update
My ten year old suggested I stick my arms all the way out (I try to ride looking ‘cool’, and fall off). It helped, putting another twenty feet of distance before the dump.
It just seems so strange to me. If you can go fifty feet, you should be able to go 500 feet, or five miles!
I started riding at 41, it took several months including with the first month just trying to ride like in a narrow hallway, or on carpet, or just learning to step off the unicycle! Then along a fence on dirt. Finally I reached the end of the fence and moved to a cinder track with a slight downhill.
What I remember after moving to the track is that at the end of a ride, some number of feet, my legs felt so exhausted I didn’t know if I would be able to stand up if/when I lost balance. Obviously way too much energy going into riding, and it is just a matter of time before you loose it at this stage.
I think it is a difficult thing to understand. You have marginally increased your skill level at this point and distance is somewhat random, but fatigue, I think, eventually kicks in and brings you down.
I was riding over a mile (4 laps) before I started to get any idea of the seat/butt junction. It seemed important to have the seat post angled slightly backward from vertical, but still leaning forward. Leaning forward is good, you really don’t want to UPD backward with the unicycle shooting out in front of you, mostly because you have to have a somewhat aggressive attitude to learn to ride.
Using your arms: I guess if they are farther out it might help, but flailing is okay at this stage.
If you want to practice form, go along a wall or fence. Best along a smooth surface. Try to just barely touch the wall if you can, but enough so that you don’t have to worry too much about balance so you can think about what you are doing and how your weight is distributed. If you have trouble getting on, bring along a chunk of 2x4 to stop the wheel as you get on. During this type of exercise it is best to avoid difficulties in mounting. Until you can do the skill you are mounting into, use whatever makes getting onto the unicycle fastest and least strenuous: use your time and energy on the skill you are learning.
It is easy to make light of simply riding a unicycle, yet everytime I get on to just ride, I seem to have somehow improved in this ‘simplist’ of skills. Probably one of the most interesting and rewarding aspects of this sport: spontaneous improvement.
One thing that I had a hard time getting right was the height of my seat. I don’t actualy know what is the proper way but I kept messing with the height till I found what worked. And the arm flailing seems to help alot. It wasn’t for a couple of months till I could ride long without the crazy arms, and even longer till I could hold the seat and ride. Another thing I found I started doing to improve my balance was walking on narrow stuff when out walking normal, like a line of the sidewalk or staying on the edge of a curb. Hope this helps you out.
I started unicycling 7 months ago, at Christmas. I didn’t have a handy wall or fence to cycle along but just a concrete step and a small piece of fence to hang onto to allow me to mount.
Learning consisted of getting on the uni from the step, getting comfortable while still hanging (very tightly) onto the fence, and then launching forward.
For days I managed about 1 rotation of the pedals before falling, then I would occasionally ride about 30 yards and then be back to nothing again. The distance and the reliability just gradually improved, I’ve not found leg strength or butt sorenes a problem but then I have been mountain biking for several years.
After about 4 months I bought a Nimbus 26" Muni and now ride off-road on single track for a couple of hours in the evening.
Just keep on with the practice. Some days it feels like you’re going backwards (somedays completely unintentionally you will ride backwards) but then you will get that eureka moment and that makes all the blood and sweat worthwhile.
And some people take 8 months:o .
I had exactly the same problem of reaching a plateau of about 50 feet.
The thing that got me beyond that was a change in venue. I always rode in the same location and it became (I believe) a subconscious habit to UPD in about the same location. I found a different place to ride and quickly got past it. As you’ve probably figured out from reading all of these posts, different things work for different people. This is what worked for me. Another problem I had was constantly veering to the left. I think it was because I learned to ride at a tennis court using the fence, always on my right, to hang on to. This gave me only one option to get away from the fence. I became so comfortable with my direction around the tennis court that I just couldn’t change. I found that I couldn’t even mount the thing hanging on to the fence with my left hand. I’d get frustrated and always revert back into my comfort zone. With unicycling, it’s important to mix it up.
I agree with the idea that mixing it up helps alot, even after you can ride and hop on stuff. Trying the same thing in the same place seems to make you hit a wall and just keep on hitting it. And the change in venue seems to help the spontanious improvement happen more often.
Unicycling requires dynamic balance; you need to lean forward just enough to require you to pedal to stay balanced, and you need to pedal just fast enough that you remain leant forward the appropriate amount.
The people I’ve taught are generally not pedaling enough, if they come off the front. They get tired, or spooked, or see an obstacle, and slow down or stop their pedaling without correcting their lean.
Something you can do to counteract is to always keep pedaling, even if you feel yourself becoming imbalanced. Your body needs to learn how to correct from imbalanced positions; if you step off every time you’re imbalanced, you’ll never get anywhere.
Going the distance
I also noticed a change of venue helping.
The biggest for me was mixing it up when I hit my platou was mixing it up. (Helps helps with bordom and keeping from getting discouraged.)
-ride along a long 3-6 ft fence so you can pull yourself to or away from the fence (waist to chest height while mounted is ideal, I found one at a school about 90 ft long).
-ride w/ almost all of your weight on the [B]seat /B.
-ride w/ all of your weight on the [B]pedals /B
-super smooth surface with high (easier)/ low (harder) air pressure.
-bumpy surface with high (harder)/ low (easier) air pressure.
-Ride w/ fence on right and left side
-focus on something (or not - harder) past end of fence
-close your dominant eye (if right handed its usually your left, left handed usually your right)
-hold both arms streight out to the sides waving as needed (easier)
-hold one or both hands to chest (harder)
-hold onto handle lightly or firmly
I got really frustrated when I could ride along my 90 ft fence for two weeks w/ zero improvement. Then I decided to think of it like doing laps at the pool and started the variations listed above. Feel free to combine several techniques.
I continued to do my laps on my learner, a 24" Torker DX for a month. Then I read larger wheels were harder, so smaller must be easier so I got a 16" CX w/ a 400 mm seat post and started riding all over the playground within a hour, 3 months after starting.
i had the same problem. what i did to fix it i started over from scratch. and also your day will come when it just clicks in your head. also do put all the weight on the seat, it really helps. one thing i also did was got between tow cars and just went between them it helped me a ton.
tonight’s practice
Using some suggestions from here (and my “ace” riding buddy, Devin) I went to our Tuesday night juggling club meeting. As it’s mostly college kids(it’s a college club, me and ten year old Devin are regular ‘crashers’) and things are rather quiet during the summer. A couple of guys are in Oregon for the IJA gathering, a couple are in Ireland for that juggling convention, so it was a quiet evening.
I took this as a good chance to try some of the suggestions posted here,-mostly the change of venue idea that was suggested.
Well, there are still some flops and drops, but I did get two or three consecutive runs that suprised me! The first time, I’m actually sitting there thinking,“Okay, where’s the UPD?” (Actually, it was more “How come I’m still up here?”)
150 feet, easy. All the way from my truck to that one way over there! I whistled to get Devins’ attention; he looks up and gives me a big grin.
I had ‘taught’ him to unicycle before I had ever tried myself. I read everything I could from this site, and followed the instructional posts and articles methodically. I was able to get him up and RIDING a mile long loop within about a week.
My own uni arrived a month later (Hey, why should kids have all the FUN?) and as easy as Dev made it look, I’ve been struggling.
So anyway, tonight, I alternate between riding in the parking lot and, when I start losing ground, juggling in front of the Visual Arts Building.
For me the evening IS GOOD.
We pack up to leave, and I just have to have one more ride on the uni.
Devin attempts to load the rest of our stuff while I ‘cruise’ the parking lot.
On the ride home, the tailgate of the truck flops open, and our bag of juggling stuff falls out.
A guy who is unloading groceries from his mothers car must have heard the “KATUNCK” of the tailgate dropping open. By the time I realized what had happened, he had managed to get the bag safely to the curb, where he sat waiting for us to turn around. So we recovered all our juggling shtuff.
We reach home, when I realize that my ‘Nextel’ (cell phone) is no longer clipped to the juggling bag. It’s a company phone, and this will be the second one I’ve lost!
Back out to the hinterlands I go, hoping against all odds that the phone is still there.
Well… I search for forty minutes, along a route where the traffic really whizes by. A car changing lanes makes a tic-tic sound as it passes one spot.
When the signal light changes, I follow where the noise had come from and locate the circuit board of the radio. It’s folded in half lengthways, but it is the right size and shape of the original phone.
Do I Care?
Nope… I managed to ride 150 feet on a unicycle, even this fiasco can’t ruin that.=