Learning to unicycle #1 – Getting on
So after a few stalled attempts at getting on to the unicycle, I’ve finally been able to devote some time to it. It’s… uhhh… tricky.
Before I got on, there was some prep work to do…
- I initially put the uni together on the floor in C’s lounge room on Christmas day using my fingers and whatever dinky tools came in the box. Not my finest piece of workmanship, so upon getting the uni home, I stripped the entire thing and rebuilt it properly. There’ll be no stuck pedals on my watch thank-you-very-much.
- Next up, I took a Dremel to the seatpost. Despite measuring in at around 180cm tall, the stock seatpost is quite long and getting it low enough has the bottom of the post perilously close to the tyre. Cutting back the post also means that C should be able to ride this thing.
- Finally, I hit YouTube for my fill of ‘How To-’ videos. I love how some of these guys make it look SO easy – “Just put your foot up, balance a bit and soon you’ll be able to do this *hop* *hop* *hop*”. Riiiiight. Along the way I discovered some bloke called Kris Holm who is an absolute lunatic.
So armed with a well built uni and more head knowledge than I knew what to do with, I wedged myself between the hallway wall and a chair and hopped on.
It’s tricky…
Very tricky…
In my first 30 minutes or so, I did manage to build up to balancing on the spot for about 5 seconds. All that time I wasted learning fixie tricks has obviously paid off because I actually felt reasonably comfortable on it. Sure it’s not EASY, but I wasn’t nearly as wobbly as I expected I was going to be.
There were however a couple of learnings….
- Falling forwards = bad. Falling backwards = good
- Sit up or you’ll mash the… errrrrr… “goods”
- Hands on walls are secure, but they don’t really do anything for helping you learn to balance. Flail them around!
- Tape your seat to protect from crash damage
- It’s REALLY hard work when you’re learning. My abs are pretty sore now, although I’m hoping that it gets easier as I get more comfortable.
Hopefully I get to spend a bit more time on it tonight…
So would you say it’s good for strengthening your core? If so I might get one just for that.
There are cheaper and less dangerous ways of building up core strength….