Slow learning progress + tibia pain

Riding Advice
22

Thanks once again for your insight!

From Duff, I like the idea of assistance from a person that can slowly be phased out while still keeping the body mechanics the same.

Unfortunately, I cannot use anyone’s assistance, as I don’t have any family or friends in the vicinity and my wife can’t help me since she’s abroad visiting her family for the next three weeks. Plus, even if I had someone to assist me, I’d still prefer to practice alone.

One more… as soon as you’re ready, I would follow elpuebloUNIdo’s advice to start holding the handle.

I could try holding the saddle with my left hand, as it could perhaps help with the tilt to the left. I sometimes grab the saddle anyway; I’m practicing on a relatively narrow sidewalk (like 1.2 meters accross) with inclined grassy patch on the left and gravel soccer field on the right. There is slight (like 1") drop from the sidewalk to the field, so when I accidentally turn and head for the field, I sometimes grab the seat with my right hand to manage the drop better. However, I still feel considerably more stable with my hands flailing and tend to manage the drop without holding the saddle anyway.

For the pain I would suggest a planned dismount (PD) before a UPD happens.

I’m trying to do so, but it’s easier said than done. In case of the left tilt dismount, I am already quite decent in doing so softly; I can sometimes even bring the unicycle more or less to a standstill before stepping off its back. However vast majority of my dismounts now happens due to an unmanaged wobble, which results in a dismount where I basically land on a foot that’s in front. Sometime the speed is a bit higher also, so I have very little control over which foot I land on and how hard it will be. As I said previously, if it’s my left foot, then ouch!

It looks like you ride on the ball of your foot, that area right behind the toes. I find that on a unicycle, having the balls of my feet centered on the pedal gives less control than having the arch of the foot above it.

I have exactly the opposite feeling. It might be due to the fact that when at home, walk barefoot, so I’m accustomed to using balls of my feet for walking. I’m even considering starting to use barefoot shoes for my daily walking outside. On a bicycle I also use balls of my feet for pedaling. Even when skiing, I tend to shove my shin into the frontal part of boot and lift my heel, standing mostly on balls of my feet.

VitR, I would recommend to ditch the poles.

I will try it and see what it does. Moreover, if it’s a question of taking a break or reducing the practice time, I’d much rather use the poles. If I have to choose between just practicing 30 minutes without poles or practice 30 minutes without poles and then 30 minutes with poles, I’ll choose the latter.

I’m guessing you mount with your right foot forward and make 1/2 a rotation and then fall on your left.

I have the support (garbage can) on my left side. I mount into a dead position with my right foot being on the down pedal. After mounting I make 1/4 rotation backwards (so the pedals are horizontal with my right foot in front), wait for a sec to focus on putting my weight onto the seat and then pedal forward. Most of the time, I can do all this pretty effortlessly, not having to hold the support tightly. When I reach the end of the garbage can, I push myself off with my left arm to gain momentum. Sometimes I try just to pedal forwards without pushing, but then I tend to be more wobbly and dismount earlier.

I definitely could switch sides (I’m more or less ambidextrous, so it’s not an issue to learn things symmetrically for me), but now I’m able to land on my right leg during majority of my UPDs, except those that happen to the left tilt and some of the nastier wobble-induced ones. I’m concerned that if I switch sides now, I will have considerably less control of what leg I land on.

23

This might be slowing down your progress. Beginners generally don’t know how to steer the unicycle. Being forced to stay on the sidewalk seems like an impediment to progress at this stage.

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24

I would suggest finding a big spacious basketball, tennis court or big empty car park to practice in. You’ll have space to not have to ride dead straight. As a beginner, you won’t always have the control to ride straight as you want all the time. It will come with more practice.

As for me, I personally learnt by riding next to a very long railing on one side, and using that until I didn’t need it. It didn’t take too long and found it got me used to having a good feel of actual unicycle riding, but also safe at the same time till I really felt I had it. You might be past that stage, I am not entirely sure. Personally I would do that rather than ski poles.

25

One other thing that I found useful was using a hanging rope for support. It’s less stable than something solid and forces you to balance more. It was especially useful for learning to freemount. You can hold the rope without any tension on it, flail to a large degree to keep your balance and it just gives you that extra little bit of confidence that you’re not going to fall. With a rope for support you can do 90% of a freemount.

It really helped with my confidence learning on a 36er.

26

Yeah, I also find it less than ideal. But the only option is a basketball court adjacent to the soccer field, which is incidentally also graveled (though not so much as the soccer field). Do you think its a better choice than a narrow sidewalk?

27

Absolutely, go the basketball court. One piece of advice though, wear something solid to cover your knees and wear wrist guards too. You don’t want the gravel cutting into your skin if the two items happen to meet. You can wear something sleeved too if you are possibly going to hit an elbow on the ground.

28

Fine gravel (cinder?) is an excellent riding surface. It allows the wheel to pivot freely from left to right.

29

I found ankle protection to be most important while learning. a few times my ankle did a kinda whiplash thing. Unbearable pain for about 10 seconds, but able to continue after a minute of resting.
Also, gravel tears the skin apart, only superficial, but annoying, so gloves are important for practicing on gravel.

30

Lots of good advice here. Some is conflicting, but each person is telling their truth. Here’s a brief from me:

  • Ditch the poles (or use them for no more than 50% of your practice time. Time spent with the poles teaches you how to balance by pushing down on poles
  • Raise your seat at least 2cm: sore knees are unavoidable when learning; your lower quads get overworked. But riding with a low seat puts more strain on the overworked quads
  • Balls on the feet is fine; the most optimum foot position for the vast majority of riding. However, while learning, don’t worry too much about it
  • Posture: Also don’t worry about it too much; it becomes more important after you can ride some distance. Then you start refining things
    Side bias: Try everything the opposite way: support on the opposite side, starting with opposite foot, and try deliberately dismounting to your opposite foot. Why? This teaches you a couple of things, including how to dismount on purpose, how to stop, and how to give your opposite side a rest
  • Everybody has a dominant side, this is normal. But most activities we do can be done with either side, and a unicycle should be no different, so don’t feel “stuck” with one side. Your other side can learn
  • Don’t over-analyze: Just try to figure out what was the root cause of the previous dismount, and try to focus on improving that
  • Overcompensate: If you keep always falling to one side, try to deliberately fall to the opposite side. Why? Because somewhere in between those two movements is the spot you’re looking for. It can be faster to find it by going past it and then finding the middle

Enjoy the learning process! You are developing a skill that cannot be taught by reading, and cannot be mastered easily. Once you learn, you will have it for the rest of your life. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
31

This might help.

1 Like
32

Tip #1: First of all, forget free mounting. That’s when you try to start riding without holding onto something. This is for after you learn to balance on a unicycle, so save it for later. Wasting your time on free mounting before you can ride will only hold you back.

Is he talking about the first hour, first day, first week, first month of practice? I started practicing free mounting within a week of starting to unicycle. My beginner’s 1/4 mile riding goal included the ability to free mount. It took me 6 weeks to get there, probably in large part due to all the time “wasted” on practicing free mounts.

Why is free mounting for after you’ve learned to balance on a unicycle? Though I’ve lost touch, to some degree, with the experience of being a beginner, I consider mounting and riding to be two very different things. How exactly does riding skill translate into mounting skill? I certainly see the relationship working the other way.

Riding first, then learning to mount…is practical because it allows the rider to enjoy the satisfaction of riding, rather than beating their heads against the wall trying to learn to mount. But I don’t really buy the notion that you have to / need to / ought to learn to ride, first.

Now that you know these ten tips, you should be up and riding within an hour.

Huh?

33

You don’t have to over-think every little thing he says. What works for some will work for others. Those are good tips.
Another tip I would give, is just to watch other people cycle. Imaginary training is a real thing. It works to just observe and visualize.

34

I agree those tips will work for many people. Flailing the arms is important. I think a lot beginners think the goal is to be in control, and that may inhibit their motions. As a beginner I was influenced by a video suggesting that riders could learn to idle first. Epic fail. So, yes, I agree with “don’t learn idling until you can ride.” I am skeptical, however, of “sit up straight.” It’s something to aspire to, but realistically, I don’t think beginners do much of it. Lower tire pressure: He explained it well. While I think it’d help a beginner get up and riding, it slows down the responsiveness of the unicycle. Depending on the circumstances, I could argue for lower or higher tire pressure.

The guy said he learned in one hour. He ends the video by suggesting that you, too, can learn in an hour, by following his advice. He didn’t say what exactly he could do, how far he could ride, after an hour. Had I seen his video as a total beginner, I’d be pretty pissed.

35

Well, you can only speak for yourself. You are, of course, welcome to make your own videos.

36

I am not confident enough about what is the right way to learn…to tell others how to do it.

One thing I like about the video is that he is reflecting freshly on his experiences learning. As opposed to someone who has been riding for years and forgets much about being a beginner.

Let me clarify. When I said I’d be pissed, that means I’d be frustrated because there is no way I could have learned to ride in one hour. YMMV. I think it’s a good video, thanks for posting it. Sorry if I offended you.

37

I think that different methods can work for different people. What the OP has been doing until recently however clearly hasn’t been working very effectively for him even though it is the method most recommended, (no support).

One thing I think I’ll try when it’s time to learn to ride backwards is a rope stretched between two objects. My experience is that a flexible support forces you to balance more than a fixed support.

38

Wow, thanks guys for your insight! :slightly_smiling_face: Away for a couple of days and it’s teeming with new advice! :grin: I appreciate it.

Yeah, but not very evenly spread (I actually wonder how is it possible to play basketball on that). It’s does not seem as nice as tarmac, or tiled pavement I’m on now. But I’ll try it tomorrow and see. I wear full PPE kit (helmet, wrist guards, elbow and knee protectors), although it serves only a psychological purpose now, as I fell down on my hands only twice and it was a very light fall (the uni just got somehow tangled between my legs). It makes me more daring though, which is a good thing.

Other than that, the poles proved to be a bad idea. It’s so different that I cannot even do a single rotation with them, whereas freely I can do around 5 meters now. Sometimes more. So I will keep them only as a last resort, if everything else fails, or if the tibia will request lower training intensity, I’ll supplement riding without support with a time spent with poles.

The tibia got much better over the weekend, so I hope it may be over.

I don’t think that raising the seat is a good idea. My quads and knees are fine. If the seat is higher, it will be more difficult for me to mount the uni. Now I’m already standing on a tiptoe when mounting.

Regarding the video, I pretty much do everything what’s said in that video. And it’s frustrating to see that some people have such a good place to learn on :angry:

I’ve actually had a dream last Wednesday that I had unicycled from my home to the nearby city forest. I sort of hoped that day that I’ll be able to ride, if I can do so in my dreams, but I guess dreams don’t come true. :cry:

Btw, I don’t mind the slow progress, I am the opposite of what you call athletically gifted (if you remember that guy from school who always got picked last for the team because he sucked so much - I am that guy). For me it’s a matter of personal pride just to learn how to unicycle, how long it takes is irrelevant. I just sincerely hope it’s not going to take me 150 hours like it took one guy in Klaas Bil’s dataset.

Finally, don’t get a wrong idea, I’m not stuck in any way - every session I feel there’s some improvement. Either I can go further, or I feel a better control over the unicycle, or I can reverse the left tilt and fall to the right, or something else. Frankly speaking, if it hadn’t been for the tibia pain, I would not even be posting here as I feel pretty comfortable just practicing riding without support for now. But from weightlifting I know that such type of pain (non-muscular one) is not to be taken lightly.

Anyways, thanks for the advice again! :wave:

1 Like
39

One thing to keep in mind about people who can learn to unicycle in a very short amount of time, they always seem to have an extensive background with bicycles. These are guys that can already ride a wheelie for as long as they want, so they’re not exactly new to the concept of riding on one wheel. Someone without that kind of background cannot realistically expect to learn to unicycle in an hour.

40

…unless they’re young.

42

OK, many things happened since my last post here, so I will post some observations I made regarding the issues I had.

Tibia pain was temporary in the way Duff mentioned. At its worst (Thursday two weeks ago), I basically took a day off, using the time designated for unicycle practice just sitting on the unicycle supported by poles while watching a movie. Next day I did just 30 minutes of standard practice and rest with poles. After the weekend, on which I also didn’t practice, the pain was already retreating and it was completely gone in few more days, and I was able to continue my 72 minutes sessions 5 times a week pattern of free launching without issues.

At one point it seemed the tibia pain will develop in my right leg as well, but it never fully did, possibly due to the fact that I learned how to dismount lightly.

Slow progress kept being slow. However, I felt small improvements happening during every single session and even though there was sometimes little perceived progress in terms of the distance ridden, I always felt I’m developing a better “feel” for the unicycle, feeling like I’m more in control.

I think the major problem hindering my progress was the place I used for practice. There are following problems with it:

  • it is narrow - the sidewalk’s width being close to 1 meter (actually less than the 1.2 meters I thought previously). On the right is a soccer field with pretty loose gravel, which I find very hard to ride in and which would probably require a bit different tires. On the right is an upwardly sloped grassy patch which also is very hard to ride on. Also, every 7 meters or so, there are benches on the left side of the sidewalk. This meant that I used to end up on the gravel and fall, or on the grass and fall, or going too close to one of the benches and fall out of fear of crashing into it or going straight at the bench, being unable to change the direction. Having some more open space would help a lot. However, eventually I’ve learned to ride more or less straight and to be able to correct any unplanned change in the direction.

  • It is tiled, not entirely smooth. I am not sure whether that is a major factor, but the fact the sidewalk is tiled seems to make the ride much less smooth than if it would be on tarmac or concrete. Also, due to this fact, it was hard to see that at some places it is uneven, which also might have caused some problems. I only realized that it is uneven today, when I got much better control of the unicycle and was finally able to feel the unevenness in certain places.

  • There is some gravel on it. Of course, as it’s adjacent to the gravel soccer field, at some places there was quite some gravel on the sidewalk, making it much more slippery. The wobbles made on the gravel-rich parts were much less manageable than on the rest of the sidewalk.

All in all, knowing this now, perhaps I should have begun practicing on a 20x20 m square made of smooth, flat tarmac instead of choosing the spot I’ve chosen, even though that square would cost me a 30 minute roundtrip to get to.

My progress was as follows (every day the session lasted 72 minutes without breaks, 5 sessions/week):

  1. Three weeks ago: Top attempt 12 meters
  2. Last Friday: Top attempt 25 meters
  3. Monday: 3x >25 meters, top attempt ca. 30 meters
  4. Tuesday: 8x >25 meters, top attempt ca. 38 meters
  5. Wednesday: 13x >25 meters, top attempt ca. 43 meters
  6. Thursday: 30x >25 meters, top attempt ca. 47 meters
  7. Today: 32x 50 meters. Couldn’t go further, as the sidewalk is only ca. 50 meters long and ends in a grassy hill.

It got relatively easy near the end of the last session and actually pretty boring. I could ride without ending up in the gravel field, while evading all the benches and managing the wobbles; sometimes even having a “gliding” sensation, with being firmly planted on the seat and the pedaling being relatively effortless. Though, not all attempts were like that; I still tend to fall rather a lot and wobble like mad.

Starting Monday, I will practice free mounting in order to be able to finally go around the neighborhood. I’ve watched few videos of how to learn free mounting and I wonder which method would be the easiest to learn. Currently, my supported mount looks like this: I mount in 12-6 position with my right foot being on the lower pedal. I then roll back into a 9-3 position (sort of like supported half-idle - uni behind me, my torso tilted forwards) and launch myself by giving myself a little push while applying significant force on the right pedal. Even if the launch is pretty bad, 9 times out of 10 I can already correct myself after it without falling. Just slow down and realign the unicycle, then pick up the speed again.

I will ponder on it over the weekend while I let my legs rest (they’ve got quite a beating today). I’m currently split on starting with a rollback (which seems more in line with what I currently do) and this sort of step/quasi-jump mount (where you sort of “step” on the lower pedal without applying pressure and then jumping on the other pedal with the other foot), which seems to me to be mechanically simpler, and breakable into smaller learning steps (1. learning the fake “step” + jump sequence, 2. learning to step over the uni, 3. mounting itself). I also have to think which leg to use for what, as I have no dominant one (disadvantage of being ambidextrous - both of my sides are equally bad at learning things :laughing:).

It took me 36 hours of practice spread over 6 weeks to get this far. I sincerely hope I won’t spend another 6 weeks and 36 hours learning how to free mount. :rofl: