I’m 52 and bought a unicycle about 6 weeks ago. When I was about 13 I had a friend with a unicycle and I was able to ride it a bit. I don’t recall if I ever learned to do a free-mount.
It took me a couple of days to re-learn to ride. This was a little surprising and discouraging - but there you have it.
I then went on to learn free-mounting. I was very surprised to see how hard it is to get consistent at free-mounts. I picked a weekend and decided it was the weekend to learn. By the end of the weekend I had succeeded a handful of times. From there I tried to have about 25 successful free-mounts each day. Initially that took me a ludicrous number of tries. I would say I felt reasonably consistent after about 500 free-mounts (I would have thought I’d have it down by 50-100). Now I’m at about 750 free-mounts. I do fail here and there, but most are successful.
Now I’m working on idling. I hung a couple of ropes in my garage and I grab one with each hand and work on idling for about 5 minutes at a time. I try to minimize the force I put on the ropes.
Question… how would you compare the process of learning to idle with learning to free-mount? Would you say it’s similar, much longer learning curve…?
Thanks.
By the way - I’m 6’2", 195 lbs, and have a uni with a 24" wheel.
Re-reading the above, it occurs to me I should make a clarification…
I said I re-learned in a couple of days, and then started working on free-mounts. That’s kind of true, but I actually spent a week or two getting comfortable riding and turning before starting on free-mounts.
I’m a bit of a slow learner, I could freemount about a year after I got my first unicycle. Not sure exactly but I do remember writing about it on here cos I then treated myself to a new unicycle
I’m afraid for me, idling is not coming along to easily. Then I have to confess that I don’t put as much effort in as I should do.
I have a uni buddy next week, for a couple of days. 57Unirider is coming to visit and the times when it rains we are going to be practicing idling and hopping. ( Don’t tell her but I’ve also got some juggling balls )
So in answer to your question, sorry got bit sidetracked there…
To quote Charlie Dancey…" Idling is a trick to be learned over a long period of time. No amount of thinking about it is going to make it easier, it simply has become instinctive." So I guess that means it’s gonna take longer.
Practice, practice, practice, then maybe practice some more LOL
Hop (geddit) over to the learning journal thread and let us know how you get on.
Thanks very much for your response. I poked around the site a good bit last night and read some of the experiences people had learning to idle. It definitely seems to come easier to some than others. But in general I got the idea that people don’t learn it in a weekend.
I read what seemed like a really good tip - one that I’ll try today…
Ride as slowly as possible to practice improved balance.
Practice brief stops, and then resume riding.
Eventually practice brief stops and a bit of back pedal…
But mostly I need to get comfortable with the idea that it’s not going to come overnight. And that’s just fine since I tend to enjoy the learning process.
It was definitely easier for me to learn to freemount than to idle. I didn’t record times or anything, and the memory fades. I’m guessing it took me at least twice as long to learn to idle. Maybe longer.
Spork, I am a new rider as well, starting at the age of 50. I still can’t freemount but I can do a curb assist mount pretty successfully. I like your idea of setting aside a weekend and just deciding this is it, I will be able to do it by Sunday night. I may give that a try in the near future.
kayakzz, I tried learning to free mounting in one weekend and tweaked my knee after about three hours. I think I spent too much time trying it all in one go. Hopefully it goes better for you.
Perhaps I might be a bit more vertically challenged then all of you. I’m able to mount on the sidewalk where one section sticks up a bit … sort of a curb mount but with very little curb. I thought that would help give me the right feel but when I tried on a totally flat spot I ended up stalling and falling off. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t quite push the second pedal enough to get momentum. I’m wondering if curb mounts help or hurt the learning process. When I stand on a curb there’s less distance for my second foot to travel which makes it too easy compared to a free mount.
I don’t think I’ve ever put in more than 45 minutes in one go. For what it’s worth, I kind of hoped and planned to “get it down” in one weekend, but it turns out that was hopelessly optimistic. I did get my first handful of successes that weekend, but I’m now up to about 750 successes, and I still fail maybe one or two out of ten.
I think I decided free-mounts were a bit easier to learn with a lower seat - and riding was a little easier with a higher seat. So I lowered the seat initially and started skootching it back up as my free-mounts improved.
For what it’s worth - I saw three different videos that showed three different methods. The first showed the rider putting his weight onto the pedal at 6:00, and then stepping up onto the 12:00 pedal. That’s a pretty handy way to get on, but a hard way to start riding for a guy at my level. I gave up on that approach pretty quickly.
The second video showed a guy putting his first foot on a pedal that was roughly aligned with the fork - yes, about 45 degrees above the horizon. He would then step unto the lower pedal. I tried that and thought I was going to end up in the E.R.
The third video showed a guy starting on the pedal at 3:00 (horizontal and back toward the rider), and stepping onto the 9:00 pedal. This turned out giving me my best results - but LOTS of failures at first. Surprisingly what I found over time is that I was having more luck as my starts gradually approached the configuration of the 2nd method. That’s now the way I do it.
As I step onto the far/low pedal I’m careful not to put all my weight onto the first pedal (that equals E.R.). Instead you have to kind of pop yourself onto the unicycle in a controlled way - mostly holding that pedal in place as you do so. As your foot is hitting the second pedal you begin weighting the first (higher/aft) pedal. This will help bring the wheel under you.
The more I do it, the more I think it becomes a fluid motion in which I’m beginning to weight the first pedal before my foot hits the second pedal.
DISCLAIMER: This is what’s working for me - but I’m a newb that doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
On an unrelated note - I rode a 1 mile loop today. That’s my longest ride so far. It would have been non-stop except I did a face-plant when I tried to ride off a curb where I was losing sidewalk. Option II (getting off and stepping off the curb) sadly had not occurred to me.
There is only so much one can learn in short term persistence. The Law of Diminishing Returns comes into play.
Moreover continually failing to free mount would not only be incredibly boring but you would be training in how to fail by repeating the same move. Better to throw in random attempts.
I mainly kerb mounted for months. My alternative where there was no kerb was to attempt a free mount technique while I held onto a fence or pole. It was often inelegant but it worked and gave me some of the feel of free mounting.
Fences were usually better because I could put my forearm along the top of the fence and maintain directional stability but I got better at poles too.
Then where there was nothing I would attempt a true free mount which always failed. Then one day I did it, just once, on the 20. Next day I started riding a 24 and found out what “inelegant” really meant when mounting at a pole.
Yesterday I was on the 24 and happened to be at the exact location where I had free mounted the 20. Lo and behold I did it again but on the 24.
As it happens, this Sunday is my 20,000 birthday and I am having friends around. Many are insisting I demonstrate my new (a few months) ability to ride. Some want to give it a try themselves.
The demo will be on my front lawn. Having only ridden the 24 for a few weeks I thought I had better practice on a 20 for the demo. If I could free mount it would be a real bonus.
I have a KH trials 20 which I have not ridden before because the seat post was way too short. The new post came in the mail recently and I also suspected its three inch Creepy Crawley would be the easiest to free mount because it barely rolls on the grass.
After several attempts I could do it every time so I tried the QU-AX 20. I couldn’t believe how tiny it seemed after the 24 especially going back to 114 cranks from the 150s on the 24 inch Torker.
I found I could free mount it just as easily. It was almost a case of of just stick it under me and ride off.
I’m going to give the curb mounts another week or two before I really make an effort to learn a free mount. I don’t want to take a chance of getting an injury as I will be bicycling the Erie Canal (400 miles) starting 7/13. That being said, I am motivated to continue learning on my uni.
Thanks Vertigo, I am sure it will. My friends are the very best people I know.
I have experimented with pseudo-freemounts through quite a range of crank angles. I don’t think it matters so much because the key is not putting much pressure on the back crank. You need just enough pressure to position the uni into the riding position, with your centre of gravity sufficiently forward of the point of contact between the tyre and the road so you can get moving.
Then it is a matter of meeting the power pedal with the foot where ever it happens to be.
Above all else, when avoiding the stall, the most important factor is gripping the saddle between the thighs and driving.
Here’s a tip that may help in the early stages: it’s usually easier to freemount if you’re facing slightly downhill. Just a little bit makes a difference. If I’m out road-riding and have to stop for a traffic light, I will often use the slope of the curb cut (if there is one) to give me a little boost.
Also, as far as practice regimens go, I always find consistent small amounts to be more effective than fewer long sessions. The long ones are great, but I find 10 or 15 minutes every day gets me farther ahead with individual skills than one multiple-hour session. There is something to be said for the power of sleep. When you practice a skill, then go in and sleep for a night, you will often find you are better at that skill the next day. This is because what you learned the previous day has had a chance to move from one part of your brain to another. A lot of what you do in unicycling involves “muscle memory.” Sounds weird, but there it is. Works for me, but (as you will often see on this forum) “your mileage may vary” (YMMV).
Oh, almost forgot – welcome to the forum, spork!
Cheers!
Thanks for the tip. Now that I’m doing some off-road stuff I’m definitely finding that to be true. Free-mounts on uphills are still tricky for me. I sometimes will do it cross-trail - but that doesn’t work so well on skinny trails.
Free-mounting is easier than idling. While I practiced idling as a beginning, it mostly helped me learn how to keep my feet on the pedals throughout the range of motion of the cranks. I decided, early in my progress, to focus on free-mounting. This decision was affected by the lack of good assisted-mounting locations in my neighborhood, as well as the feeling that free-mounting gave me some street-credibility.
Free-mounting still wasn’t easy. I focused on two types of free-mounts:
Jumping on: There is a park near my house with thick, soft grass, where I practiced stepping away from the uni with one hand on the seat, then jumping onto the pedals. This resulted in falling a lot (on the soft grass), buying shin-guards, and it probably created the impression that I was failing miserably. When I ‘did’ catch some balance and start to ride, the grass wasn’t so good to ride on. But this technique removed a lot of the fear of riding, mounting and attempting other tricks.
Tire-grab: A neighbor-kid suggested this to me: mount with one or both hands on the wheel. I think this has been referred to as a ‘tire-grab’ mount in other postings. This worked incredibly well for me. Grabbing the tire with two hands (I wear gloves!) allows me to place the first foot in the 3/9 position (without roll-back), then gives me time to place the second foot squarely on the other pedal. In the 3/9 position, the feet are ready to start pedaling forward. So, this mount involves being pretty hunched over the uni. (On a side-note, sitting-up-straight is virtuous, it is given to beginners as advice, it is easy to do while assisted-mounting, but, in my opinion, it can’t be forced on beginners.)
Here is my rationale for the two-hand-tire-grab-mount: The physics of balance is reduced to a single-mass system, in which the body and the unicycle are fused together. This slows down the process of mounting (imagine something very large leaning over slowly), providing more time to get the second foot on the pedal and then the hands off the tire. (Another side note: the “look-straight-ahead” concept relies on the logic that we need to look in the direction we are heading; to that I respond, when we are mounting, we are not moving forward, the only direction we are heading is toward the center of the earth, and luckily we have the street to stop us from falling down there! So, yes, I am looking straight down during the wheel-grab mount.)
It was only later that I learned the typical self-mount, involving a little bit of backward motion when mounting. The physics of a conventional mount are more tricky than the tire-grab mount; as a beginner, the body and the unicycle behave like a two-mass system, with the body going one direction and the unicycle going the other direction. This mount can feel different from one attempt to another.
Back to free-mounting-vs-idling: When I started getting better at idling, then I learned the conventional mount. I think there is a mini-idle happening at the beginning of the conventional mount, due to the initial backwards motion. It is going to take a lot of practice for me to improve at idling. It is something I am better at after 30 minutes of riding. Going back and forth, rather than moving in one general direction, messes with my sense of balance. Interestingly, the same time I learned to idle (unassisted), I also started riding backwards. It is not hard to see how these techniques are related.
I agree it’s probably easier for shorter people; for taller people like us, it gives the unnerving feeling that you’re dive-bombing headfirst over the wheel, on your way to cracking your skull. But I’ve had some success with it. While it’s a freemount, it almost feels like a “cheat” (assisted) method to me, due to its simplicity over other methods and because you’re using your hands when it seems like you shouldn’t be, as in soccer. Hands are for people on bicycles, not unicyclists, right?
The trickiest part with the Tire Grab method (which I also call “Megan’s Mount,” after YouTube instructor Megan Rouch) is getting upright after landing the second foot. You’re hunched over for a moment, with time running out before your stall becomes a fall; you’ve got to get upright pronto and start pedaling away. The other problem is along the left-right axis: the “hunched-over” position should be directly over the tire, not tilted off-balance to the left or right of it, which makes righting yourself harder.
I am 6’2" and the tire-grab works for me. I guess it is kind of cheating, agreed, and it is certainly not very elegant looking. For anyone who already knows a few mounts, there is no great reason I can think of to learn it. For beginners exploring self-mounting, however, I would suggest they practice the tire-grab. You might have to lower your seat to perform it.
