets asked if a G26 is like a 39” wheel or rides like one - or if it is harder or easier etc etc, I personally kind of shrug and mental type back my reply: “It’s just different”.

Geared riding for me feels like a whole new animal in the Kingdom of The One Wheel. Is so different that I’d be inclined to say it isn’t anything like normal fixed unicycling, and the ride is much more like on a bike*!

(*in some ways, not the balancing bit— that’s like unicycling )

So the way the trippy, buzzy, feeling of riding a geared up unicycle strikes me most is: it’s muscular.

This means, it is initially more of a physical work out, and your legs do feel they are doing more to get the results you get. Am I riding a virtual 39” wheel? Possibly, I can’t tell - but I am riding a more muscular 26er, YES! It has more grunt, more weight, more heft, more leverage, more MORE…

But speed to my mind comes way down the list of what the system can offer. (Admittedly I’m a scaredy-cat, and enjoy the continued integral nature of my skeletal structure— but I don’t think you automatically just go faster in high gear)

So you’re landed with a new unicycling species - it’s more gorilla than rocket

I think this chunk of text completed grunt point … But what’s with the weight aspect, Felix?

It may be stating the obvious, but any wheel geared up will “feel” more weighty. I guess this is coming from the increase in the torque - cranks to tyre, and the fact that moving said crank from from 12 o’clock to 1, shifts tyre-rubber over dirt by double the distance.

I hear the words: “virtual 39er” forming on someone’s lips somewhere. Yes. I guess this is why we’ve come to coin the comparison via the extrapolated 1:1.5 wheel ratio. G34>>36er, G36>54” etc., etc….
But the wiring in your brain is being altered when riding an actual 26” wheel, in its high gear mode. I don’t believe it feels the same as if I just hopped on an actual 39” wheel. So we come back to my feeling the wheel is a weighty 26er in high

More heft and more LEVERAGE comes next, as a way to sum up the feelings I have too I feel.

With weight, you also get more heft or power if you like. Press down hard enough to go over X size root and you will quickly realise you don’t need to press as hard. At least I think that’s the case logically. The brain’s rewiring happens by itself and I’m no electrician… but the sense is that you get more for your input to the pedal rotation. That’s not to say with less energy expended though.

So heft being power, what does that really get you in the unicycling space? Power via gearing on a bike is all about speed in high, upwards gearing — but on a geared unicycle it’s also leverage.

I think the easiest thing to forget when first getting acquainted with high gear riding for me, was that it works forwards and backwards.

I could feel the forwards sensation and the increase in the rotational torque I had under my toes, but it took me a while to realise this was on tap in equal measure on rear pedal pressure, or in effect “braking”.

I still forget this from time to time, even today! The gearing is fixed in high so you’re able to control the wheel forward and backwards in the same “heft space”, if you follow my mental picture

I think it is this control, that is makes the whole experience of riding a geared so trippy and almost magically unreal. If you ride bikes you know the feeling of a high gear and its cadence, but it’s not quite the same feeling on a uni in 1:1.5.

You need leverage for the process of riding (unless you freewheel) so having it under your front and rear foot does make you feel like you’re atop a larger wheel. It’s darn cool

The above point leads me nicely onto:

3– Misconceptions

——A) I recently realised that shifting up into high gear wasn’t going to make me suddenly go faster.

I’d always just tense up at the idea of pressing the button and not in any sense looking forward to the experience of the shift. It was to me like I was about to press Turbo or the Ejector-seat switch - and my brain was solely focused on the shift being likely unpleasant.

This was a misconception, as I’ve realised that shifting up isn’t about increasing your speed, but slowing your pedals cadence. At the point of having just shifted, they - the pedals, feel stiffer, slower - and I now see that you have to trust your body: it won’t be pressing down on them at double the pressure instantly after shifting.

Just like on a bike, if you shift up into a high gear too early, things become slower regarding your pedalling and you may need to stand up and work harder to match the bike’s gearing size, with more speed.

Another way of looking at this - when unicycling up a hill, falling off suddenly doesn’t really happen, it’s more that the wheel gets too slow or hard to turn and you stall. So I’ve started to focus on trusting it and mentally picturing that I’m shifting /across/ not /up/ - across to a different Rotational World Order.

——B) I had always felt when I first started riding in high gear that I should: “hold it all together” and cling on in there. This tense Felix was going no where fast. It was exhausting!

I was in fact making myself sit too much behind the wheel. On a fixed unicycle the principal of being always in a state of falling forwards can (after practice) feel like an acceptable thing and when you get good you want to have a body position that’s more forward, over your wheel — on a wheel in high gear I found this much, much more scary.

But you don’t need to be scared (I’ve discovered). It’s again back to the leverage the high gear gives you. It may seem like you’re reaching into the abyss by trying to fall further forward, but you’re helping ensure you put direction into those pedals, and as you do, the high gearing brings things back into line as with a fixed wheel, it just does more of it: so you need more of that falling forwards too!

——C) Needing to anticipate more…

It dawned on me yesterday, after I’d taken a big dive forwards when my high gear control had been lost —that I was over-reading the road.

All of the stuff I’ve said so far for A - re shifting not being an instant turbo boost is true at that stage, the shift - but I think it is very easy when settling into high gear to at times over-compensate for the road. You can think you need X when you need Y - and this can lead you to get into uncontrollable speed.

Ride the hill, when you’re on the hill -

I was looking ahead far down the path, and physically over preparing myself for a small uphill hump. I was starting however to ride as if I was there already - in the hill, but before the hill. Big mistake

While high gear riding can feel like you’re on top of this big muscular wheel, you are in fact still riding the patch of earth beneath you - just like any wheeled device.

So, I’ve now recognised the need to dispel the desire or misconception: to be prepared for what’s coming up. Scan the road for sure, but riding that hill when I got to it, would have been a piece of cake and a matter of a bit of extra pressure to push the gearing and me up and over it. Doing this too early in anticipation, got me going faster than intended and I stopped reading the road where I was riding… and probably missed a slight mini-downwards section of the track which is what led me to go flying forwards off the GUni and…. splat.

[I swear when you fall like this, your brain’s film speed goes up to something like 240fps. It was all so gloriously slow. CRAAASH!]

So I’ll draw this long ramble of a post to a close with some recent practical tips that helped me shift up better-er than before:

1. Speaking to yourself out-loud when struggling to shift - “Come on! Now! Go go go on you ****** thing!” - whatever takes your fancy, actually helps. I used this when I was determined I’d get it to shift, and was trying to push my brain past its natural caution and reticence. Shouting at yourself as you ride may make you look a little mad to other passers-by, but heck they don’t know the lengths a Schlumpf owner has to go to master their art

2. Steady pedalling - this seems key to a nice non-shock of a shift. I found my last two shifts to happen without any real jolt or balance correction, and I credit the fact I was focused on keeping my pedalling going evenly round in circles and not letting the process of shifting change this. Like tapping your head with one hand, while doing circles on your belly with the other

3. Once you’ve shifted, take a beat and ‘be’ there in the new space. You’ve got to keep pedalling of course, forward forward forward, but I have found it helps centre oneself to take a few seconds - 30 even, directly after shifting where you focus on controlling your speed. This lets you recognise you have geared up backpedal braking at your disposal, which I find reassuring when I the decide to put on a bit of steam and move forward faster.

I’m sure I’ve got few other ideas rattling around in my head regarding this magical version of unicycling - but I’ll let them brew and distil for another day.

I’m cog-nisant this post has gone on for long enough

[UniTographer]

I have no idea how so many folks managed to figure out shifting so easily. Congratulations at being naturals!

For the opposite experience, maybe of (psychological) help to anyone that didn’t “just get it”: I’ve been riding a G29 for about a month now. Can’t mount it in high gear (but I’m also gun-shy of the high leverage while mounting, having torn my patellar tendon while mounting a 36er some years back). No big to-do, I’ll just mount in low and shift. Except.

Haven’t gotten the feel for it yet. If I don’t consciously put my weight all in the seat so my feet are just going around with the pedals, I completely lose balance right after the shift. If I do, then I can shift and make 2 or 3 full revolutions before my brain revolts and it’s UPD time - either my brain thinks I need to keep pedaling at exactly the same cadence as before and I don’t lean far enough in to it, or I slow down so much that I’m overcompensating on the pedals, and the gear slop trips up my sense of balance. At least I think that’s what’s going on, so obviously I’m consciously trying to fix all of that on every shift…

My 52-year-old knees hate constant re-mounts so I’ve limited myself to one attempt every 5 minutes while riding, and I’m out on trails for about 3-4 hours a week. Might be some time before I get it at this rate. But I am determined to get it and I’m loving the challenge.

[mindbalance]

Great to hear your learning process.

I’d have never got more comfortable with shifting up if I hadn’t first experienced and re-wired by brain for high gear before.

Sure there are those people who can hope on never having tried and shift and be peddling away - but for mere mortals such as ourselves - my tip is to find a friendly helper who’s willing to get you mounted and seated with the hub in high and walk semi run with you holding an arm while you pedal forward in high gear.

This will give you the feeling of what high’s all about - and solely you’ll probably recognise that the key thing you need to do when it high - and when it shifts - is be further over the front of the unicycle that would I normally feel “in balance” - forward tip forward focus and being happy to put your body weight, or toe focus into the void that feels like you’ll fall flat on your face is key for high gear riding I feel as then when you pedal and the gearing takes effect you’ll realise it helps you catch up (the torque saves you more).

Being behind the wheel - holding yourself backwards will make shifting very hard and also risks a rear UPD /
splat which should be avoided.

Falling forwards is your friend!

[UniTographer]

Thanks for the advice. It feels to me a lot like originally learning, and I’m expecting it to progress pretty much on that schedule.

A few weeks ago I spent some time trying to use a wall to mount in high gear. I can’t do it, because I never learned that way - I self-taught free-mounting while I learned how to ride a 24" (no good walls or railings around my house). I don’t think it would be any different with someone helping me up.

My original learning arc started around March 2012, and until May, I had a lot of what felt like no progress at all. Then very slight progress for weeks, and eventually measurable progress. I’m a data nerd and tracked it once it started feeling trackable, posting a lot of the graphs over in the Learning Journal thread… but I see those images are all long dead. This was the last projection graph I made, and I’m expecting pretty much the same curve here. If not timeline.

[mindbalance]

@UniTographer

I don’t think it would be any different with someone helping me up.

I’d say it can be massively different - and fundamentally you have an arm and support that moves with you. Different from a wall. Walls make you lean to them and I find add nerves to the fact you might drive into it. A person helping is a live actor in the process and for high gear it was invaluable to have someone walking with me as I stuttered and started the high torque pedalling - and finally launches me like a bird of prey from a glove…

Once you have the taste of high gear - shifting up gets easier as the body isn’t as surprised by the whole thing.

Just my tuppence worth - learning this is possible from all sorts of approaches.

Keep at it and where possible I’d say enjoy the fear - I know I try to do that when the nerves bite

[Wheelou]

@mindbalance , do you have an idea at what speed you are moving in slow and high gear, respectively? Seeing your videos it seemed to me that you were riding pretty slowly, even in high gear. I‘m no speed demon either, but I have the impression that I ride at least as fast on my ungeared 29er as you on your 26er in second gear. Please don‘t get me wrong, I‘m not wanting to brag (as I said, I‘m not very fast myself, riding at a cadence between 90 and 120rpm, resulting in a top travel speed of around 14-15km/h when I‘m in a hurry), and I don‘t want to try and push you to ride at speeds you‘re not comfortable with. But I find riding slowly to be quite a challenge and I have the impression that this could be part of what presented difficulties to you when you learned that new skill.
The lower the cadence, the more you have to correct to remain in balance. Like, say, when riding at a higher speed you may have to pedal slower for a full revolution to bring yourself back in balance. Now if you‘re riding at 3/4 the speed you may have to slow down only for 3/4 of a revolution. Both scenarios may take the same amount of time, but the distance your legs travel is shorter when you‘re slower, thus requiring more precision from your legs to do what‘s needed to regain balance. Now that may be a bit oversimplified, but it is part of my understanding why riding slow / at a low cadence poses some extra difficulty to the rider.
(The other part of my explanation being that every correction of a given strength has a greater effect on a fast moving vehicle. Like the driver of a car moving at 20km/h on a straight street turns the steering wheel 10 (or whatever) degrees to the right for a second. Chances are that they can correct this before the car hits a wall. Now if the same thing is done when moving on the highway at 120km/h, chances are that the car crashes because it travels a lot more distance within one second, resulting in a much greater deviation from the intended track.)

[Maxence]

I agree with your analysis. The slower, the harder. I would say that a cadence of 80 rpm is the minimum to ride a geared uni while being comfy. Considering that a 29er wheel perimeter is about 207 cm, then you should ride at a minimum speed of 15.5 kph to be comfy. If you feel you’re going slower, then you should probably downshift, which would lead to a cadence of less than 120 rpm. Sweet spot in low gear as well

[mindbalance]

I guess it’s a case of why I ride what I ride. And a lot of personal choices.

For a very very long time I was slower in high gear due to FEAR. I therefore continued to ride to over come my personal challenge in this. That’s the achievement that no one will see - nor do I care if people see it or know I’ve done it really.

[Probably why I fundamentally detest organised group rides as they’re so full of background comparing and general sense of - “you should ride like I do…” / “why don’t you do this?!?”]

I think unicycling is a highly individual thing and what is hard for one person, is easy for another etc etc.

I think stating a speed anyone should ride is a nonsense.

The manual that comes with the Schlumpf hub says: ride within your limits - and this is a message directed to each rider to decide on.

I get the point that speed is your friend for stability but I have never ridden a geared wheel to be fast - and that approach means I’m learning more slowly then I might if I pushed things more — but for me personally it means I’ve not ridden in a way where I’ve felt I’ll damage myself. It’s all around your own risk acceptance.

Going faster would possible make for a more comfy technical experience, with say cruising along on my G29er - but if your ‘internal risk system’ is flagging this as dangerous then you’re not going to be comfy and in fact dislike it.

I’ve upped the ante over the 1.5 years of practicing - and sure the faster I feel happy to ride, the better it feels - geared wheels are at there best in a higher space.

I think my top speed so far is 12-14kmh and it’s cool. It’s not fast no. But I’m in no way competitive at all, and in effect detest any hint of one-up-man-ship in this sport.

There are super impressive riders and that’s inspirational and great and something I’d applaud but it doesn’t mean I’m hankering to be at that level - or want to be like X rider.

Don’t get me wrong - I can see your message is well intentioned here @Wheelou - but I feel a bit snappy about this kind of topic really (much like that horrendous thread regarding what makes someone a G36er rider) - so I’ve kind of knee jerk reacted here - but there it is.

In conclusion - yes faster is better for general use of the hub and to make the actual riding in 1:1.5 more fluid. But this should never come at the risk of a bad fall when your risk system isn’t ready.

And given that riding slowly is harder - doing that isn’t a bad practice thing to build control and muscles.

We do ride unicycles because they’re challenging right? Not for them to be easy.

I should also end and say a hard ride in high gear where I’ve been full of fear and going slowly - while it and of itself isn’t successful for 1:1.5 skills - leads to my general 1:1 riding being massively more assertive.

The only time you’re not developing a skill is when you’re not attempt it.

[Edited for typos and additional thoughts when I was less grumpy ]

[Hammer]

For me the up-shifting experience have two variations (also on a G29).

1. Going very slowly keeping my weight centered and when shifting it feels kind of a new regular static mount where I’m sensing the balance on the “bigger wheel” and slowly accelerating away. Feels a bit like everything happens in slow motion.
2. Riding at a fast cruising speed and shifting.

1 is obviously not very stable after the shift (as speed equals stability as others have mentioned) but it’s also less scary as I can easily step of if everything goes south.
2 is stable after the shift but also with a higher risk of failure during the shift.

A few thing i did myself to help me get comfortable on my G29

• Crank length where the gear ratio matches what I can manage on a 36" (~4.0). It makes it quite boring in low gear, but manageable in high.
• Higher tire pressure for a more responsive wheel.
• A lot of body protection to overcome the initial fear factor.