How long did it take you to learn to ride backwards?

[eucinsea]

A pretty skilled rider I know told me that he learned how to idle on the wheel first then tried backwards. Sounds like others agree. 

I plan to try it soon. 

Also @Lucas Alexander Oliver We just talked about learning to ride backwards on our ride tonight.   

 

Edited July 2, 2019 by prasket

[Rywokast]

14 minutes ago, prasket said:

A pretty skilled rider I know told me that he learned how to idle on the wheel first then tried backwards. Sounds like others agree. 

I plan to try it soon. 

Also @Lucas Alexander Oliver We just talked about learning to ride backwards on our ride tonight.   

 

its basically physically impossible to idle on the wheel.. at least for more than two seconds lol.. maybe five if youre a circus performer or something.. unless you mean pendulum i should like to see a video of this idling xD btw dont take a good wheel to learn backwards, especially the shiny nikola  it will be dropped

[eucinsea]

Just now, Rywokast said:

 maybe five if youre a circus performer or something..

I am pretty sure he actually is and teaches circus stuff (not sure how you say it.)  Haha 

I will ask him to demonstrate what he meant next time I ride with him. 

[Rywokast]

1 minute ago, prasket said:

I am pretty sure he actually is and teaches circus stuff (not sure how you say it.)  Haha 

I will ask him to demonstrate what he meant next time I ride with him. 

then that would be fkn amazing, thats pretty cool haha.. ive never once heard of someone being able to literally idle due to simple physics, even on a basic unicycle you have to rock back and forth, and those things definitely dont weigh anything near 30-50 lbs xD you should because he would be a god among us lol

[gon2fast]

Rocking back and forth to keep stationary balance has led to overheat (in excess of course). True stationary balance has not been widely learned/shared. Which method is healthier for the wheel if you do not want to take a foot off? Seems like a lot of stress on the wheel either way...

Edited July 2, 2019 by gon2fast
user error - typo

[Rywokast]

11 minutes ago, gon2fast said:

Rocking back and forth to keep stationary balance has lead to overheat (in excess of course). True stationary balance has not been widely learned/shared. Which method is healthier for the wheel if you do not want to take a foot off? Seems like a lot of stress on the wheel either way...

i mean yea if youre 300 lbs and do it for 20 minutes straight lol.. no traffic light in the world is long enough to even remotely stress any modern wheel.. but you need to learn not to jolt it like a madman, because as with going forwards from a standstill you can overlean or "stall" the motor.. but even a 350W motor is fine if you know how to do it.. look at martys videos of the mten, hell do it for like 10 mins straight on a tiny ass little mten motor. and being stationary would be literally nothing, just the wheel keeping itself upright as if you had it leaning against a pole or you were holding a fence and standing still.. you could do that indefinitely its absolutely no stress whatsoever, you can see it yourself if you look in the wheellog live analytics.. it will be a flat line lol -------------------------------------------------------------

Edited July 2, 2019 by Rywokast

[DanH]

It took me about 2-3 weeks practicing an hour every day. Currently I’m trying to master getting on it and going backward immediately. 

[Mono]

On 7/2/2019 at 6:33 AM, Rywokast said:

its basically physically impossible to idle on the wheel

Many of us say "to idle" for the small back and forth movements of the wheel when the body remains pretty much at the same place.

Surprisingly, artful idling doesn't necessarily need a lot of power. The trick is not to push when the wheel is out of the vertical axis but rather guide it back under the body by bending the knees and hence to apply only little lateral force to the body. I have done it on snowy surfaces which provide little traction, where the wheel would immediately start to skid under the load of heavy back and forth rocking movements.

[Wonderwebb]

Ok so can anyone tell me if going backwards has any use ?

[ir_fuel]

6 minutes ago, Wonderwebb said:

Ok so can anyone tell me if going backwards has any use ?

It impresses the ladies 

[Mono]

31 minutes ago, Wonderwebb said:

Ok so can anyone tell me if going backwards has any use ?

IMHO no real use besides being fun.

[LucasD]

On 7/2/2019 at 7:04 AM, Rywokast said:

i mean yea if youre 300 lbs and do it for 20 minutes straight lol.. no traffic light in the world is long enough to even remotely stress any modern wheel.. but you need to learn not to jolt it like a madman, because as with going forwards from a standstill you can overlean or "stall" the motor.. but even a 350W motor is fine if you know how to do it.. look at martys videos of the mten, hell do it for like 10 mins straight on a tiny ass little mten motor. and being stationary would be literally nothing, just the wheel keeping itself upright as if you had it leaning against a pole or you were holding a fence and standing still.. you could do that indefinitely its absolutely no stress whatsoever, you can see it yourself if you look in the wheellog live analytics.. it will be a flat line lol -------------------------------------------------------------

Looking at mten3 it is 800W motor and 10" wheel so torque is impressive. You can't really call it a tiny motor.

[ir_fuel]

On 6/30/2019 at 8:16 PM, LanghamP said:

If you just practice pendulums, mostly slow pendulums, and do it smooth enough that you don't jerk the wheel back onto balance, then you'll eventually and drama-free be riding backwards. Being able to do pendulums is necessary, because the pendulum is how you get into going backwards.

That's what I am learning on my Mten3. And I try to go further and further backwards before "penduluming" again forwards.

[Rywokast]

2 hours ago, LucasD said:

Looking at mten3 it is 800W motor and 10" wheel so torque is impressive. You can't really call it a tiny motor.

i can because ive owned one  im not talking relative power im talking physical size.. the motor is puny, a small person like myself can cut it out extremely easily, even the 500W motor in my V5F is much harder to cut out.. the small motor of the mten has to work a lot harder to do the same thing.. you can think of it like an 800W motor thats half the size, so it has to work twice as hard as the motor twice as big as it.. in essence it would be comparable to a 400W motor.. of course im generalizing but with experience of a ninebot and V5F i can say, i have no problem cutting out the mten motor, whereas its really hard to cut out any of my other motors at my weight

Edited July 3, 2019 by Rywokast

[mrelwood]

15 hours ago, Wonderwebb said:

Ok so can anyone tell me if going backwards has any use ?

Actually riding backwards, no use. Which is why I haven’t put in any effort to learn. But doing controlled pendulums and 3-point turns would definitely be useful for me, so I occasionally practice doing those. About a third of my 3-point turns are already succesful.

I started by stopping from going forward for a second, then continuing forward. Then just reversing for a feet while doing that. Then two feet, etc. Paved surfaces are more difficult, as they offer greater resistance for the twist corrections.

My brother is exceptional in riding backwards. He can even hop up sloped 4” curbs.

When I saw him riding figure 8 in reverse, I had a big eureka-moment. You all know that when going forward, we turn with our upper body first. You know what, it’s the same in reverse! (Duh...)  So as he was turning to his left hand side, he looked back over his right shoulder. This naturally turns the upper torso clockwise, which is the actual direction of the turn.

Hopefully that is a good hint for you guys struggling with steering in reverse. Try to mimick the same body movements you would do when turning going forward.

Edited July 4, 2019 by mrelwood

[LucasD]

9 hours ago, Rywokast said:

i can because ive owned one  im not talking relative power im talking physical size.. the motor is puny, a small person like myself can cut it out extremely easily, even the 500W motor in my V5F is much harder to cut out.. the small motor of the mten has to work a lot harder to do the same thing.. you can think of it like an 800W motor thats half the size, so it has to work twice as hard as the motor twice as big as it.. in essence it would be comparable to a 400W motor.. of course im generalizing but with experience of a ninebot and V5F i can say, i have no problem cutting out the mten motor, whereas its really hard to cut out any of my other motors at my weight

Physics says otherwise, I wonder what exactly you mean by cut-out. Torque can be broadly calculated as motor power by radius. Disclaimer: We are not talking about max speed and stability.

So going by comparison you can he that is quite high, it is approximation but weight of wheel would also play role...

MSX 200 & 19 -> 100% (reference torque)

Mten3 800 & 10 -> 76% 

Luffy 350 & 10 -> 33%

MCM5 1500 & 14 -> 102%

KS14D  800 & 14-> 54%

V5F 500 & 14 -> 34% Also for speed V5f is not capable of 30km/h that mten3 can easily do.

 

[Chriull]

26 minutes ago, LucasD said:

Physics says otherwise, I wonder what exactly you mean by cut-out. Torque can be broadly calculated as motor power by radius. Disclaimer: We are not talking about max speed and stability.

One has to consider additionally the leverage (axle-pedal vs tire radius) torquewise.

Edit: sorry - not the leverage with the tire radius, but "just" the pedal geometry relative to the axle. The needed motor torque results by the riders force applied on the pedal - the motor torque counters this to keep the pedal straight:

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by Chriull

[LucasD]

This one talks about the zippiness and in this category Mten3 and MCM are top representatives.

Due to size etc. Mten3 is super easy to tip

[tenofnine]

I learned to ride backwards on the V5F instead of my Tesla since it seems to have more torque even with the much less powerful engine.

The few things that I had to learn that were different than riding forward -

1. You have to be more deliberate and apply more input to the pedals when first learning since it feels scary trust falling backwards.

2. I learned 3 point turns and clovers (stars) first instead of trying to backwards in a straight line. Seemed easier for me.

3. Another thing that helped me immensely was trying to do a pendulum once or twice and seeing how smooth, slow, and controlled I could get it. Then doing this trick I call the Pendulum Take-off where you are about to mount but instead of pushing off one footed going forward you push off backwards riding one footed a bit then pendulum forward as you get the other foot on to take off. Seems kind of stylish and it actually has some applications if you're in a spot where you need to back up before taking off (it also was the first "backwards" thing I was ever able to do)
4. You can also try just pushing backwards one footed in a line, the same as when people say you should learn pushing one footed forward when first riding an EUC. It's surprisingly intuitive to push backwards and I think it gets you used to the feeling.

 

It took me about 5x as long to learn backwards than just learning to ride an EUC. I learned to ride my first EUC in a few hours, by the 2nd day I was confident enough to ride in traffic and among people.....I don't think I'll ever do backwards riding anywhere public. Seems a bit too flashy and I don't know if I'll ever practice it enough to feel confident with it.

[Rywokast]

4 hours ago, LucasD said:

Physics says otherwise, I wonder what exactly you mean by cut-out. Torque can be broadly calculated as motor power by radius. Disclaimer: We are not talking about max speed and stability.

So going by comparison you can he that is quite high, it is approximation but weight of wheel would also play role...

MSX 200 & 19 -> 100% (reference torque)

Mten3 800 & 10 -> 76% 

Luffy 350 & 10 -> 33%

MCM5 1500 & 14 -> 102%

KS14D  800 & 14-> 54%

V5F 500 & 14 -> 34% Also for speed V5f is not capable of 30km/h that mten3 can easily do.

 

I just mean that due to its small size, is extremely easy to overpower the motor, if I switch from going forwards to backwards quickly on the mten the motor will make a horrible gurgling sound and I can cause it to stall, or if you gun it from stand still its easy to over lean.. it may have a ton of torque but I also have huge leverage over it being such a small wheel that the amount of torque it has doesn't compensate for that.. I know it has more power than the V5F motor for example so can achieve higher top speed but the fact remains it's very small, so easy for someone to over lean it before it has a chance to catch up.. I've done it a few times on my mten where I've transitioned going from forwards to backwards or backwards to forwards and it just can't keep up it beeped a bunch of times then swung forwards and smacked it's face into the pavement.. none of my other wheels have ever done this

Edited July 4, 2019 by Rywokast

[LucasD]

3 hours ago, Rywokast said:

I just mean that due to its small size, is extremely easy to overpower the motor, if I switch from going forwards to backwards quickly on the mten the motor will make a horrible gurgling sound and I can cause it to stall, or if you gun it from stand still its easy to over lean.. it may have a ton of torque but I also have huge leverage over it being such a small wheel that the amount of torque it has doesn't compensate for that.. I know it has more power than the V5F motor for example so can achieve higher top speed but the fact remains it's very small, so easy for someone to over lean it before it has a chance to catch up.. I've done it a few times on my mten where I've transitioned going from forwards to backwards or backwards to forwards and it just can't keep up it beeped a bunch of times then swung forwards and smacked it's face into the pavement.. none of my other wheels have ever done this

Yes it is true that small size and weight make it super easy to over lean. So by applying the same lean as on bigger wheel you in fact moves COG (the one does matter) on higher angle that would be impossible for most wheels to balance (if you moved COG the same).  

[Kristof Willen]

I have 2500+ km on my (first) wheel, but never felt the urge to try riding backwards.

 

Untill this thread.  You bastards.

My calves & ankles are all bruised up, I feel like an idiot trying to ride backwards & failing/falling every time.  

 

[Mike Sacristan]

18 minutes ago, Kristof Willen said:

I have 2500+ km on my (first) wheel, but never felt the urge to try riding backwards.

 

Untill this thread.  You bastards.

My calves & ankles are all bruised up, I feel like an idiot trying to ride backwards & failing/falling every time.  

 

Haha. You'll be fine. The wheel will get scratched up though. In the beginning it will feel hopeless but in the end you will gain much more control over the wheel which will help with mounting, dismounting, stopping, riding slow, etc. During learning to ride backwards I moved my feet back a bit on the pedals. In the beginning I had my heels lined up with the back of the pedals. Now I have my feet in the middle. I an now in the middle of the middle. 

[stephen]

I'm off to my training ground tommow (cricket pitch) and I'm going to learn backwards for a bit on the z10 , I've got 3000+ miles between the msx and z10 so I'll give it a go @Rama Douglas does it so well on his z10 and it does look kind of sweet . And the z10 is more my enjoyment wheel for just doodling about when i want it to be 😊

[LanghamP]

2 hours ago, Kristof Willen said:

I have 2500+ km on my (first) wheel, but never felt the urge to try riding backwards.

 

Untill this thread.  You bastards.

My calves & ankles are all bruised up, I feel like an idiot trying to ride backwards & failing/falling every time.  

I think that's the best way to learn going backwards, to learn to fall while going backwards and then finally learn to ride backwards.

Think of it this way; suppose you instantly knew how to ride backwards, yet haven't fallen while going backwards, so now you fall off at higher speeds, and bad things happen because you didn't know how to catch yourself.

The learn to fail before learning to go backwards is a good thing.