If you can’t rolling hop into a grind, then your grinds are going to go nowhere, you might be able to do a couple ledges that you can get lucky on, but your grinds will never go beyond the occasional box and other perfect situations suited to your needs. Being able to rolling hop and land in the position you so desire is the single greatest thing you will need for any good street riding, the foremost of this being grinding as it is one of the closest things to combining all three disiplines of unicycling (freestyle, trials, muni). If you can rolling hop into a grind then you will slide farther, faster, cleaner, and with more precision. If you are doing anything other than a perfect ledge or rail then you will need to have those down pat.
Getting a rolling hop into a grind really isn’t that hard. If you can rolling hop up a curb and you can at the very least crank grab then you can grind within about a half hour at the most.
If you want to learn how to grind do this:
- Get your rolling hops to the point where you can hop a curb without slowing down (I’m assuming you can do this as I hear you are quite the muni expert and large roots are pretty similar to a curb)
- find yourself a ledge, any ledge, you won’t be grinding this so it doesn’t matter but it should be at least as high as your wheel.
- learn how to crank grab said ledge
- figure out some way that you can rolling hop into a pedal/crankgrab (pedal is better than crank but crank will do in a pinch) this can be going perpendicular or whatever but if it is paralell then it will make your life easier.
- once you can grab that ledge WITHOUT falling off and still having some momentum before you jump, now put an object in the middle of your path to the ledge, rolling hop over the object and land in your grab without losing your balance once on the ledge.
If you can do that then you can grind anything. Slanted rails are good to learn on because they slide the best and you don’t need as much speed to slide them, but remember the most important thing is to keep your momentum as you go into the grab, if you lose your momentum even a sloped rail may not get you far, but if you have momentum then you will be sliding across solid concrete.
Also you don’t need to use fancy skate wax or any of that crap, it costs too much money and you will look like a fool buying it. Buy the cheapest candles you can find, either that or parafin (no I don’t mean the fuel for you English blokes), parafin is pretty cheap and you can get it in chunks that are easier to handle than a spindly candle.
Probably the easiest thing that you could build is to go to your local scrap metal place (also good for finding premade bc plates for about five bucks a set) and buy yourself about a ten foot piece of metal that looks like a U with the tops of the U bent down flat (I don’t know what its called but its probably steel and its the same stuff they use to make stop signs). Drill holes in the ends of it and mount it onto something that you think will hold it and you. If you want it to last then I suggest putting more bolts into it then you think necesary as there are some brutal forces that go into grinding. The optimal hight for this rail would be about just below the highest you can rolling hop into a grab every single time with no difficulty, that way when you land onto the rail you are comming just barely over it and you won’t be putting too much downward force on the rail, this creates too much friction. Remember you want to slide onto the rail, not land on it and then slide.
Hopefully, I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have and its not to long. Enjoy your grinds as they will (if you are anything like me) become your favourite thing to do on a nice ledge or rail.
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