Yes i only freemount now everytime i go riding. I’ve been doing this for almost 3 weeks now. When i first started to freemount i never went back to assisted mount. Even though it took me 1 out of 25 tries to freemount…i now freemount in 1 in 4-5 tries. So there is improvement for sure. I’m sure as the weeks go by freemounting will feel easier and easier.
Tomorrow i will start to hop like you describe…just 1,2 or 3 hops then keep riding. I’ll see how this goes.
As far as idling…that will be my winter project to accomplish this by the Spring.
I appreciate your advice…thanks.
I’ll use an assisted mount every chance I get because I’m a lot more fixated on trying to ride a challenging piece of trail than getting a perfect freemount. I’d rather have my feet positioned perfectly when I try the hillclimb or descent that I have trouble on than practice my 5,000th freemount
I think trying to freemount when you can is a better habit to get into. Also, you’ll eventually develop the ability to move your foot on the pedal for when your foot is not always in a great position.
So… keep going with it. You’ll need to be independent sometime 
I think that if you stuck to one wheel and practiced freemounting with every ride that you would come close to 100% within a month.
Once you are able to stop thinking about the body mechanics (because it becomes second nature) it all slows down to a point where adjusting your feet after the mount is just done.
If you want to ease into it then practice your freemounts on your descents. The body mechanics feel the same as a controlled freemount on level ground and it’s way easier to slow it down.
I do freemount on every ride, I just don’t do it if there is a handy tree or branch nearby. So on a typical ride I probably freemount 6+ times, but I’ll use assistance at least twice that. I can freemount with about 90% reliability and that keeps improving, but it’s just not my priority when I’m trying to ride a difficult piece of trail that I can only ride with 25% reliability. For that I want my feet perfectly positioned and I don’t want to be trying to move my foot 1/2" to the right while traversing roots or tilting my foot 30 degrees to keep it from hitting the cranks while climbing a 25% grade. I do that stuff enough that I’ve worn all the tread off the front of my left shoe.
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Just to be clear on what I meant… was to freemount for every single time you set foot on the unicycle.
If you start missing your mounts then you better start heading home so you don’t have to walk. 
I do understand though what you’re saying about having different priorities.
My priority was to nail the mount like getting on a bike. It’s just something you do when you get on a unicycle.
Actually, reading this again. If you use an assisted mount 2 times and freemount 6 times on a ride, to me, that’s totally ok! But then, now I read it again. You meant you freemount 6 times and assisted mount 12 times or more.
I think, really try to minimise the assisted mounting.
And you will certainly get better with foot placement on the pedals.
I try and ride every part of a trail I think I have any possibility of successfully completing and I’ll ride the difficult parts over and over, although I limit myself to 6 tries. So I fall a lot and make repeated attempts at the same climbs. I usually get the descents and obstacles within the first few attempts.
So I freemount when I have to and when I’m not feeling challenged by the trail ahead of me.
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Foot placement is definitely an issue, I’ve freemounted and proceeded to go off a drop about two feet in front of me and had about half my foot on the crank frantically looking for the pedal the whole time. I think clipless would be cool because you just click into the right spot every time but I would probably have died by now if I used them. Maybe some alternative like a square hole in a shoe and an extruded square in the pedal so you fall into place and can’t slide around but can also just hop out like normal.
I think we all ride unicycles for our own particular reason(s). And, we are all challenged by different aspects of the act of riding a unicycle. But in the end, we do it because we enjoy it. We enjoy the challenge, or the freedom, or the feeling, or (fill in the blank). We all have our priorities in that regard, also.
One of my priorities is being able to walk out of a bakery with a croissant in hand, effortlessly mount a unicycle, and head off to work while eating the croissant. (If you understand that reference and link back to the correct post, then you get 100 virtual ruari points.). That doesn’t mean that I go buy a croissant every chance I get and then eat it once I mount and ride away. So, we all have our priorities. It is great to understand the priorities of others, and to learn from others experiences.
Back to the croissant. I can’t eat a croissant with style (at some point) without freemounting. But, freemounting (now) might cause me to place my foot on the pedal in a way that causes my foot to contact the crank and fall flat on my face as I try to navigate the “Root Garden”. I free mount to practice croissant style points, but I use a tree to mount just before the “root garden”, to (hopefully) protect me from awkward falls.
Someday, I will free mount everywhere, and I will eat croissants in style. Until then, I will (still) enjoy every minute I spend on my unicycles challenging myself.
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Edit:
Well, it is time to add an additional chapter to this… Yesterday evening, I decided to ask the question, “What would Terry (Peterson) and (CanoeHead)Ted do?” The answer was that Terry might say, “Force yourself to ride with one hand on the saddle handle”. And, Ted would say, “No free mount, no ride.” So, I decided to ride off an 8 inch drop, across the not-so-flat grassy area to the top of the dam, and make it all the way to the concrete spillway (in the attached photo), free mounting every try, and holding onto the saddle while riding. The first series of tries were what you might expect. Unsuccessful. But then, I started nailing the free mount half the time, and kept getting further and further through the grass. One additional thing I did was to follow the advice of Duff and not let go of the handle during UPDs. It made the UPDs less “eventful”, and I started to realize that by forcing myself to hold onto the handle my balance hand started shooting out hard enough to not only correct my balance, but to change my direction of travel. I started to ride through UPDs that would have, before yesterday, caused me to jump off or step off the uni.
While I did not make it all the way to the spillway, I did make it 85 yards (the yellow line) (the spillway is 180 yards away, and the blue line is the line I intended to ride), while nailing my freemounts an average of 7 out of 10 tries, and riding off the 8 inch drop at the end of the sidewalk (the red line) an average of 9 out of 10 tries.
Thank you, Terry, Ted, and Duff. All three of your suggestions resulted in me being a better rider yesterday than I was the days prior.
So, my suggestion(s) to any new riders reading this is/are: read everything you can on this forum, and practice the suggestions given by veteran riders. They will work in time, even though they may seem impossible at first.
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That’s awesome! 
Great stuff!!
I’ve been riding for 4 years now. I’m working on big wheel idling. While the 36er is hard, I definitely feel improvement for my 27.5 and 29er.
The more practice you do on skills you aren’t good at, the better you’ll get and the easier it becomes. So, keep at it!!