I made this video because I thought it was funny. I attempted to side ride from my apartment to one of the campus dining halls. It ended up being 0.63 miles (1 km). There were LOTS of falls. Please note that it was intended to be funny. I hope you get a good laugh out of it! I certainly did!
Also, I made a point in the video I wanted to address. I am aware there are a lot of “distance riders” here, and there’s probably at least a few of you that are into freestyle. I think a cool discipline would be “distance freestyle”. I’m not sure if that kind of thing exists, but it’s something I’d like to explore. Let me know what y’all think!
Wow I didn’t even know side riding was a thing! Looks incredibly strenuous and awkward, but props on challenging yourself! My one thought is if, in order to ride any distance, you have to get off or fall over and over, there isn’t quite enough actual riding going on. I guess everything improves with practice, so maybe you could get good enough to make it worthwhile. Anyway, thanks for the vid
I would say even with these short distances it definitely is riding. Doing tricks in competition is a whole other level up from doing it in practice. I’ve done one xStyle competition, and I can say that what I did here is multiple levels up from that. Just because you can consistently do something for a few revs in competitions and transition in/out doesn’t mean you can do it for these long distances. And I can do it for long distances. If I go for endurance, I usually got for at least 20-30 revs in my perfectly flat garage, and I can do a handful of transitions. If I were to make it all the way to my destination in this video in one go, I would have beat the one foot world record by a significant margin (and side ride is way harder). So I would definitely say I have the skill “learned” by this point. Navigating uneven terrain (even slightly uneven) is completely different from doing it in a flat space. What I did here is like muni on steroids. I can do spoke walk/lacewalk for 150+ feet (basically as long as I want until my legs tire out), but if I try this on an uneven surface sometimes I can barely do it.
I appreciate your thoughts your thoughts on all this! If you’re interested in seeing this trick more, I’ve been working on a lot of side ride/SOS 1 ft ext tricks (see YouTube videos) lately, especially roll transitions. Also note that a lot of videos we see only get the good take. This video was meant to be entertaining by showing the struggle of doing this skill for long distances on less than ideal terrain.
The video was intended to be entertaining. When my runs got longer later in the video, that was because the ground leveled out and I didn’t have to crank down as hard on the pedals/push as hard into the seat, not because I was treating it as a practice session. I thought this concept of “distance freestyle” might be an interesting idea to other unicyclists, as these skills aren’t usually something we attempt for long distances.
This trick is freaky. A few questions:
1.) How does your body not bob up/down?
2.) Are you “fixing” your hip to the saddle to maintain a pivot?
3.) Are you just pumping down from 12 to 6 o’clock, or do you try to maintain constant speed rotation and pausing at 3 and 9 o’clock?
4.) During each pedal down pump, how do you counter the reaction twist? Does your outside leg serve as counterweight?
4.) How do you steer? Leaning? or Twisting?
Based on physics and wheel momentum, I think a larger diameter wheel will it easier for you to go farther.
Your weight goes in your hands on the saddle. This helps you maintain an even pedal stroke.
The point of contact for side ride is the thigh. In seat on side one foot extended, the point of contact is the hip. SOS 1 ft ext is a little harder than side ride if done in a circle, but significantly harder to do in a straight line. I think this may be because in SOS 1 ft ext you have to lean over the unicycle more. This is my experience.
I’d say my speed of rotation is pretty constant, and the pedaling happens very briefly around 3 - 4 o’clock.
As I mentioned in the video, side ride is easiest to do in a circle. If you’ve seen videos of freestyle routines, they pretty much always go in a circle. I think my outside leg does serve as a counterweight. Most people put their leg in front, but I also only see them go in a circle, so I assume that helps with turning. If I start to lose my balance while going in a circle I will often bring my leg to the front to help turn. For going in a straight line, I keep my leg by my side. What you don’t want to do is put it in back. I used to do that a lot and that makes it harder to maintain balance.
For steering, it’s a bit of both actually. I tried to upload a video of me side riding in a figure eight to show you what I mean, but it says the format isn’t supported. But towards the end of this video I make an outside turn, so that might help illustrate the point.
I think so too. I’m wanting to do it on my 32" some time. The only thing is, I don’t know how the big wheel and extra momentum will react to this trick. I tried it a while back and had trouble committing on the 32" because it was scary lol. But I think doing it on the 24" was a good intermediate step.
