Can you use “muscle” to accelerate an EUC?

[Darrell Wesh]

Not quite. But you can sure look like you’re pushing harder than everyone else with the proper angles and technique. 
 

I finally stopped riding long enough to finish up a video on starting technique (that should have been done a while ago👀)

With wheels becoming heavier with larger diameter tires it seems just about everyone these days has taken the easy route and just slapped some “powerpads” on it so they can Superman lean into the sunset. Hell, wheels are even coming STOCK with powerpads! Where did the technique go?Damn those powerpads!
 

If you’ve ever tried an 18” or larger wheel you know about the “turbo lag” on initial acceleration. You jump on and try and crank it forward and without powerpads you feel like you’re about to fall off the front and even with them it takes a few seconds to really turnover and start going. If you’re already rolling it’s not so bad to accelerate, but from a dead stop you feel it. 
 

As a sprinter I joked around with starting like this at stop lights just to look cool. But I realized I was leaving cars behind from the start and no longer hoping for a higher top speed wheel as I could gap them at green (these are 35-40mph roads) and they would have to play catch up. 

Not only was I starting faster but I was starting safer. By getting a sort of rolling start I eliminated the feeling of falling off the front on the bigger wheels (especially the Monster) I could lean forward as hard as I wanted knowing the torque would be there to catch me as soon as I planted my pushing leg since I had overcome the “turbo lag”. 

I do admit that when I was almost through making this video there was still so much more examples and things I wanted to talk about (the “perfection paralysis @houseofjob recently talked about) that I gave up for a long while.
 

But regardless, an imperfect video is better than no video! 
 

 

[houseofjob]

@Darrell Wesh Nice vid! Exactly how I would imagine a sprinter would make a video about getting the fastest dead start on EUC LOL 

Since you're going for maximum push here, you should try to cocking the wheel slightly sideways, wheel leaning slightly down like it's gonna fall forward, so you can use the friction of the sideway facing tire to get push off of as well with your pedal mounted foot (I sometimes freemount this way).

With this, I wonder if you could even just go into semi sprinter's crouch with your lagging foot-side arm mounted to the ground, pedal-side arm leaning off the wheel body.

On the Monster, you could perhaps even have both arms leaning on the front nose, to give extra lean force to the gyroscope input, ala how seated accelerations on that wheel are always faster than standing.

Edited August 26, 2020 by houseofjob

[Bob Eisenman]

1 hour ago, houseofjob said:

On the Monster

The wear pattern on the right pedal of my Monster, after a few thousand miles of riding,

Right pedal:

shows that I use the balls of my feet to control the EUC in all aspects of riding.

Loss of grip between the shoe and the pedal has not noticible , despite the wear, but my riding style tends to be conservative on generally smooth surfaces. 

Closer inspection of the pedal in the photo shows that the area is where the rubber of the sole of the shoe has deposited between the abrasive contact points on the pedal. The silver color is more a light reflectance when in reality the area is dark black.

 

There is also a small spot under the left heel but not under the right heel.

The installed pedals are the same age. The right pedal broke awhile ago and both pedals were replaced.

 

Left pedal:

 

 

Here is a picture of the left pedal , removed (and replaced) following the breakage of the right pedal.

It shows the same wear marks under the ball of the foot and slightly under the heel as the installed L pedal.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Bob Eisenman

[Darrell Wesh]

4 hours ago, houseofjob said:

On the Monster, you could perhaps even have both arms leaning on the front nose, to give extra lean force to the gyroscope input, ala how seated accelerations on that wheel are always faster than standing.

As in having both hands on the front of the monster pushing down? Wouldn’t that be dangerous from a safety perspective 

 

4 hours ago, houseofjob said:

you should try to cocking the wheel slightly sideways, wheel leaning slightly down like it's gonna fall forward, so you can use the friction of the sideway facing tire to get push off of as well with your pedal mounted foot (I sometimes freemount this way).

The S principle about straight line stability “doesn’t align” with this notion. Excuse the pun lol.

 Especially when you have smaller width wheels that aren’t as easy to keep in a straight line. Just like in any 3 pt start or block start, you want to start already aligned so it’s that much easier to move down the terrain in a straight line. One of the reasons I was able to so easily beat the MCM5 was that it was difficult to both start aggressively and track straight. 

[houseofjob]

9 hours ago, Darrell Wesh said:

As in having both hands on the front of the monster pushing down? Wouldn’t that be dangerous from a safety perspective

🤷‍♂️ I do this mounting to seated riding al the time.

 

9 hours ago, Darrell Wesh said:

The S principle about straight line stability “doesn’t align” with this notion. Excuse the pun lol.

 Especially when you have smaller width wheels that aren’t as easy to keep in a straight line. Just like in any 3 pt start or block start, you want to start already aligned so it’s that much easier to move down the terrain in a straight line. One of the reasons I was able to so easily beat the MCM5 was that it was difficult to both start aggressively and track straight. 

I suspect then that we don't really ride the same way then, as I forgo riding in a straight line for increased gravity-assisted acceleration push.

[Darrell Wesh]

1 hour ago, houseofjob said:

as I forgo riding in a straight line for increased gravity-assisted acceleration push.

Yes you would need that assistance but if you followed all the steps in cohesion you would not need to start “sideways”. 
 

By throwing the wheel around side to side, or your coined “pumping”, you can obviously crank it further then a static lean due to momentum shifts. 
 

However, your technique is best used for when you’re already on the wheel and rolling. My method obviously can only work from a dead stop. Once you commit to it and are in that accelerative posture, changing up to pumping would only slow the overall acceleration down.

It would be interesting to see a race between the same wheel and you using your technique from a rolling start vs someone who just leans forward.

It subjectively feels faster to pump, it’s what I use instinctively when trying to accelerate.
 

BUT! It’s also what football players use instinctively when trying to accelerate. What I mean by that is football players are notorious for side to side motion in order to accelerate, and all the track gurus know side to side is wasting time and only looks and feels faster. A straight line is always the fastest route, and I was trained to accelerate as straight as possible, arm movements, leg movements, everything going forward.
 

So part of me wants to say that remaining static in a forward lean only feels slower because you aren’t doing as much work as pumping.  

[Darrell Wesh]

1 hour ago, houseofjob said:

🤷‍♂️ I do this mounting to seated riding al the time

The problem is that technique would only work on certain wheels and wouldn’t be universal. You can’t do that on the nikola... it’s rounded!

[houseofjob]

2 hours ago, Darrell Wesh said:

Yes you would need that assistance but if you followed all the steps in cohesion you would not need to start “sideways”. 
 

By throwing the wheel around side to side, or your coined “pumping”, you can obviously crank it further then a static lean due to momentum shifts. 
 

However, your technique is best used for when you’re already on the wheel and rolling. My method obviously can only work from a dead stop. Once you commit to it and are in that accelerative posture, changing up to pumping would only slow the overall acceleration down.

It would be interesting to see a race between the same wheel and you using your technique from a rolling start vs someone who just leans forward.

It subjectively feels faster to pump, it’s what I use instinctively when trying to accelerate.
 

BUT! It’s also what football players use instinctively when trying to accelerate. What I mean by that is football players are notorious for side to side motion in order to accelerate, and all the track gurus know side to side is wasting time and only looks and feels faster. A straight line is always the fastest route, and I was trained to accelerate as straight as possible, arm movements, leg movements, everything going forward.
 

So part of me wants to say that remaining static in a forward lean only feels slower because you aren’t doing as much work as pumping.  

I get what you're saying, but you can't completely compare apples to apples, because this is a gyroscopic device we're talking about, not plain running and body physics alone. 

What I've referred to in the past as "pumping", is about trying to get stronger acceleration down force, as opposed to straight and press, which is more about muscle, as the force dies down when you're at the strongest.The alternation is about trying to make a stronger overall sum acceleration force by maximizing the initial downstrokes of the gravity falls, and switching feet when the tail end dies, which is always the weakest force for either method, much like swimmers won't just stroke one arm and hold it (yes, I know, it's not apples to apples comparison).

It would be interesting to see which is fastest in a true test, yes. What was slightly missing in your vid is 2 Darrell Walsh's with same technique on different wheels, unfortunately. Maybe this might be better in solo time trials?

 

2 hours ago, Darrell Wesh said:

The problem is that technique would only work on certain wheels and wouldn’t be universal. You can’t do that on the nikola... it’s rounded!

Yes, this is true. You would need a good height EUC with preferably a flat surface, ala seat. But when you Do have it, why not use it?

 

 

Edited August 26, 2020 by houseofjob