>hey, as for gettin better at skinnies and stillstanding, has anyone
>tried holding a long pole horizontally, like the tightrope walkers
>sometimes do to help them balance? does it help?
No personal experience but here’s a stamp picturing a tightrope
unicyclist doing just that <www.xs4all.nl/~klaasbil/morestamps.htm>. I
guess it helps because you can generate more corrective rotational
moment.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
“Heck, even my toes were aching from trying to grip the soles of my shoes! - Tommy Thompson”
Yes, but then after correcting your balance wouldn’t you often be thrown off balance again while trying to stop the pole moving? I’ve always wondered about that.
On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 01:29:31 -0600, andrew_carter wrote:
>Yes, but then after correcting your balance wouldn’t you often be thrown
>off balance again while trying to stop the pole moving? I’ve always
>wondered about that.
I don’t think so. It’s the same with conventional stillstanding without pole which I know you’re familiar with. You rotate your arms and/or upper body and that rotation has to be stopped too. I think you unconsciously work it out in such a way that you overcompensate the tendency to fall (so now you tend to fall to the other side), and then use the stopping of the rotation (of the body/arms or heavy pole) to cancel out the ‘over’ bit of ‘overcompensate’. I hope that makes sense. And if it throws you off balance again, you just start from step on; it is a continuous struggle anyways.
Klaas Bil
I posted this 16 hours ago but the gateway once more doesn’t work so I repost directly at the forum. Sh*t!!
Maybe a quick way of learning to stillstand would be to start with a long pole and then cut a few cms off it each day?
I’ve been practicing stillstands (without a pole) for a few weeks now and still not much in the way of progress. Would it be level10 if it was a level?
I think I made a bit of a breakthrough today, I seem to be averaging longer stillstands now. I can hit about 10 seconds from time to time and I feel like I’m gonna fluke a bigger run sometime.
As for how boring it is to practice, I don’t find it extremely boring coz it takes such a deal of concentration. I mix it up with failing unispins, bouncing on the tyre (“tyre hopping”?) - record’s 8 hops… & even watch TV while tryin to stillstand.
What did you guys think of the rest of the videoes at http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albuv39? The one at the top right is pretty interesting, I filmed it all in one shot in under an hour and he made about 4 runs as good as the one you see at the end (only falling off coz of lack of space). He’d never tried unicycling before I turned the camera on!
Some of those just came out as black for me but the ones I saw were great. What is it you’re designing these ads for? I’m very impressed by the modelling.
On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 01:29:31 -0600, andrew_carter wrote:
>Yes, but then after correcting your balance wouldn’t you often be thrown
>off balance again while trying to stop the pole moving? I’ve always
>wondered about that.
I don’t think so. It’s the same with conventional stillstanding
without pole which I know you’re familiar with. You rotate your arms
and/or upper body and that rotation has to be stopped too. I think you
unconsciously work it out in such a way that you overcompensate the
tendency to fall (so now you tend to fall to the other side), and then
use the stopping of the rotation (of the body/arms or heavy pole) to
cancel out the ‘over’ bit of ‘overcompensate’. I hope that makes
sense. And if it throws you off balance again, you just start from
step on; it is a continuous struggle anyways.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
“Heck, even my toes were aching from trying to grip the soles of my shoes! - Tommy Thompson”
We’ve pretty much finished all the filming. I’m going to be involved in a trials demo during ‘Bike Week’ which I’ll film, then I want to add a few little bits and pieces that are particularly challenging, and I’ll be done. I’ve started editing and it’s up to 15 minutes so far. It’s looking like being between 30 and 40 minutes for the feature bit and maybe 5 minutes of extras. This is exciting.