uni with training wheels, best learner?

[Ricky W]

don't waste your money

[StaggerLee]

I'm still learning to ride now and I would never use something like that. It looks like would get in the way when you needed to bail. I can just see that thing wacking me in the back of the head.

I've thought about training aids and the best training aid out there is a really long wall along a flat surface... maybe something like a tennis court


Plus these training wheels are VERY cheaply built. I'm sure the wheels would break/bend/crack in the first couple of tries.

[peter.bier]

Originally Posted by AscenXion

With the exception of the one guy that's tried something "like it", you all give VERY strong reasons why you THINK it would suck, but you've never tried one, and you have abosultely NO idea if it would suck, or maybe be quite helpful.

X

You should always give more weight to the opinion of people who have tried the actual equipment (especially when it is David Stone).


I also have a little bit of an idea why it might suck :-) But you probably don't know me from a bar of soap.

My thoughts were based on 10+ years of riding unicycles of all sorts of shapes and sizes, including various unicycle like devices (which have more wheels touching the ground) I have played around on a few things that use similar concepts to the contraption shown and also talked/lived with people who have ridden similar vehicles. Plus I also teach mathematical modelling and have a reasonable knowledge of physics.

It is always difficult to evaluate what advice is worth listening to from the forums when you have no idea about the background of the giver.

When in doubt it is a safe bet to listen to the likes of John Foss, Greg Harper, Roger Davies and Gilby.

Regarding the vehicle in question, if you don't mind throwing away money on a potential lemon it might be fun to get one for novelty value (assuming you can already ride). It should not prove too difficult to actually ride, although it may end up being slightly harder to use than a normal unicycle. If you are part of a club it could be worth getting for a bit of entertainment. Have a "who can do the most interesting trick with this" evening.

[skilewis74]

I thought about it but didn't buy it. I was afraid it would break from a fall or just riding it soon after I basically learned how to ride. I did buy a 24" DX and spent 2 months riding allong a 90 ft long, 4 ft high rail.

It looked like a great idea though. If you were falling to the left, right, or back the training wheels would catch you. Also just leaning back would save you from a fall. And as you improved you could rais the wheels (if your seat height limited this you could bend the wheels up). The only problem is you'd be riding around with this frame and wheels hanging off the back, which would mess up with your ballance.

This seamed like the Ideal trainer (or for learning tricks like 1 ft. riding, ww, coasting, still stand,etc) especially if you didn't have a rail to support you with. I know a coulple of people who tried learning and quit, but if they had something like this I think they would have stuck with it long enough to learn to ride. I think neither person had any instruction or tried to ride along a rail, fence, or wall though.

When I learned to ride a b*ke I was about 6 (now I'm 31) and I rode around for 4 months before I had the courage to take the training wheels off.

[onelesscar]

What I think might be a good idea is to sell just the training wheel contraption by itself, without the cheap uni. The contraption itself may or may not work, but it seems better that they sell the training wheels and you can attach them to a nicer unicycle that you are able to pick out yourself. That may be worthwhile, but seeing as it comes with a uni of questionable quality, I would avoid it.

[xeaza]

It's not a unicycle if it has training wheels.

[JustOneWheel]

Originally Posted by xeaza

It's not a unicycle if it has training wheels.

So it's not a bicycle if it has training wheels

Training wheels don't change a bicycle or unicycle from being a bicycle or unicycle, they help acclimate a person to the cycle to give them a better idea of what it will feel like to ride one (who wouldn't want the chance to feel what it was like to ride before they learned)
From the rotation of the pedals to the movement of the unicycle, they will have a much better understanding and feel more comfortable when continuing to learn to ride without a training aid.

For most people a well designed device would help bring many more riders to the sport!

Adam

[joemarshall]

Originally Posted by JustOneWheel

So it's not a bicycle if it has training wheels

Training wheels don't change a bicycle or unicycle from being a bicycle or unicycle, they help acclimate a person to the cycle to give them a better idea of what it will feel like to ride one (who wouldn't want the chance to feel what it was like to ride before they learned)

For most people a well designed device would help bring many more riders to the sport!

Training wheels/stabilisers on bikes are recommended against by many cycling teachers for various reasons.
http://www.bikebiz.co.uk/newsitem.php?id=23524

I guess the key thing here is 'well designed', which bike stabilisers generally aren't, they actively teach you not to balance right in turns and screw you up.

I think there's some more argument on a unicycle, because it's fixed wheel, and most normal cyclists haven't learnt to ride a fixed wheel, so the pedalling skill is different to them, whereas on a bike you can learn the balance and then learn the pedalling later.

One thing that seems wrong with all these unicycle training wheel sets is that they're always about making forward/backwards balance easy, which removes the main skill that you're trying to learn, maybe a sideways set of training wheels, that stopped you fallling left or right and let you get on with learning to ride forwards and backwards, sort of in the same way that going along a wall does.

Joe

[JustOneWheel]

I don't believe in using a training devices for the long term. They should just be used as an introduction to unicycling (30-45 min of play with the proper device that is).
Most people will never try to learn to unicycle after there first attempt. This is because you don't learn on your first attempt.
To get more of the mainstream public involved you need a tool to ease them in. A device that will mimic riding a real unicycle and get people wanting more instead of them just getting discouraged.

Just one of the reasons there aren't more unicyclist.

If training wheels were never invented for bikes, there would be a much smaller % of riders out there. Most bike riders wouldn't have had the patients to learn without the ease of training wheels. It's also a mental thing (piece of mind to start).

Adam

[xeaza]

lol Hey Adam. How are things? PM me and i'll tell you about my summer so far!!!
~Taylor W S

[vuniw]

Dont Learn With Training Wheels They Are Horrible You Cant Turn With Them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!