What to do to stop falling sideways?

Hi, I recently started learn to unicycle. Now I can ride about 10-15 ft without holding on the wall, but after 10-15 ft I start to fall either left or right. Coud you please suggest, what can I do besides of swinging my arms? It does not help much… Thanks!

Don’t think of trying to stay on top the unicycle, think of keeping the unicycle under you.

guide the unicycle with your hips

swing your arms

go faster

and practice practice practice

Definitive answer: learn to turn.

That pretty much was the breakthrough for me.

Look further ahead.

Turn off gravity.

Let the wheel wobble. The side-to-side movement of the wheel is what keeps us upright. As we get better, the wobble gets less. You cannot ride a perfectly straight line on a unicycle.

Also, keep practicing. That overcomes all problems.

Its all in the wiggling of the hips, twisting. Think of as your pedaling you are doing half arcs around the tube like climbing a rope, but just circling with your knees. Do that and its easy. It feels like you are wrapping your knees around the uni while pedaling.

wanna bet?
watch joe campbell, ryan atkins, mark fabian, etc, etc…

learn to turn … that will more than likely fix it for ya

I remember that as being a problem in the beginning. Now it’s the problem I have riding backwards. I turn or twist into the sideways fall to help stay up but I end up going backwards all over the place and not in a straight line (and not very far). I know–PRACTICE!

Your objective is to keep the wheel more or less under you. More to go straight, and less to make a turn. If you start falling to the right, you need your wheel to head to the right. This happens with arm movements in the beginning, and then with more experience, with hip or waist movement. After a while it becomes automatic. So for now, use the arms and try to use the waist. Later on, get better at using the waist/hips, eventually not needing to move your arms at all.

Same goes for riding backward. In the begging you have to develop the same sense of side-to-side balance.

Hit the ground? :o

The side-to-side balance is just like a bicycle–you turn into a fall.

Thanks! I tried to wobble today and I feel definetely more stable. I just thought that wobbling is wrong:-) So I was riding pretty much straight before.

So far I was lucky - no falls, just jumps:-)

Ta-Dah!! :smiley:

Good for you.

Wheel Rider:

The point isn’t that wobble is preferable, exactly… just that it’s a) not something a new rider will be able to eliminate or even control and b) riding along wobbly is more “informative” than falling off straight. Wobbliness in the wheel IS very natural, and it takes an entirely different frame of mind to eliminate it altogether, as skrobo alluded to by listing riders known for being able to ride very skinny objects in a straight line.

The other benefit to allowing the wobble is that your body starts to “catch on” eventually, and learn to initiate the wobble under its own control, sometimes providing a smooth learning path into turning at the same time as learning to ride straighter.

Enjoy your new wheel :slight_smile:

billnye
John M

try and put more of your weight straight down on the seat. Before you let go of the wall (or whatever your’e riding off of) make sure your’e completely centered on the seat and then start to pedal.

The twist is key and also what helped me was keeping my stomach muscles tight before starting. Lock those abs tight before starting…this really helped me in the beginning, and remember to sit in the seat and keep your back nice and straight.

Practice is the real key…you will get it with time in the seat…it took me 26 hours to hit 150ft. Stick with it!

When I was just starting out I found this website with all kinds of tips. There are a lot of tips from a bunch of people chiming in about methods of learning.

One of the most memorable webBits was “start pedaling and wave your arms wildly as if you’re learning how to fly.” I can’t remember where I saw that, but as I was learning I thought on more than a few occasions that it must be a fair description of what I looked like.

That’s pretty much an exact description. It was so exhausting! But it works while your body learning to make the adjustments.

Wow! I like this description! I imagine wrapping my knees around the front of the wheel and somehow it holds me better. I can go a little longer distance now. But I still fall sideways at the end… I know: practice, practice. But thanks to you, guys, I moved from plateau, and this feels great!
The other problem still persist, though: my weight seems to sneak from seat to feet as I pedal.