Today was the second day where I was trying to relearn to freemount my KH-36 unicycle. After my experience with regaining confidence while freemounting the 29-er, I knew that I had to take it one step at a time. Day 1’s drill started by practicing safe-aborts; jump up, try and hit the pedal, and then go over the uni and allow it to drop behind, catching it from behind the back, as a bonus. I was able to get the safe-abort to work from the first time, and the fact that I seemed to be hitting the left pedal nicely gave me a lot of confidence. I then tried the jumps while standing close to a wall, where I could use support from the wall, to position myself on the uni and then performing a launch. I noted a bit of hesitation with the launches, but this is because I’d never really learned to launch from the wall/pole in the past! Once launched though, I found that I was able to ride quite well.

Today, I started again with wall-assisted starts, but when I tried to freemount, I found that despite nailing the jump itself, I wasn’t able to get started. I counted the attempts, and after 30 unsuccessful starts, out of which only two were aborted due to not landing my foot onto the pedal properly (legit aborts), I realized that I had to do something else. One thing that I do when I’m seemingly stuck is to switch to a different wheel size, to get the brain to readjust, which I find is often helpful. When I switched to my 29-er, it felt really small in comparison, and for nearly five minutes, I could hardly nail a freemount on it. I then let my muscle-memory take over, and I nailed it, but more importantly, I realized that I did a quick but critical adjustment with my hips that helped the wheel come ‘unstuck’, which made getting started far easier. I realized also that with smaller wheels, we do this without even thinking about it, but it becomes a more conscious action with bigger wheels, as there’s more inertia to overcome with larger wheels.

I switched back to the 36-er and before long, I was able to nail my freemount and ride off, thanks to the easy-to-ignore but critical hip-flex. When I first learned to freemount the 36-er, I’d spent a lot of time learning to do it, and I’d failed to to document everything that helped me get it right, but now that I couldn’t do it anymore and needed to work to reacquire the skill, I decided to document my findings so it could help others, and potentially even me, should I happen to take another long pause myself!

Acquiring/reacquiring freemounting capabilities on a 36-er

• My first and perhaps most valuable tip is to follow instructions Terry’s 36-er mounting tutorial, particularly when it comes to not pushing down on the non-jumping foot.

• Practice safe-abort drills.
  • To do this, jump high enough to be able to hit the top of the pedal on the jumping foot side, and then continue till the unicycle ends up behind you.
  • Bonus points if you can manage to catch the unicycle behind you, as this will help reduce wear and tear on the unicycle.
• Wall/pole drills where you jump up onto the uni, but use the wall/pole to help you get stabilized. After that, start moving and keep adding revs till you get used to riding. This is only required if one is coming back from a long pause and is trying to once again get comfortable with riding the 36-er.
• Start from a place with free-space in all directions.
• Stand straight but hold the wheel angled slightly away, in the direction of your mounting leg.
  • With smaller wheels, one can have the wheel perfectly straight, but with a 36-er, unless you yourself are very tall, it’s easier to keep the wheel slightly angled.
• Jump up onto the pedal, and straighten the wheel, as you jump.
• Once onto the pedal, quickly perform a slight adjustment from the hips, to get the wheel to come ‘unstuck’. This helps to overcome the inertia of rest and set the wheel in motion.
  • Sometimes, the jump-imparted energy itself may be sufficient to set the wheel in motion, and if so, no further hip-flex is needed, but if that’s not the case, doing a quick hip-driven adjustment moves the wheel sideways. This is also helpful when trying to freemount up an incline.
• When mounting, we hold the uni with a hand, but it’s important to let go of the uni and not keep holding it, before we can get started. Continuing to hold the uni frame in the hand while mounting causes us to be rigid and will likely result in an failed mounting attempt.
• Once the wheel has started to move, settle into the saddle and keep spinning. Adjust foot position as needed, to get comfortable.

• Whenever progress is going very slow, try riding/practicing with wheels of other sizes. The additonal adjusment the brain has to do to compensate for the size change is often beneficial to learning, resulting in faster learning.

• Here’s a video of me, freemounting my 36-er. Note the angling of the wheel, and the hip-driven adjustements that set the wheel in motion; that’s critical for success, as it’s a lot harder to start off a 36-er from total standstill.

Factors that can lead to failure to mount/launch

• Improper foot placement on the pedal, when jumping on
  • This is generally not a common occurance, and factors for the least number of failures to launch.
  • Tends to happen more often when very tired or distracted.
• Late release of the unicycle frame from the hand.
  • It’s important not to release the uni frame before the foot has firmly been planted onto the pedal, but equally important to let go after that.
  • In cases where the foot misses the pedal or lands sub-optimally, go over the pedals and catch the uni behind you.
• Too much lateral movement, or too much of hip-flex/adjustment.
• A jump that’s too weak, with the center of gravity being too far back.