yea, I can’t tuck at all when I hop up stuff sif, thus I can’t hop very high sif. any tips/ advice?
thanks,
Miles
Practice SIF squats while standing still, try and get your butt down as low onto the tire as you can. Also, practice jumping on flat, and tucking as much as you can, but don’t worry about jumping high. Just static jump and pull the seat up high in front of your chest and do the same thing you did with the leg squats in mid-air.
Doing a bunch of those will help you tuck better when jumping onto objects. Also, do stuff like jumping onto easy heights, and tucking as much as you can. That will carry over to helping you jump onto big stuff.
I can’t sidehop very high, but I tuck the heck out of them, even on easy jumps. I’ve hit myself in the chin with the seat before.
thanks, anything else?
Impressive, but have you ever hit your chin on the crown before? I have.
Morn,
Sif hopping and tucking are 2 diffrent actions at the same time, the second you leave the ground, pull your legs up till they stop. make sure that when you hit the object, you are sitting on the tire, this can add control somtimes, also a little bit of time to get your feet back on the pedals.
Forrest has a lot of great advice.
Someone asked me a similar question in the thread about my first video, and here was my response, even though it’s about more of what I do…But I hope it helps you nonetheless:
Basically what I do, is warm up how Zack Baldwin said that he warmed up. I stretch my arms and legs before a ride. I might also do some static jumps without the unicycle, and with those jumps I tuck my legs up under me so that my knees basically hit my chest area. I also mount the unicycle, pull the seat out, and lower my body, and seat over the tire, until my butt touches the tire. Essentially I’m doing sif squats with the unicycle. I try to make it a fluid motion without using a corrective hop until I’m upright after dipping down. This helps so that I don’t bash the back of the seat into my ribs or collarbone when landing a big up. It keeps the seat anywhere from a little to farther away from my torso when I land on bigger stuff, for that reason. I do about 4-6 squats before I consider myself warmed up and ready to go. And if you notice in video Ryan Atkins and Zack Baldwin will, before a big up or pedal grab, quickly drop/push the seat away from them and bring it back in right before they compress the tire, like they are adjusting it and their center of balance. It’s another part of the technique.
Everything else is just timing, tuck and practice practice practice. The more you practice, the easier it is to judge how far away to be from a ledge, and how much to compress and then snap into a tuck. I use the rebound from the tire compressing (play with the tire pressure to see what gives you the best bounce response) to boost me into the air. As soon as I’m coming up from the rebound, I pull my knees/legs/feet up. I also pull up on the seat, but my legs do most of the work. The seat just helps, along with your spare arm (with the exception of your spare arm being able to throw your weight in different dirrections), in angling where you want to go. The tuck part is just like when I said that I practice a high static hop without my unicycle. I bring my knees to my chest. With a unicycle there’s a little more weight added to the game, of course, and your feet are in a different position along with your arm on the seat, and you are balancing on a small footprint of rubber. A lot of hopping is a mind game. I trick my mind into believing that a big ledge is actually smaller than it is, when I first attempt a new height. My static sif hops, no-pre-hop top out at around 34 inches, as we speak. Zack once told me he’d done 37" without a pre-hop. I’m not sure if I can go 34" seat-in. I’ve never tried anything over 24 inches as far as I know…and that was rolling. I really don’t have any use for rolling seat-in, or static seat-in hops. But, if I practiced I’m sure I could go 34 inches.
Start small. Work your way up. Defeat your mental blocks. I start on smaller things to warm up during rides. And besides, there are some small things that I ride that are a lot harder, more precise and technical than some bigger stuff that I do.
–Evan
thanks alot for all the great advice. I’ll practise more tommorow and during the weekend. does seat height make a difference for sif?
You want your seat a little higher than usual. It wont strain your back and you wont have to bend over as much to hold your seat.
Yes, When I try to go for a high hop, I raise me seat to where it is uncomfortable, and some times even challenging to ride with the seat in.
I like my seat really high for sif. I like it so high that I cannot even sit on it. It just feels more comfortable that way. Right now I don’t have any seat posts long enough so I just raise it as high as I can with the smallest amount of post in the neck as possible (I will probably pull the post out one day but oh well).
Edit, Evan beat me.
hmm. maybe I should get a QR clamp…
How would that help anything?
nice Thread!!
didn’t consider raising the seat high. That’s a dandy piece of advice. My lower back muscles are giving me so many problems, I just stopped doing SIF, but the seat was pretty low. Maybe this will help.
Cheers.
i know a kid who got a pedal bite on his forhead. it looked so funny.
how the hell did he manage that? thats impressive!
haha, yeah next 661 is gonna have to make like 1x4’s or like forhead biters or whatever to protect forheads from pedal bites 
that would look so dicky! they should just get a full face helmet and cover the front of it, so its pretty much a dome that you stick over your head. i dont know how you would see out of it but it would work!
Lol Ive herd of hitting your head on the seat, Ive givin myself a balck eye from the bumper…But the pedal to the forehead…IM JEALUS! lol. Anyways, yeah most riders do better and feel more comfortable with a high seat for sif hops. I usually just leave my saddle the same height for every style, street, trials, roll hops, or side. I just get used to it at one height, ask Evan or Spence, I damn near have a panic attack when someone adjusts my seat!!!
i adjust my seat all the time, for freestyle i like to have it high, for muni as low as it goes, for trials and street i just have it normal (for me)
I stacked doing a muni-bomb
ok
shin pads for shins
elbowpands for elbow
helmet for top of head
now how do I pro tect my forehead 
you hit your head on the pedal too?
i was talking about a kid from school, it looked so freaking hilarious i cuoldn’t stop laughing