The rider is apparently Adam Cohen, of www.justonewheel.com fame…

Jerry’s review scale:
Fascination: 7
Scenery: 12 (It’s New Yahk, baby!)
Big Wheel: -2
Great Music: +3

For those of you with a free minute, check out this phenomenal example by Skrobo of how far some people can jump and gap on a unicycle. Make no mistake, this guy has amazing athletic ability.

Check out the street jump shortly after 1:00. You’ll know which one I mean.

Oh man, I wanna go try some of this stuff!

Jerry’s review scale:
Adrenaline: 8
Jumps: 9.9 (not a 10 just in case someone does better)
Everything else: Who cares?

Happy Friday!

Jerry

p.s.: Have a video you think I’d like? Drop me a line and I’ll take a look at it.

I found that as I learned to ride my unicycle with other riders, they appeared to be much more relaxed than I was while riding my unicycle. I would be forcing my body into weird contortions in order to stay up on my unicycle while they made it look effortless. Frustrated and envious, I asked my friend Mike what I was doing wrong and how did he make it look so easy?

“You need to steer with your hips”, he said.

Assuming I was enlightened, I tried to steer with my hips. While it helped a bit, I still felt like a beached whale. I decided that he was a better rider and resolved to embrace my glorious whale ancestors.

This week I had an epiphany. The easiest way to steer a unicycle is with your hips. I heard what my friend Mike said, but I didn’t understand until this week, about two years after he mentioned it. Here’s what I should have heard:

The Three Steps to Steering a Unicycle

Step 1: Find a flat, smooth surface to ride on.

Step 2: Make sure you’re not sitting up straight. Sitting up straight makes you look like a dork and makes it hard to steer your unicycle. You need to slouch (relax) and bend your upper body forward. For the sake of this exercise, bend forward quite a bit.

Step 3. As you ride, push the unicycle seat as far left as you can go by leaning your upper body to the right. Your unicycle will turn left. Then do the opposite. Push the unicycle seat as far to the right as you can by leaning your upper body to the left. The unicycle will turn to the right. It should feel like you’re trying to fold your body and unicycle in half like you would a piece of paper, with the crease of the fold being the seat.

Huge success! I can turn sharply with hardly any beached whale antics! I’m convinced that’s what Mike meant by steering with your hips. If you are having the beached whale problem, give this a try.

What is actually happening?

I have a theory about why this works so well. If you look at a bicycle tire from the end instead of the side, you will notice that the top of the tire has a half-moon curve across the width of the tread. When you lean your unicycle over to the left, the part of the tire that contacts the road is more to the left. The circumference of the left side of the tire is smaller than the circumference of the middle part of the tire, so it effectively means that you’re rolling on a cone instead of a cylinder. You know what happens when you try to roll something cone-shaped on the floor, right? Circles. As opposed to a roll of paper towel, which rolls in a straight line.

This made sense for me personally because I learned to ride a unicycle on a mountain unicycle that has a wide tire. Because the tire is wider and my tire is running at a lower pressure, the tire had a larger contact patch and resisted the turning forces more than a narrow, high pressure tire would. My friend Mike had an even wider tire than I did but didn’t have the same problems as I did because he had already learned to steer with his hips.

This also explains why riding along the side of the road is difficult when the road is sloped towards the drain. It is like the unicycle is leaning all of the time, always applying a turning force that frustrates beginning riders.

So there you have it. Steering a unicycle is easy, once you know how to do it and *understand* how to do it. Get out there and use those hips!

Jerry

Actually, it’s probably your second time on a unicycle because you just got your shiny new unicycle, tried it out and found out how difficult it is to ride, then came inside and decided to read this article. Well, have no fear, because every unicycle rider was once at the place you are at. What I have written here will give you the courage to go out there and try it again. I know from personal experience that unicycle riding can feel very hopeless when you’re first starting out.

The Most Important Thing Is Your Desire To Learn

You will never learn to ride if you don’t get out on your unicycle and try. You have given yourself a goal of learning to ride a unicycle, your unicycle. Remember that, because it will give you the drive to learn this skill. Remember how you saw someone else riding a unicycle and thought, “I want to do that too.” Learning how to ride a unicycle will help you in many areas in life, not just this one. Many people will never reach the point of learning to unicycle because they are afraid of making mistakes, of looking silly, of failing. You will not fail. Unicycling is all about making mistakes over and over again until you learn not to make the same mistakes. I hate making mistakes, but I hate making mistakes and not learning from them even more. You will try to ride your unicycle and keep making mistakes until you learn how to make the right moves.

Need some more motivation? Read the Courage to Live Consciously and then continue where you left off.

What is your body doing when you ride a unicycle?

Learning to ride a unicycle is about teaching your body and your mind to work together. Part of what you are doing is teaching your large leg muscles to do fine balance movement. Normally you walk by putting one foot out and then locking your knee so that your leg is in a straight line, which is coarse motor movement. Your legs are accustomed to carrying your whole body weight all the time. On a unicycle your leg muscles have to learn how to tense up but not contract completely - a developmental thing that takes time. When you watch people first learning how to ride a unicycle their wheel is all jerky because they haven’t yet taught their legs the fine muscle control that an experienced rider has.

The other part of riding is teaching your mind about balance, about how if you are falling one way and twist and turn your body a certain way, it will cause your body to fall over in the opposite direction. I still don’t understand this very well and this is one reason I am a crappy rider when doing fine balance stuff. I know I’m not explaining this very well so I’ll try to keep this section short. One thing I will tell you is to put your arms out. You feel like an idiot, but just do it, because it works. The best unicyclists in the world do it all the time.

Side Note: Definitely wear a helmet and consider wearing wrist guards.

Getting on your unicycle

Are you sure you still want to do this? Of course you are!

Now let’s get on that unicycle. A good way I have found to get on a unicycle is to find a wall or a fence or a hand railing or a post and line your unicycle up beside it, in front of you. You’re going to put one foot on one pedal, then you’re going to put your weight on the seat and put your other foot on the other pedal. The first pedal you step on is usually the side with your dominant leg - the leg that you would start a 100 meter sprint with. Put that pedal at about the 4:30pm position on the clock, so that when you step on the pedal, the wheel will move back towards you.

When you are learning how to get on a unicycle you will want to stand up on that first pedal. Don’t. Your first foot keeps the wheel from rolling away on you while you transfer your weight to the seat. Your second foot that is still on the ground pushes you forward and up over the wheel and then quickly transfers to the other pedal. If all went well, you’ll be sitting upright on the unicycle. If you’re like me, you’re probably running down the street trying to regain your balance while your unicycle bounces off the ground in the opposite direction. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I didn’t learn to ride a unicycle the first time I tried, either.

Once you’re up on the unicycle, spend some time getting used to the feel of being on the unicycle. At first it feels really shaky and uncomfortable - this is natural because your legs haven’t learned that fine muscle movement I was talking about earlier. You’ll probably feel this for about the first 5 or 10 times you practice. The other thing you’ll notice is that you have much more control over the unicycle when the pedals are at the “9 and 3″ position. If you have one pedal at the top and the other at the bottom (The “12pm and 6pm” position), it’s almost impossible to move the wheel forward and backwards. If you try to move the pedals when they are at the 12 and 6 position you end up turning sideways and falling over. Instead, try to keep your pedals at the 9 and 3 position, where you have the most control over the wheel.

When you’re learning to ride the unicycle, you go forward a half-wheel-turn at a time. Go from one 9 and 3 to the next 9 and 3, regaining your balance each time you do. This is actually how you ride a unicycle, it’s just that when you go faster the 9 and 3’s start to blend together.

Once you’ve gained some mastery of this skill, congratulations! You’re more than 80% of the way to learning how to ride! All that’s left is to let go of whatever you are holding on to and start riding!

As an aside, it took me about 8 years to learn to ride a unicycle. I gave up at this point because I thought I was a long ways from learning how to ride. I learned how to ride in about two days, 8 years later. I cringe when I think back to those 8 years I missed.

Riding into freedom

When you let go and start riding away from the fence, at first it will feel like the unicycle is going in a straight line and you just fall off to one side. Try to keep your head up and look into the distance instead of looking at your feet, or at the dirt right in front of you. This does two things. First, it helps your balance because your brain uses the horizon to figure out if you are falling over. If you don’t believe me, try riding with your eyes closed. I can’t. The second thing it does is it keeps you your body upright so that you can twist your torso more easily. Try slouching down and twisting your upper body. Now try sitting up straight and twisting your upper body. Notice how it’s easier if you aren’t all crunched up? More accomplished riders say that when you ride a unicycle you steer with your hips. All I know is that I feel like a beached whale when I try to steer my unicycle.

How long will it take?

The general wisdom is that if you commit to practicing multiple times per week, in less than a month you will be able to ride successfully. Having said that, people who are gifted with good coordination and balance can learn to ride in an evening. At the very least, it should take you less than 8 years.

Reflecting on what you have learned

Once you’ve mastered this skill, reflect on how your life has changed. You have done what most people in the world will never have the courage to attempt in their lifetimes. You have learned much more than just how to ride a unicycle. You have learned that mistakes are not to be feared because every mistake is an opportunity to learn and change how you react to something in the future. You have learned that if you have the drive and the passion, even difficult things can be achieved. You have learned that while there may be many problems between where you are and where you want to be, having a direction, a purpose, will lead you to where you want to go. Where will you apply these lessons next?

Note: Do not try and apply these lessons to skydiving without a parachute. Some things are both possible and stupid.

Jerry