Yeah, it probably does. The one gotcha is that I have a Mad4One handle on my muni. The fact that my hand is rotated 90 degrees really makes a difference in feel.
I’ve got M41 saddles on all my unis. I think they do impart a slight twist to the uni when you hop. Either side of the handle is out of center, but you can compensate for that.
Then you’ll lose one hand for balance…
with the S and M HandleSaddle it’s easy just to hold the front as if you’d hold the regular handle. (No experience with the L version).
In the end you only need sufficient strength to lift the uni from the ground while you hop. It becomes even easier with grippy pedals (steel pins) because then you can pull on your pedals as well…
Look at Ryan Kremsater for example, he hops and drops pretty well and uses one hand on a t-bar with grips on the end for holding on.:
Mr. Kremsater is one of my favourite riders and looking at his videos will point out the unbalanced technique I’m talking about.
So the 10-20 takes aside, the desire to show the absolute max it can be taken to, and the scripting of measuring your takeoff to coincide with your asymmetry, have a look at his body position every time he launches for a feature jump.
Right arm on the bars creating a diagonal shoulder line sloping down to the right.
Right foot usually back to accommodate his dominant side.
A kick or tire travel to the right as well because the asymmetrical body position assists in the mechanics of this maneuver.
If I’m riding down a trail, hand on the right bar and hit a kicker, my right hand pulling up will initiate a tire travel to the right. (So I’m slightly hopping from left to right)
If I’m riding down a trail, hand on the left bar and hit a kicker, my left hand pulling up will initiate a tire travel to the left. (now I’m hopping slightly right to left)
If you use two hands (with equal force) the kicker won’t push you left or right but keep your forces centred and directing you forward or up instead of sideways.
I know it’s splitting hairs at this point but I like to try and achieve an absolute control of the wheel through fine symmetrical balance.
I feel this is much healthier for my body and the benefits transfer to other activities in my life.
I’m also not making videos to shock and impress an audience so all this symmetry talk is really just what works for me. (probably not the masses)
Where I find it most noticeable is when doing hard climbs. If I grip the saddle from either side it seems to throw my balance off very slightly. Gripping from near the center of the front of the handle seems to solve this. I think it also comes into play when doing hops, drops and descents though too and for those I grip the side. I’ve got a large saddle on my 36er but I don’t notice the effect so much when riding that.
It also seems like hard turns are easier when gripping with the outside hand, but maybe that’s just me.
I freemounted my handlebar-ed 36er a few times after work today on flat ground and took recordings of it!!!
Here’s my video.
By the way, freemounting a 36er has been a MAJOR struggle for me.
You should take your own advice and give yourself some space. Your 4’ wide workspace may feel safe but it looks quite dangerous if you were to fall out of control.
A wide open space will give you the room to concentrate on the mount and not the possible fall into all of that gear.
Try your mount without grabbing the seat.
Your one hand is already on the bars so you’re half way there.
When you ride, does hanging on to the bars feel better than hanging on to the seat? I’ll bet yes.
I think that mounting with the bars will end up feeling better than the seat grab too.
Soon, you’ll be a two fister for your mounts.
… and yes, momentum and commitment are the secrets.
Extra power is easy to dial back but lack of power is much harder to deal with.
Keep it up!
(edited to remove exclamation mark… didn’t mean to yell. )
I find that mounting with one hand on the seat and the other hand/arm free to throw forward and up works best for me. With the one hand on the seat and not on the handlebar I have the option of pulling hard on the seat for up hill mounts or when I jump a little too hard and need to get going fast. I can pull up on the saddle and push down hard on a pedal if needed but can not do the same if my one hand on the uni is extended on the handlebar. I could not do this without one hand on the saddle.
When I learned the rolling mount what I quickly discovered is that you don’t have to roll the wheel very far to get that momentum that helps get you up and into the saddle. A quarter turn is more than enough. This makes foot placement a lot easier and more predictable. Maybe it’s not a true rolling mount anymore, but I don’t really care so long as it reliably gets me up and riding.
What’s really hard on a 36er is mounting on an incline. Even a very small uphill slope can be very challenging. Fortunately it’s not significantly harder to hop on a 36er so you can mount downhill and then reverse direction by hopping.
Also, if you’ve got some trails around that no longer challenge you on your muni you can attempt them on the 36er.
Jim, I honestly think that if you tried the same mount with one hand on the bars you’ll see what I mean.
On that mount, by using the handlebars you would be crossing over the balance point sooner and pushing the bars forward during the mount will drive the seat up and forward which should help the mount even more.
Also, by using the bars, the seat will start off lower during the step up which seems to give you more room to mount and more time to comfortably sit down once the seat does come up.
Though this is just what works for me.
I use the bars for everything. Riding, hopping, idling, mounting, etc…
I’m going with, what works for you may or may not work for me!
But it really is the momentum from my run up that gets me up. If I try at walking speed, I can’t get up onto it unless its a downhill.
I can’t static mount a 36er on a flat surface, I just can’t get up and over it from standing on the ground.
When you miss a mount, is it because you aren’t balanced side to side, or did you just not use enough power to get it up and over?
When I was learning it often felt like I was missing power/commitment, but actually my lateral balance was off. If I feel this happening now I focus on jumping towards either the front of the tyre or the forward pedal, depending on which way I need to correct.
If you are “just” not jumping high enough, have you tried deliberately jumping all the way over? Start the mount as normal, but instead of landing it aim to step off the front and let the unicycle fall behind you. Sometimes that helps to calibrate my brain.
Static mounting a 36er is seriously hard. I only do rolling mounts and rollback mounts on the 36er. Rollback mounts used to be a hit or miss thing for me. I’d maybe get one out of three of them. Once I developed some skill at idling however they became much more consistent. Like everything else, idling on a 36er is tougher than on a smaller wheel, but it’s not a huge step up in skill. It does seem that way at first though because the big wheel seems so ponderous and covers such a big distance with each idle. I’m currently using 170mm cranks on mine however so that probably makes a difference. I found 170’s to be too long on smaller unis and that they slowed me down and were kind of awkward even when climbing. On a 36er however I like them a lot. With that big wheel I can still go as fast as I want to and the extra leverage helps with climbing and control.
In the case of rolling mount, probably more like not happy with foot placement on pedal, and then side balance perhaps?
I was having issues with not getting enough power to get up over the frame on flat ground but I’ve now gone faster with leaping off the ground.
My legs are too short for anything longer than 150’s on the 36er, unless I was to cut the frame, and I won’t do that. The seat is all the way down to the frame already, and the saddle is a KH Fusion Street, a fairly slim saddle if you are going to ride distance.
Hop right foot forward
and uses one hand on a t-bar with grips on the end for holding on.:
)