Hi everyone, I started producing a series of tutorials for Mountain Unicycling, which I will publish over the next few weeks (probably 6 videos).
The series is aimed to be a guide for people who have learned to ride a unicycle and want to start riding offroad. It’s not a step by step guide, but a collection of tips, exercises and techniques that should help point you into a good direction and take you from a beginner unicyclist to being a pretty good mountain unicyclist.
The channels name says: “Basics”. This doesn’t mean easy, it will take time and practice to learn all this. To me, “Basics” means that I have tried to condense this to the essentials.
There are thousands of details one could add, but I tried to stick to the most important things. However, if you think I left something out, you have further questions, or even if you disagree with what I say, please comment, I may make more videos in the future, or at the very least, we can discuss them here.
Thank you everyone! They’ve been a lot of work, so I’m glad to see people are enjoying them.
Todays video is about Riding:
Not learning unicycling in the first place, there is plenty of instruction out there for that. I put together what I think are the most important basic tips to help someone ride a unicycle offroad better.
With the previous video, I knew that the way I think about freemounts and teach them is relatively widespread and works well for many riders. In this one, the parts about dealing with bumps and rough terrain are how I would personally break it down and try to describe it. It doesn’t seem to be put into words and instruction much, more something that people “figure out themselves” and “comes naturally”, so I hope you can give me feedback if how I put it into words is helpful for you. (Even if it doesn’t help you at all, I’d like to know that too)
(I will link all the episodes in the first post of this topic. Click here to get there. )
Another good video. I like these, and I think we kinda-sorta lack quality intro videos like this. You got me working on the running/walking freemount yesterday. I picked it up pretty quickly, but now to refine
I’ve been noticing that gap for years, I just finally got the time/energy to make these. Standing in front of a camera and talking is honestly very awkward for me, with the added difficulty of doing it in English I was considering trying to find someone else to do the presenting.
Realistically, there were not many candidates around and sometimes challenging myself to go far out of my comfort zone is good, so it’s a one man show for now.
(If anyone wants to cooperate for a topic they are an expert on, just shoot me a message, maybe we can work together. Freewheeling and (M)unipacking are things I think would fit in, but I don’t consider myself enough of an expert on to create a tutorial.)
That’s great and exactly the kind of thing I was trying to achieve! That mount takes a while to become super casual, the technique itself is arguably easier than a static mount, but the chance of missing the pedal makes it a bit more scary and it requires more foot-eye coordination. I think it’s a great step for people to get to a point where mounting just becomes second nature.
The information and advice more than counteracts any small akwardness you may feel (plus that will naturally diminish as you do more of these). Additionally, your English is fine, very clear and easily understandable. It is a credit to you that you pull this off so well in a second language.
I’m another person who your videos have already helped! Mounting up-hill has always been a roadblock for me, so I decided I just had to commit and start working on the rolling mount. It’s going well after the first few awkward ones, one of those moves you just have to commit to.
I really want to get better riding muni and am finally moving forward on it now, your videos are coming at the perfect time . I’m probably at a green/beginner level of a mountain bike rider, I’d love to be at a blue/intermediate level. I’m in awe of the riders in the elsbet 22 video.
You don’t come across awkward in the videos, your English is great, videos are the perfect length. Thank you!
Thanks for taking time to make videos which are great and have given me few tips to take away and try like the wheel in front riding that i have never tried and i must do more standing riding as i am fully aware that i am lazy on that front which is holding me back.
Your forest playground looks fun!!
Also any freewheel videos would be appreciated as i have recently built a freewheel that i have yet to try but will soon, Time and back trouble have stopped me so far.
Next tutorial video is out, this one is about Jumping:
Starting with basic hopping, then rolling hops, how to apply them in riding and ending with how to do drops.
The longest one so far and there is still stuff I left out, so if you have questions for a future video, I’d be happy to hear them.
(I will link all the episodes in the first post of this topic. Click here to get there. )
Was super excited to see another video. Keep’em coming!
This was a topic of particular interest to me. The forward/backward and side-to-side hopping exercise is a great idea, and I didn’t think of that. If you have any more exercise ideas in that realm, let me know. You don’t need to make a video or anything.
I really enjoyed this last video. Lots of great tips here.
I do static jumps like you do: Right foot forward, right hand on the handle. You recommend learning to jump with either foot forward, but are there other reasons for this than being able to do rolling jumps more easily? What about which hand to use? In one of his videos on jumping, Chris Huriwai advices holding with your right hand when (static) jumping left, and vice versa. My experience confirms this – I find it much easier to jump left than right, and I always hold with my right hand. Huriwai doesn’t mention anything about which foot to put first, though.
Some comments on objective reasons to hold with your left or right hand, and whether to put the same or opposite foot forward, would be greatly appreciated.
By the way, unlike some others, I always free mount with my left foot forward, but jump with my right foot forward, so I think saying “just use your dominant foot” doesn’t quite cover the subject.
One I forgot to mention would be playing with the rythm of your hopping. Fast hops people usually find easy, but slowing down the hopping is a bit more challenging and quite useful, since it saves energy.
That is pretty much the reason here. My hopping is noticably worse left foot forward and I think it’s normal to be better with one side, but the flexibility of having some hopping ability with either foot forward is great.
I agree there, it’s better and easier to jump towards the free hand. If I made this for trials, that would probably be one of the first things I mention, for Muni you don’t really get to choose all that often. Changing hands quickly is often too cumbersome and something may just force me to jump to the right towards the hand on the seat, so if I look from a Muni perspective, you just need a bit of ability to hop in any direction.
I don’t think any combination of hand on the seat vs. foot forward really have a significant advantage for Mountain Unicycling. If there are differences for rolling hops, they are tiny and no one has really put them together and most of the hopping is rolling hops or weird “off technique” hops.
With trials, there are some benefits to jumping towards your front foot when jumping onto a platform and with pedal grabs. With Flatland some flip tricks are supposedly easier/harder with some stances, same with front foot/backfoot grinds in street, but I honestly don’t remember if there ended up being a concensus on what you would ideally start with.
I’d keep it simple and I would recommend using whatever stance feels comfortable (I don’t even know what my “dominant foot” is supposed to be), with the addition that for Muni learning to hop with either foot forward is a good benefit.
I just use my right hand on the handle for everything and most people are sticking to one main hand (which surprisingly often to me is not their usual dominant hand) on the seat.
I do the (mirror image of the) same thing, and it’s an annoying problem - I often want to mount and then pause for a second, or make a quick correction hop, but I’ve got my wrong foot forward. Sometimes there’s room to roll a half rev to get my proper foot forward, but I often end up doing an awkward wrong-foot mount, or an awkward wrong-foot hop. Grr.
I’ve worked on mounting and hopping with the other foot, and I can do it, but I wish I had just chosen my other foot back when I was learning to mount.
Yes, it’s not a super rare “problem” to have. Most people (I’d guess upward of 90%) seem to naturally end up with the same foot forward, but some don’t.
I think the best thing to do if you end up in that place is learning to mount and hop with the other foot (as you did) and maybe putting a bit more focus on getting comfortable with mounting with the other foot.
What I did for hopping was forcing myself to use the “wrong” foot forward for a ride, that already helped a lot. I should still do that more often, hopping over stuff is mostly fine, but the kind of akward hopping on a tight switchback, I’m just very noticably less comfortable on that with my left foot forward.
! Great video, looking forward to the rest.
That mount takes a while to become super casual, the technique itself is arguably easier than a static mount, but the chance of missing the pedal makes it a bit more scary and it requires more foot-eye coordination. I think it’s a great step for people to get to a point where mounting just becomes second nature.