It sounds like you might have air in your line and you need to bleed them. My Maggies brake very solidly and it doesnt bottom out. But i guess if youre used to it its ok.
I dont think brakes are meant for emergency, instant stopping, then youll go flyin. They meant to slow down by the means of dragging.
If i cant swerve and avoid, my natural reaction would be to instantly jump off , catch handle if i can, to avoid crashing.
Thread resurrection!!
So for basically my entire unicycling life, I’ve never used a brake, never saw the need (Maybe I just don’t ride that many hills!)
But recently, I’ve been using my G29 with fairly short cranks and so have been struggling to keep it all under control. I figured a brake would help, so I’ve screwed on a Magura HS11 (It’s an older Schlumpf so didn’t want the hassle of discs, plus I find the idea of putting a brake on my crank to stop a wheel that is geared up in relation to the crank really weird…).
My first experiences are that this is a stupid idea, and using a brake on a unicycle is just a fast way to eat tarmac. I’m struggling to un-learn the act of slamming my foot on the back pedal to slow myself down, and a lot of the time I sort of wimp out of using the brake and end up slowing down naturally before trying the brake, which then results in a forward fling!
So… that’s where I’m up to so far. I want to find some nice steep hills that I know I struggle with, and see if I can learn to flatten them out, but don’t really want to be bailing off in front of cars and stuff. Maybe I can find some off-road ones! 
Try applying a small even percentage of brake on level ground and keep riding.
Now that you’re used to the back pressure, you can take it to a hill.
Apply the same pressure and keep riding through.
Repeat this several hundred times and you’ll be fine. 
Good beginner advice I liked was to have the brake starting to engage before the need was there. Basically, brake lightly on top of the hill and continue with the pressure as you ride down. This is where you learn to feather more or less to compensate for the hill.
After a while you’ll pedal hard into the top of the hill and your fingers and legs will work together in a millisecond to find the correct resistance for the drag.
To echo Ted, the biggest thing is to get the brake under load before you need it. So if a steep hill is approaching, apply it at the crest and don’t try and fiddle with the pressure too much on the way down to begin with.
Ditto for releasing the brake - keep it applied until the hill has levelled out and then release it slowly. I’ve never had any UPDs when applying the brake but I’ve come close a few times when releasing it too quickly.
If you’re trying to use it for stopping, rather than hill management, then probably what’s missing is that you need to lean quite far back. Start by riding fairly fast and do a running dismount off the back of the uni, applying the brake once you’re off the saddle to stop the wheel running away. Then you can gradually apply it earlier and earlier.
BTW, I’m not sure what your road riding looks like but one thing I find the brake really handy for is riding extremely slowly with control. For example, if I’m timing a red light I’ll keep some brake pressure on, even on the flat, as I’m at a near-standstill. It makes it much easier to keep both hands on the bars without much wobble.
Oh, and welcome to the dark side 
So there is a way to use it for a sudden stop!
I own 2 uni’s: a 29er KH 125mm cranks and a Huni-rex 125mm cranks only high gear 26" with fat road tire. While using the KH I don’t need a brake: I’m almost a newbie (about 15 months of uni) and I’m still too scared to drive down any hill that my legs could’t manage without help.
But when I’m driving my road uni, I found that I MUST learn how to brake for a sudden stop. If I’m riding fast the high gear involves only slow acceleration and slow deceleration: on bike bike paths on sidewalks, or in a XC bike paths I decided that I need to learn how to apply istant brake to sudden stop. Too much risk involving other people, also my 6 y.o. child which usually ride his bike with me.
Even if Corbin is the only one who could use the brake to stop quickly that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be learnt. Also a freewheel uni was just an impossible idea a few years back…
This year my plan is to learn idling on the 29er, than learn to stop quickly from a rush in high gear and than learn to idle in high gear… I’ll let you know by a video when I’ll become an expert “braker”!
I learned idling on a 20". I was able to transfer that skill to larger wheels, but idling on a big wheel is, imo, not that much fun. It puts strain on my knees. Idling in high gear could be done either very slowly (requiring a great amount of control) or more quickly (requiring great force).
Learning to stop quickly from a rush in high gear is definitely a goal. There are probably many, many intermediate steps on the way to that goal. I’m not sure there are any shortcuts. For example, can you ride one-footed with either foot? Then do the same on a braked unicycle applying minimum braking force? This would teach you how to minimize the effect of your feet during “extreme” braking.
Please, someone back me up on this…Vogelfrei80, you need a 20"!!!
Even if the only goals you care about are related to your 29er and your HuniRex, you are still more likely to achieve them by practicing basic skills on a smaller wheel, then transferring those skills.
Twen-ty! Twen-ty! Twen-ty! Twen-ty!
I used a 20" ebay trash for 1 month… than my child wants to learn with me… I bought the huni-rex and cut the 20" to fit a 120 cm boy that tried it only 1 time. Now it’s my ultimate wheel (why no one use a uni wheel without frame as a UW?) I cannot ride
Have a look at this portait of Martin Charrier filmed 4 years ago, he’s one of the top unicyclists on the planet. He does exactly what you ask for at the beginning of the video:
Just to be clear, I wasn’t talking about Corbin’s no-foot braking. That is very impressive but also way above my pay grade. My feet stay on the pedals :p.
Wow yeah he leans back pretty far in order to stop safely! There are a few other videos of unicyclists doing that same sort of skill (Stopping more or less on the spot from a fast sprint). I’m mostly interesting in learning to use the brake for taking the edge off hills rather than stopping dead (I don’t have much trouble with this even in high gear).
Just to be clear. If I’m going down a hill, am I supposed to basically just hold the brake at constant pressure, or should I be tugging it on and off (In a similar pattern to how I usually pedal forward, stop on the back pedal, pedal forward etc. when doing it brakeless)?
Or is it more of a combination of the two that I’ll learn with experience?
Once you get the hang of it you’ll find that you can vary the brake pressure to control both your balance and your speed. “Tugging” sounds a bit aggressive though - it’s more smooth than that as you have braking power in every part of the pedal stroke, unlike when you’re braking with your feet.
Yeah I didn’t necessarily mean literally tugging on it (Like, going from slammed-on to virtually nothing), just applying more pressure at certain points of the spin. When I do a brakeless descent, my feet push backwards really hard when theyre going from the bottom of the stroke to 90 degrees behind me, but I do the forwards-pedal part fairly smooth. Imagine if you were riding on flat ground with cranks that are FAR too long, and you keep shoving down super hard rather than spinning in circles, that’s how I look going down the hill (although backwards) so I keep imagining that I should be using the brake in that sort of motion too.
Pedal through the brake
I find it best to usually “pedal through the brake“. Like pushing on the throttle and the brakes of a vehicle at the same time.
As I apply the brake I will continue increasing forward pedal pressure/force to maintain or nearly maintain my speed. Then I’ll continue forward pedal pressure/force and increase braking force to slow down while using forward pedal pressure/force and cadence changes to maintain balance or change attitude [or to increase how much I’m leaning backwards so I can increase braking pressure].
Remember to separate the two components—speed control by brake—balance(attitude) control by cadence.
After some practice you should be able to get to hard braking and light forward pedal balance control in just a couple of seconds (similar to the videos that have been shared, I don’t think they are backpedaling any or much).
I find this method to work well on rim and disc brakes, on pavement and downhill muni, with 24, 26, 29, and 36 unicycles either singlespeed or geared.
As a side benefit you should find the wheel to “straighten out” its wheel track. If you work at it you can usually learn to wobble less and less when pedaling forward. But few of us work regularly to track straight going backwards. Going downhill shifting back and forth between pedaling toward and applying back pressure on the upstroke many of us wobble significantly. Braking without backpedaling usually reduces our tendency to wobble, especially when in high gear on steep descents.
Please forgive me if I have posted this already somewhere. I searched and gave up quickly.
JM
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It’s a steady pressure.
Think of using the brake to take away the hill component.
Small hill = small constant pressure
Steep hill and/or big wheel = more constant pressure
Now that the hill component is taken away, all there is to do is balance.
If I’m rippin’ down a hill and my tire leaves the ground (for whatever reason) I will back off the pressure to keep my tire rotating while off of the ground. Feather it back on when you’re back on the dirt.
I find this is easier to land and keeps things smooth under speed.
Thanks Joe, that was really helpful I think! I’ll be putting the ideas into practice this week hopefully.
To be honest having ran brakeless for so long I think I’ve gotten alright at descending without wobbling too much, but in high gear with teeny little cranks I am losing a lot of back-pedal strength.
Canoe, what you said makes perfect sense too! Without a brake, and without any back-pedalling, my wheel would quickly escape from under me forwards. So if I don’t back pedal, and use the brake to drag the wheel, I should be able to pedal forward ‘against’ the braking force, thus making the hill feel less steep. Or… something like that.
I have brakes on my 29" muni without a handlebar which makes braking easy enough, but also have them on the handlebar of the 32". When going downhill with it, i hold the brake from the side while holding the bar before the handles. This gives a slight angle which adds some difficulty to balancing. How close to the seat or close to the front do yous attach the brake lever on a handlebar?
At the front of the bars for me. I always ride with my hands on the handlebars, unless I need to blow my nose.
I originally wanted mine on the bars where my hands go but the hose isn’t quite long enough and I can’t be bothered fiddling with it yet, so I just put it just after the saddle handle - this means I can grab the saddle with one hand and the brake’s tube with the other
After reading this thread, my next ride was on my 26" muni. I practiced applying the brake abruptly. I was expecting to UPD. However, I noticed that, to the extent that I had a firm connection with the seat/handle, sudden braking did not send me flying.
To get the strong connection with the saddle, I sit far back on it, so I’m not only applying weight downward on the saddle, but I’m also able to pull back hard on the handlebars/brake without letting the saddle slide under me. The more isometric force there was between my butt-on-the-seat and the handlebars, the less my balance was affected by sudden braking.