Getting my groove on

[M640x]

Noob here.  Bought my first ever EUC last month.  Been learning, falling, jumping off etc.  I have approx 32 miles on my KS14S.  Yeah I know, not much but there's a good reason.  I picked up starting / stopping pretty quickly. Same thing for turning. Believe it or not my biggest hurdle has been going straight. I don't know why but it has always been the biggest challenge as far as balance goes.  It's also always felt very uncomfortable.  I'll just be slowly going and pretty smooth and then wham, I go one way and the wheel goes another.  I'd describe it as the same feeling as if someone kicked the back of the wheel sideways.  I couldn't go more than approximately 30 or 40 ft without the wheel becoming completely unmanageable.  I know from other things I've learned that persistence is the key.  With this wheel, I really need to put on the miles and time but it's been difficult to get the miles in when I can't go straight... until today.

I found information online pertaining to using a staggered stance on the wheel to gain stability.  Thank you evX and Duf (YouTube) for that info.  The idea is to have one foot a couple of inches farther forward than the other foot on the foot pads.  So today I tried it and I have to say that it worked instantly.  It was much more comfortable and I had much more stability right away.  I was able to go straight with no more problems.

Having my feet side by side with toes pointing straight ahead isnt how I stand naturally so it's no wonder I've been uncomfortable on the wheel.  I know I need to put a lot more miles in and it really sucked not being able to go straight so I could do that.  Up to today I was more comfortable turning than going straight.  Anyway tomorrow I finally get to go on a longer ride and hopefully run the battery all the way down on my KS.

[meepmeepmayer]

Usually if you're instable going straight, it means you're simply too slow.

As far as being stable while going slow, keep the balance by moving the EUC like the front wheel of a bicycle - turn into the direction you're about to fall.

 

[M640x]

I worked on a lot of different things to see if I could narrow down the problem(s).  I tried slow, fast, legs hugging the wheel, legs farther out, grass, street.  Going faster

hurt a lot more as I always fell going straight.  I bought an EUC bodyguard because I was beating up my wheel pretty good.  I went to the local middle school which has a big

running track with a big grass area in the middle.  I moved to the grass after beating myself up on the hard part.  As long as I was in a continuous long turn right or left I did really well.

The second I'd go straight I was down in under 10 seconds.

 

One main thing I do know and readily admit is I need a lot more miles on the wheel.  I just couldn't for the life of me figure out how I was able to figure out the other skills,

ie: turning and start/stop so easily but going straight was so difficult.  It was frustrating.  I even asked around to other experienced riders because I knew I had to be doing something wrong.

Other people commented that it's usually turning that is a challenge to figure out and not going straight.

For some reason having my feet even with each other on the wheel pointing forward isn't the least bit stable for me.  It amazed me that the little bit of foot placement would

make such a big difference.  Looking down, my feet are placed in such a way that my left foot is 3" farther forward than my right.  Instant stability for me.  Don't know why but

it works like a charm.   

 

[KalSeth]

Foot placement and the shoes you wear are probably the most important point when just starting out.  After awhile it is much less so but at the beginning  it is key.

[Mike Petrogeorge]

I was in the same boat at one time. At 50 miles, I was getting discouraged and actually making excuses for not practicing. But, I stuck with it. I pretended I was on a sports team and I had to go to practice everyday whether I liked it or not.

A good pair of shoes does help, along with going a little faster. The shoes I have are hard and steel toed. But hey, if your riding and not going straight, your headed down the right path. It just takes a while to finally get comfortable. It took me 150 miles to get there and I was still nervous at the time. I now have 300+ miles on the wheel. Yea, I still get nervous, and I do go slower than most riders. But, I love the ride. Keep trying don't give up. I promise, it will click in. At 300 miles I am still learning things and that is what makes this hobby fun.

[M640x]

I won't stop, no worries, I'll figure it out.

[Mike Petrogeorge]

Good man, the rewards will pay off.

[M640x]

After more research I finally figured out what I wasn't doing.  I found a video for the solowheel and it had 2 pieces of key information that I had missed since the beginning.

1.  When riding straight don't lean the wheel.  I had been leaning it.  I'll explain why in a little bit.

2.  Swivel into the fall.  I tried swiveling one day because nothing else was working. I didn't continue swiveling because I said to myself if this is what you were supposed to do then someone would have already mentioned it. Wrong, I just didn't find that piece of information yet. 

Ok this is why I was leaning while going straight.  Up until last night one of the pieces of information I got for correcting while going straight was "turn into the fall". Because I already knew how to turn I did just that. So if I was falling left I would press the left leg straight and bend the right and turn into the direction of the fall.  Of course now I would have to correct for the left turn and go back right so I would turn back towards the right.  As you can probably see from the description, this obviously didn't work and was a lot of effort and exactly the reason why I could not go straight.  From the beginning I knew I had to be doing something incorrectly because I had more than one person tell me that I should be able to ride straight and have more difficulty turning while in reality I could turn the unicycle on a dime anywhere I wanted.  Why, because I literally was always turning lol. Thankfully I've figured it out and as a bonus after 3 weeks of working at trying to get this thing corrected I actually balance it pretty good. Adding in the newly-found information should be a fairly painless process.

I use the local middle school track to do all of my testing and also to ride uninterrupted from obstacles, kids, dogs and traffic.  This weekend I plan to go up there and by the end of the weekend I will be much more proficient at riding straight.

[RetroThruster]

I've only been riding a few days now, I actually took a 30 minute lesson on Monday and felt really good about it, got home and immediately started riding around the yard with only one little step off, so all is good, I thought, well I go to the park close to my house and start off in a really big parking lot, I too struggled a bit going straight, seems like I could ride better in my somewhat bumpy yard carving around and doing only short straights, it's like my focus would drift away and everything felt disjointed on long flat straights, it's getting better now but I've had similar experiences.  My problem now is is that I'm a bigger guy with a lot of weight lifting background so I tend to muscle the thing around too much, I'm so damn sore I can only ride for a few minutes at a time, I gotta relax more, I see all these pros riding drinking coffee and such and think, damn, I wish I could do that...

[gon2fast]

I would suggest spending a lot of time navigating grass fields while learning to ride for two reasons:

1. Hurts less when you fall

2. The grass fields in my area are always rutted and uneven. Learning how to navigate through the fields made riding on the streets so much easier. It also gets you prepped for when you want to take your wheel out on the trails.

Good luck!

[M640x]

4 hours ago, gon2fast said:

I would suggest spending a lot of time navigating grass fields while learning to ride for two reasons:

1. Hurts less when you fall

2. The grass fields in my area are always rutted and uneven. Learning how to navigate through the fields made riding on the streets so much easier. It also gets you prepped for when you want to take your wheel out on the trails.

Good luck!

The grass seems to be where I start all of my new endeavors lately, lol.  I usually spend days in the grass.  Once I found the info about the swivel and not leaning I've been practicing it every chance I get.

I'll get it soon enuf.  I'm going to the middle school track on Saturday to practice for probably 3 or 4 hours.  I hope to be pretty proficient after that.  I do great on the mten3 simply because the corrections needed to ride straight are so small that I don't notice them.  I also have a onewheel pint, just got it 2 days ago.  Went for a long ride yesterday and it threw me off 3 times.  2 were planned, (running battery down to zero), and one was trying to navigate up a steep curb that I couldn't see very well because of the sun in my eyes.  Anyway thanks for chiming in.

[M640x]

5 hours ago, RetroThruster said:

I've only been riding a few days now, I actually took a 30 minute lesson on Monday and felt really good about it, got home and immediately started riding around the yard with only one little step off, so all is good, I thought, well I go to the park close to my house and start off in a really big parking lot, I too struggled a bit going straight, seems like I could ride better in my somewhat bumpy yard carving around and doing only short straights, it's like my focus would drift away and everything felt disjointed on long flat straights, it's getting better now but I've had similar experiences.  My problem now is is that I'm a bigger guy with a lot of weight lifting background so I tend to muscle the thing around too much, I'm so damn sore I can only ride for a few minutes at a time, I gotta relax more, I see all these pros riding drinking coffee and such and think, damn, I wish I could do that...

Yeah, I can't wait until I can learn to ride long and straight like those guys.

[Singletrack]

The soreness and fatigue will get less and less as you practice.  You will likely experience the wheel wobble next and figure your wheel is malfunctioning... but that will also be part of the learning process and muscle development.

[RockyTop]

On 9/26/2019 at 5:22 PM, RetroThruster said:

I'm so damn sore I can only ride for a few minutes at a time, I gotta relax more, I see all these pros riding drinking coffee and such and think, damn, I wish I could do that...

You are talking about that old @Duf guy with the DD coffee  

Duf has inspired many of us to start riding EUC's   (thanks Duf)

 It just takes time. When I was learning I could not believe how sore my chest was... . Why !?    

You have to build up and learn to control your calf and core muscles. Don't worry just about anyone can do it. (15 minutes a day for three months and you will be able to pickpocket the cyclists. ( I use the money to pay for my wheels.))

[M640x]

I posted on another thread but I finally got it figured out and I'm able to ride straight as far as I want now. Basically came down to doing one technique I wasn't using plus I had a knee injury that created a weak imbalance on my left side. Anyway I got it all figured out and I can ride pretty good now.