sideride?

Riding Advice
1

hey guys just looking for some tips on learning to sideride. i can ride one footed both sides with the spare foot both on the frame and off but i cant seem to get anywhere with learning to sideride

Scott

2

sideride?

3

theres a video of it here:
http://www.unicyclist.org/cont/play.cfm?pi=w320240csideride

its where you ride one footed with the left foot one the right pedal or vice versa.

4

yay, something I can help with.

A few words before I give you any advice: side ride is a hard skill, in fact its pushing towards to top end of riding skills. Depending on your level of experience and your ability to pick things up, you could be in for a long haul. Having said that, when I started learning it i could only do the basics (seat out riding, backwards, one footed) and wheel walk (which I would call the first hard trick you have to learn) but I still managed to get up to a stage where I could get 10 revolutions after alot of practise. So you may learn easier tricks and hold off the side ride till you are better, but then again the sooner you start practising the sooner you will improve right?

First, pick a side. This should come naturally as your dominant foot will almost definitely be the one you first put to pedal.

Stand next to your unicycle and place your near hand towards the rear of the saddle and reach your far hand over to the front of the saddle. Ive seen different people grip different ways so I can’t really give you exact advice. However, remember that you will need to support the majority of your body weight on your hands so the grip must be firm and secure. Remember the hip must be snapped tight right against the saddle when you are doing so ride so it has to be able to accommodate this.

Now, place the riding foot on the pedal and just practise moving around in the bottom half of the revolution with your other foot on the ground supporting you. Feels weird? Well it should.

Position the pedal so you can get a decent push on it and lift your other foot off the ground! Your weight will probably push the pedal to the down position and your other foot will go back on the ground for balance. Thats ok, good in fact. For now just practise that 1/4 - 1/2 revolution with your leg lifted off the ground to get a bit of a feel.

Just with one footed, the hardest part is getting the pedal up and over in a smooth motion. As a beginner you will need to push HARD just to get the leg over but all you should be focusing on is getting it over, don’t worry about continuing. You may need a little rolling momentum to help you as well, don’t be afraid.

So this is how you should be practising: Hopping along next to your unicycle, lifting your leg off for single pushes just getting the pedal over. The next challenge from here is to get it over then push and get it over again! Just keep drilling it, find a nice big area where you can “walk” along in this fashion. From here, just focus on getting the pedal over more and more. Once you get up to 3 revolutions or so its more fun because you are actually doing mini side rides. This stage could take a while but when you get there its the first hint of definite progress and gives you a target to beat. 4 revs, 5 revs, 6 revs just keep practising and they will start to get easier and more consistent.

Hmm ive got to go to the dentist now, i’ll write some more later on.

5

going out to practice that right now :stuck_out_tongue:

6

Some notes about riding form:

Support your body weight through your hands. This means you will have to do less work with your pushing leg and there will be ALOT less resistance on the pedal coming over the top, giving you a smoother and easier motion. If you are supporting to much weight on the pedal you will find it very hard to keep a smooth motion as you will slow yourself down as the pedal comes round and tries to get over the top.

Your arms should be locked and your whole upper body should pretty much remain in a constant position. It is only the pushing leg that follows the pedal round. Its important to visualise this, on the extreme other end you would have your whole body bobbing up and down on the pedal :smiley: . The saddle should be making firm contact with your thigh/hip. This stabilises your body and makes the whole thing alot easier.

There is a natural tendency for side ride curve and follow a circular path. Its easy to see why when you think about it. The easiest position for you to attain is where you body is vertically aligned and your weight is balanced out on each side. Its the same with side ride…except your whole body is on one side of the unicycle and in order to achieve this you must lean the unicycle over which of course forces it into a circular path. Don’t fight the urge to go in a circular path, embrace it because its making life easier for you.

Alot of this won’t apply until you’ve made a bit of progress with it but its nice to know before hand so you can think about how the trick is going to work. Of course you don’t need to know any of this as the body will generally teach itself the positions it needs to be in if you practise enough, but you CAN speed up the learning curve.

  1. Support yourself on your hands
  2. Hold the unicycle firmly against your side
  3. Push firmly on the down, minimise resistance on the up
  4. Follow a circular path on the unicycle side

Hope I’ve helped you and any one else who wants to learn side ride. Post if you make progress :wink:

7

this is a lot harder than id first thought but that being said ive now managed to get the general feel for it and can now get 1 sometimes even two full revolutions :smiley: