is it important to learn to ride one legged on your non dominant leg?

[Silverfish]

I'm one of those people who just will not learn quickly. And since its been raining for a month solid in Vancouver I'm not in a big hurry to get out. so I have been learning to do short distance hops on one leg like some videos have suggested. 15-30 mins a day right now. I've just been doing it on my dominant leg. I was wondering if you eventually want to be able to do so with both legs. Because if I do I might as well start building that muscle memory now.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Silverfish

[RockyTop]

It can come in handy. When you have to do an emergency stop in pedestrian traffic you might have to put down the other foot. So you should at least be able to do that. 

[The Brahan Seer]

The stronger both legs are the easier your more difficult ride will feel and how you respond to it. I have only been riding around 6 months. 1350miles 227hrs. I am also a slow learner but once you have the muscle memory hopefully it will stay with you. I specifically exercise my legs on my EUC to make them stronger and have seen the improvements in response over the months. But there are no rules and everything goes. I just happen to like to learn everything I can, be stronger and get the most from my wheel. But its not actually important. There is nothing wrong with just wanting to learn to ride on easy terrain roads and leaving it at that in which case its not important at all.

[Tawpie]

1 hour ago, Silverfish said:

I was wondering if you eventually want to be able to do so with both legs

I think you do want to do this, especially since you have the time. Why? I don't have a good reason other than it seems like being able to ride with either leg would have to improve your overall balance/skill. Besides, if you broke the pedal on your dominant side (or heaven forbid your ankle), you'd be able to ride home on your other leg!

[Silverfish]

thx for the feedback... I will do it. Its surprisingly tiring to learn anyway, so doing the other side will probably be a break for the first. I'm surprised that it can even make be breathe a little bit harder.

[That Guy]

I think it is important (although I personally still haven't learnt it) because on some occasions you may need to stop in traffic or at pedestrian crossing awkwardly and take your dominant leg off the machine first. The stability at this moment depends whether you can ride one legged on each side.

[Silverfish]

addendum:
As an extremely slow learner it was actually nice to try my non dominant leg. I sucked really really badly at it. It made me appreciate the 2-3 feet I could go on my dominant leg. And I also got 6 feet one time on  the dominant leg which was cool. Will probably have to wait a sleep cycle to get past my 6" record on my non dominant leg. 

One noticeable difference is I am not stable enough on my weak side to even get the wheel to accelerate yet, and I'm literally pushing it like a skateboard, which is a lot of work. I think I am only consistently engaging the wheel on my strong leg on day 3. Altho, my sessions have been very short. 10-15 mins max. So I still have less than an hour of practice time total.

[Silverfish]

I'm kind of spamming this, but I am having one of those days where I am having some learning moments and it might be worth documenting. First off it occurred to me that it would silly not to do both sides just for the sake of having a balanced body. 

Trying with my weak leg also put into focus why I was succeeding and failing on my strong leg. Just by thinking about why they were so different, it became really apparent that the wheel was really easily pushing my weak leg outwards. It made it obvious that every time I failed on either leg was because the wheel won the battle to push my leg out. And that my singular task was to keep the wheel on the other side of vertical. I'm not sure if I read it described exactly that way, but I certainly read similar things many times. For whatever reason it still took riding on the weak leg to internalise it. 

I'm glad I got a small head start on the strong leg before starting the weak leg though.

 

[The Brahan Seer]

12 hours ago, Silverfish said:

One noticeable difference is I am not stable enough on my weak side to even get the wheel to accelerate yet, and I'm literally pushing it like a skateboard, which is a lot of work. I think I am only consistently engaging the wheel on my strong leg on day 3. Altho, my sessions have been very short. 10-15 mins max.

I am going through exactly this at the moment. I am currently 18 days in learning how to ride one legged on the opposite pedals. ie Left leg right pedal, right leg left pedal. It uses different muscle's again to standard one legged riding. I'm also finding riding backwards one legged is another. 

[pico]

1 hour ago, The Brahan Seer said:

I am going through exactly this at the moment. I am currently 18 days in learning how to ride one legged on the opposite pedals. ie Left leg right pedal, right leg left pedal. It uses different muscle's again to standard one legged riding. I'm also finding riding backwards one legged is another. 

Welcome to the dark side! Great fun!😃

[RockyTop]

As a beginner you have to get both of your feet to work together. As you improve you learn to drive with one foot while the other does little other than support weight. Being able to switch out right to left helps relieve foot pain on long distance rides. 

[Paul A]

How important is it to ride backwards as well?

Ride side saddle, trick ride, bunny hop a pot hole/kerb at full speed?

 

 

 

[The Brahan Seer]

21 hours ago, pico said:

Welcome to the dark side! Great fun!😃

I love it, I found your channel previously and it has been a great inspiration for me and to see what can be achieved. You sir are a Master. Respect.

[rcgldr]

Mounting with the opposite foot is not needed (since you choose when to mount), but dismounting with the opposite foot could be helpful, such as learning slow speed, tight turns in both directions, where you want to be able to step off with the inside foot, which changes depending on which way you are turning.

Following Kuji Roll's and Wrong Way's (Adam) advice from their how to ride EUC videos, I learned how to ride first, using support to mount and launch, then learned how to free mount (without support) which was easier since I already knew how to ride. Rather than one foot glide, I just stepped a couple of times and hopped on, which is much less tiring than learning how to do a proper one foot glide to mount.