Learning to Ride/Tips based on my experience

[74256274]

What I’ve learned/Tips on how to learn to ride from my own experience. Gotway ACMs+

 

Here’s where I’m at in my learning curve. I can now ride for blocks on city streets and sidewalks. I can get on the unicycle freestanding without the use of a pole or wall for balance. I’ve only ridden 26 total miles.

 

1.       First, know that you’re going to fall and then fall some more and a lot after that. At least I did until I figured out a few things. Yeah I know, kinda obvious.

2.       Your legs are going to get bruised on the inside near your calf muscles. Also expect abrasions on your legs as well. I just ordered a pair of ProForce Shin Guards from Amazon. I haven’t tried them yet and may not need them now, but I’m going to wear them at least till my bruises are healed.

3.       Don’t learn to ride on concrete or pavement. Your unicycle is going to get really, really banged up. Also, because … No. 1.

4.       Riding modes in the app. I have the ios app. There is soft, comfort and power mode. I don’t know what these actually do, but perhaps they’re self-explanatory.

5.       The settings you enter in the app seem to be lost when you log out. So keep in mind that you may have to re-enter them after reconnecting your unicycle via Bluetooth. Also, if the app isn’t on (as in you pushed the power button to put your device in sleep mode) it will disconnect from the cycle and although the riding settings seem to remain, the app will no longer track your progress (time, avg. speed & distance). When you reconnect, the stats are reset to zero. Except total mileage of course.

6.       Tilt Up Rocker Speed: I didn’t understand exactly how this worked and it caused me to fall 10 times more than I should have. Speed and balance are obviously interconnected, right? I thought that as a beginner, I should set the speed to the lowest. But THAT speed is barely enough for you to keep your balance. The Tilt Up Rocker Speed is also known as the tilt back. It serves as a warning that you are reaching the maximum speed you set. It isn’t a speed limit for the unicycle and won’t keep you from going faster than the set tilt back speed. What it does when you reach your maximum speed is tilt back the pedals. If you disregard this, and don’t slow down by leaning back, the tilt back will get so bad, that it is impossible to keep your balance and you’ll crash (so in a way it does limit your speed…by force). If you have a tilt back speed set, be aware of the feeling of the pedals. If your feet seem to be tilting up, slow down immediately and the tilt will go back to normal. You can turn the rocker/tilt off and go as fast as you want.

7.       Pedal tilt: My unicycle came with about a 5 degree upward tilt (toes higher than heel). I’ve read that some riders prefer it this way and others say the pedals should be calibrated to as near level as you can get. I use the iHandy Level app on my iphone. I’ve tried it with the pedals inclined, level and declined. I didn’t notice much of a difference, so I’m sticking with level for now. One last thing about tilt. Setting the pedals at a decline will not keep the pedals from tilting back once your reached speed. The unicycle will continue to tilt back to the point you can’t keep your balance regardless of how much of a decline you calibrate your pedals.

8.       Calibrating the pedals: Make sure your unicycle is on and connected to the app.

a.       Press the cog wheel (settings) in the upper right corner of the app.

b.       Select Calibration setting.

c.       You will get a warning pop-up, just press okay.

d.       You’ll hear 3 beeps and the gyro in the wheel that keeps it stable will disengage and the wheel will move freely back and forth as it does when it’s off.

e.       Place a level on a pedal or eye it and hold the wheel steady, tilting backward or forward to where you want the angle of the pedals set.

f.        Hold the wheel at that angle and press the on button to turn the unicycle off.

g.       Keep holding the unicycle at the angle you want and press the on button again.

h.       You’ll hear a succession of quick beeps and then a long steady beep.

i.         Turn the unicycle off again.

j.         Now the angle is set.

k.       Turn the wheel back on and the gyro will settle at the new angle.

 

I think I’ve found the best way to learn to ride. It only took me a couple of hours over two or three days to advance to where I’m at today. Which is still novice. But I’m riding it. Yay!

 

1.       I took my GotWay Unicycle to the local park.

2.       I found a nice thick grassy area that had a nice straight path. Learning to ride in the grass has several benefits.

a.       I could crash at 20 Kpm/hour and not get hurt. Grass stained yes and bruising of my inner calf muscles from gripping the wheel and abrasions when making contact with the wheel while falling. Hence the shin pads.

b.       The unicycle won’t get beat to hell from bouncing on pavement in a spectacular Indy-500 like crash.

c.       The uneven terrain, bumps and the unexpected hole is great for learning to keep balanced. Once I learned to keep my balance in the grass, the street was cake.

3.       I balanced myself on the pedals using a post or fence.

4.       I set the power setting to Power Mode and I turned off the Rocker/Tilt back speed.

5.       I leaned forward and allowed the speed I acquired to help my balance.

6.       I rode from one pole, tree or fence to another and back and forth.

7.       After I was good at this and could ride around the entire park in the grass, I worked on getting on the unicycle free-standing. It came surprisingly easy. The first time I tried it, I got about two feet before falling over.

8.       I’m right footed, so I kept my right foot on the pedal and leaned the cycle over until the other pedal was an inch or so off the ground. You’ll feel the balance point.

9.       I kept my left foot as close as possible to the left pedal, either directly next to it or a little behind.

10.   I then quickly lifted my foot onto the pedal and leaned forward for speed and balance. I had a tendency at first to go left instead of straight, but after practice I got better. I just repeated this process over and over.

 

The third phase was learning to ride on the sidewalks that twisted and turned through the park. To slow down for making corners, I found that rocking myself backward (slow) and forward (speed) to nail a good balanceable turning speed worked for me. It’s sort of like pumping the brakes on a truck while driving down a steep decline. I also learned how to bend my knees to accomplish sharp turns at slow speed.

 

These are some of the things that I wished I’d known at first. For new riders, hopefully, this will help overcome some aspects of the learning curve that I went through. For the experienced rider, please comment, correct or add as necessary.

[Dingfelder]

Nice, thanks for the effort.  I'll be coming back to study this thread in more depth when my Gotway comes in about a week or so.