The log was only about 10 inches in diameter. I made it clean over the log but landed weight forward…MUni goes back, I goes forward…hit the wrist guards hard. (and the crotch, and the knee).
I know its just a practice thing, but I’m having trouble getting enough height to hop over logs (etc.). I’m not a seat out front kind of guy yet. I can see how seat out front jumping would give a higher jump. And besides, the other MUCsters I ride with hop over this size log, seat in, with fewer problems.
I’ve noticed that rysling does a little “pre-hop”.
How high can one jump with seat in?
Followup question: Could I expect to learn jumping with seat out before learning to ride seat out front?
Chris has a monkey on his back that he has been trying to shake for decades. The little “pre-hop” is one of his feeble attempts to fake the monkey out in hopes that he will launch himself over a barrier and be forever free of the parasitic primate. Were he but more clever than the little fellow.
If he could ever shake him, he could probably make a clean escape. I personally have seen him hop a unicycle vertically in excess of 15mm.
Pre Hop is a usefull tool to get more height. To do a pre hop I suggest set out a few more inches from where you would normally attempt to get up from, when you land your hop you want to keep your legs straight and STOMP the ground like crazy. From there you go up and now bend your knees to get up and over big logs. ( I can get up stuff thats like 20" with the seat in like this)
If you can download Kris’s Clinique at one of the Unicons. I got it off of Jeff Luktus’ site although I forget what it is. Kris demonstraits this really well in one of them. He can also hop higher than anyone else so I listen.
If you are a few feet away from the object, and can’t decide how your cranks are going to end up, (I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s just pedalled right into the thing they are planning on jumping over) you can prehop to right infront of the object, with your cranks level, ready to leap over the object.
I seat-under-butt hop all the time. Heights of over 18" are quite common. (Grab/lift handles really help out here)
My problem is when I seat-out-in-front hop, I can get nice height, but can never land it. I don’t really practice it much though…I think this may be the culprit
Seat out front is very handy. I used to only do seat-in, but after a while, you realise you can only go so big without learning to be good at seat out front. I now ONLY use seat out front when hopping. It just takes practice. Force yourself to hop seat out front. As for the max height hopping seat in… i’d say about 20 inches, however, this is with a precision tuned pre-hop, and much practise (and a high vertical) but with seat out front, i am constantly hopping over 80cm.
Practise, Practise, Practise.
Dan Heaton almsot only hops seat in, he can hop amazingly high. He finds side
hopping much harder than rolling hops. I think both forward rolling hops and
seat-out-front side hops are very useful skills to become good at, and if you
are able to not overlook one or the other, it would make you an even more
extremely skilled trials rider. By the way 80 cm is excellent! I need to get a
good trials uni, and get back into the trials scene. A couple weeks before
unicon I was getting heights up over 75 cm.
>How high can one jump with seat -in-?
From the responses it seems like 50 cm (20") is doable with lots of
practice. My question would be: what’s the effect of having the seat
very low? Is it important?
(I ask because I have my MUni seat rather high as I like rolling more
than jumping.)
Too low, adn your power is decreased, and the knees end up hurting more. I ride MUni with the seat a little lower than I would think as optimal, but it’s a nice compromise.
Lower it 1/2 an inch and go out for a ride…you may be shocked
