Yeah, no pressure, right.
I can mount directly into one foot idle. My plan is to do this and then hope for the best…
Ok, so I had nothing to do and thought I could as well give it a shot. Having to push the uni to the hard court felt a bit like being betrayed and humilated. You may head over to the Today I (brag thread) for more details .
Unfortunately no pictures or movies, though.
I hadn’t really noticed ur kangaroo rotation until now. Very cool. I suppose this is what happens with first-time unicyclists that don’t know how to screw the cranks on the wheel. How do you even start learning that? It must be way akward. I suppose knowing how to one-foot helps, but still.
@Wheelou, you can do this too then?
I think learning one foot is already scary, but I suppose all these tricks are scary the first time.
@Ulkicycling have you spent time on ur 36" UW yet? It is prolly more tiring than riding one-foot, but compared to the smaller wheels a lot more comfortable. For me I can now easily have a 30 minute session without having knee pains.
In the coming weeks I will spend time “mastering” the freemounts.
Well, all in all I practiced about one hour over two days and thereby once managed to ride 300m kangaroo style. I’d say I’m on a good way, but it all depends on the time I’m willing to put into it in the future.
It really is quite fun, so I guess I‘m not going to convert my 20er back to normal very soon. Also (since we got into a discussion about freewheeling) I think that kangaroo should be quite helpful when it comes to learn freewheeling, since the core muscles are much more involved than in normal riding - at least at the level I’m currently at. Building up those muscles should be helpful for everything unicycle related. This is of course also true the other way round: if you can coast / glide (still don‘t know the difference) that should be very helpful when learning kangaroo.
One foot is a good basis to learn kangaroo since you can „just“ drop the other foot onto the pedal and drag it along while the first foot really is controlling the motion.
One foot isn‘t all that hard or scary, I think. But it took me a while to learn it (still no expert). The cool thing is that having a foot on the crown stabilises the whole thing when riding. And once things start to go south towards the back you can heavily push off the crown; this launches the uni forwards and stops your backward rotation enough to enable you to land on your feet rather than on your bum / back. At least that‘s how it works for me - I rarely fell on my bum when practicing one foot. Actually I‘m not sure I ever did.
We just had very hot days followed by rain/thunder here, so I got into other projects. I’ll report in case it starts to make sense.
300m kangaroo is impressive
Yeah, it’s been over 100 degrees for the last 2 days over here.
Well, thanks
Hoping to find the time to practice some more, today.
don’t forget to make a video… (my UW36 video will come very soon)
Too late. Just returned from practicing a couple minutes ago. During the day it’s too hot, so I had a short session in the morning. New record: 228 revolutions.
What is missing is consistency: I have to mount a number of times before I can successfully go from one foot idle to one foot and then to kangaroo. The kangaroo part itself isn’t consistent yet either, but given the limited time I put into practicing, I’m quite happy where I am at the moment.
We finally had some rain yesterday and now the temperature is more normal again just over 20ºC. But later in the week it will get back to 27.
Can you not push off from the wall directly into one-foot-riding? I can’t even idle.
Don’t you have to go to work? My holiday first starts end of July. I only have time to ride in the evenings from 20:00 when the kids have gone to bed. Unfortunately these days in the evening it is very warm.
Haven’t tried that yet. If possible, I’m trying to make the transition from riding rather than pushing off a wall when practicing new stuff. Maybe I’m just afraid of pushing off the wall .
With kangaroo I imagine the first stroke to be a bit difficult when pushing off the wall. You don’t yet have the feeling for how much force you have to apply, yet you lack the rear pedal to correct if you put in more power than needed… If* you’re already riding one foot you can wait for the right moment to start kangaroo and your foot is already in the flow. That makes the transition smoother in my view.
I had pretty much the same argument on the subject of practicing SIF, but I don’t remember whether it was with you or someone else. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, so it’s best to go the route that you feel suits you best. And if it doesn’t work out, you can always try a different approach.
That said, I think it’s wise to learn one foot before trying kangaroo, since one foot really enables your leg(s) to get the hang of this kind of riding (slightly stronger down stroke than usual, then wait for the pedal to come up again, while trying to correct as little as possible in order not to run out of momentum).
*as mentioned I’m having a harder time than I’d like to get there consistently. But on the positive side of things, that’s some “free” one foot practice, so I’m fine with that, overall.
there are too many fun things you can do with unicycles and they all cost a lot of time. I think that because I can ride UW, SIF should be easier, but I never really tried.
Freemounting a UW I can do … sometimes (only managed 3 times with the big wheel). If you mount into SIF, it is basically the same, only ur standing upright already.
I can see that freemounting into one-footed riding is very difficult as you don’t know with how much force you step up. On my normal unicycles I already never know.
The problem with the big UW is that I should have enough time to first stand upright and at the same time have enough momentum to press down on the front pedal. The wheel is very heavy and requires some force to get going and then my balance must be in the correct spot.
Actually it’s not. I learned it kinda accidentally when I was practicing something else (I think it was one foot backwards [no, I haven’t nailed that yet]). I had to mount soooo many times, I really got the hang of it and at some point noticed that I was reluctant to even place the second foot on the pedal. So I thought, I might try to just go directly to one foot idling, and that worked well…
sounds a bit like bragging
So this dude ( I know - thread hijack ) leaves his one foot hanging in the air. Is that easier than placing it on the frame?
And you don’t have a problem that you fall backwards when you want to keep your balance?
This is not the bragging thread, so no.
Having the foot on the crown makes riding one foot a lot easier. It helps to strengthen the link between you and the uni (if you brace the foot firmly on the uni), so there’s one less joint that can move; or at least it moves considerably less. Proof: With the foot on the crown I can ride either side. With the foot out I can only really ride when the right foot is on the pedal.
With regard to falling backwards: as mentioned I push the uni away as soon as things get sketchy. The repulsion helps me to not fall on my back, but rather land on my feet. Has so far worked very well. Of course, a uni with a flat crown is better suited for this.
I always have one foot on the frame/crown. One foot in the air is probably during an UPD I don’t like the wobbly/twitchy unicycle behaviour when the foot is in the air. But kangaroo is OK, not too wobbly/twitchy.
yes and the way you do kangaroo, do you apply equal pressure with both feet? Or maybe that would launch you off the seat
Done. Now I just need somebody to host it, since I’m not on Youtube or whatever…
Sure, equal pressure like naturally expected. But every pressure between only left and only right works. The pressure is well dosed, following and depending on the pedal rotation. It will only lift you when you UPD and don’t push yourself back by the handlebar. The pressure appears to be not too different to normal riding. Ofcourse it is more pulsed, but far away from lifting you.