There’s a few tricks I want to learn that need one footed riding as base work but I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. Any tips?
i would be interested too! One hint i found in several posts is: try idling one footed. That is something i tried and that seems feasible. But it is still far beyond my imagination how to be able to ride one footed 
First you generally want to have mastered the idle, in whichever form you’re looking to transition to one-foot-riding; either foot on frame, or foot extended.
I personally find foot-on-frame to be easier and more more practical, but I know people who do both.
Once you’ve got idling, I recommend practising slowing down your idle as much as possible, getting your foot as high as possible front and back.
You should be able to idle with very little foot pressure for most of the stroke. When you’re doing one foot riding, you need to apply almost no pressure to the pedal while it goes from the bottom of the stroke to the top to ensure it can get all of the way over the top. It’s pretty much a case of pushing down for a third of a rotation, and then following the pedal around with your foot for the rest of it.
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Isn’t one foot riding more about forward-momentum? first gain some speed and then dare to take off one foot and with the other push down hard on the downwards rotation and let the momentum carry you over the deadpoints?
Sure if you’re going down a hill, but when you get started (and on a 20” wheel) you don’t have much forward momentum, so you really can’t put much pressure on the pedal coming back up or the wheel will stop.
do you mean that you start in one foot riding? I thought you first have to make some rotations first and then shift to 1 foot.
I started with one-foot idling before progressing to one footed riding. I find it’s easier resting my foot on the frame than letting it dangle.
I’ve learned one foot riding the way you describe, ride, take foot off and place on frame, continue. (To be fair, first it was ride, use one foot less and less until it feels like one is not used, then started taking it off. Not quite as “daring”).
However to learn the feeling and timing of one foot riding, I’ve seen more riders have success starting from one foot idling. I think that way just feels safer.
Once you’ve learned one foot, starting from riding is generally what people do.
+1. Way easier.
Absolutely. Don’t be afraid if you’re getting slower and slower; you’ll eventually learn to handle this, to endure the lack of speed (that would normally help to stabilise the ride). I consider this ability to be the most precious benefit of learning to ride one foot.
Could be a personal thing. To me it feels safer (and easier) to switch to one foot while riding. But that seems to be my preferred way to tackle transitions (e.g. seat in front). Then there’s also the possibility to mount directly to one foot idle. Don’t know if that’s a good way to learn or not - I kinda learned it by accident when I practiced the transition from one foot idling to one foot riding.
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I think slow is a good recommendation in general. One footed riding at speed is hard anyway, and I see a lot of people UPD when going from two-foot to one-foot as they’re simply going too fast to handle the transition.
I certainly learnt to one-foot from two-foot before I could one-foot ride from idling, but I was practising both in tandem and I’d recommend anyone else to do the same.
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