Learning how to ride an electric unicycle is difficult. But once you figure it out, it’s super fun. I’m going to share some tips I used when I was learning. Hopefully, they’ll be helpful for you too.
Start by stepping onto the unicycle with one foot and moving around. Once you’re comfortable, place your second leg on the device. As soon as you can maintain your balance with both feet on the unicycle, pick a goal and try riding to it.
Keep repeating until you’re an expert unicycle rider.
Tips for Learning How to Ride a Unicycle
Below are some tips to help you understand how to ride a unicycle. Dive in!
1. Understand Where Your Unicycle’s Pedals are
The first step in learning how to ride any unicycle is to figure out where its pedals are. Make sure you’re familiar with where the foot pedals, handle, and cutoff switches are.
Being familiar with the different working parts of your unicycle is essential. You can’t really ride it if you don’t know how it works.
With most unicycles, putting pressure on your toes will accelerate your movement, while putting pressure on your heels will slow you down. The more you push down, the faster your acceleration or deceleration will be.
Keeping your upper body straight will help maintain balance.
2. Buy Safety Gear
You should wear a helmet and wristguards when learning how to ride a unicycle. It’s quite dangerous, and you don’t want to hurt yourself.
3. Practice in a Wide-Open Space
Balancing on a unicycle is a little difficult, so you will fall a couple of times before you get the hang of how to ride it. So, any wide-open space with a wall or rail to hold onto would work well.
If you’re someone who falls a lot, an open grass field might be a good idea. That way, even when you lose balance and fall, you won’t hurt yourself too badly.
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4. Ask a Friend or Family Member to Spot You
Ask a friend or family member to help you balance while you’re mounting, dismounting, and riding the unicycle for the first couple of times. Having that extra support will ensure that you get the hang of how to ride this vehicle without falling.
According to Harvard Business Review, getting the right help can do wonders for your learning curve.
Also, it helps you learn faster. Since you aren’t super concerned about falling and can focus on other technical things like figuring out how the controls work, you’re bound to do better.
5. Avoid Using a Crutch to Hold Onto
It can be very tempting to use a crutch like ski poles, strollers, or shopping cart to help you keep your balance. But you should absolutely avoid doing so.
All these accessories slow you down and make it harder for you to learn how to ride a unicycle. This is because you become dependent on them to balance and have a hard time figuring out how to do it yourself.
Riding a Unicycle in 6 Steps
Let’s learn to ride a unicycle in 6 easy steps!
Step 1: Step onto the Unicycle with One Leg
Start by standing upright. Then place your dominant foot on a pedal. Push down so your foot is holding the unicycle in place. The top of your unicycle should push against your calves. Push back against it with your shin.
Your calves will hurt, and your knees will be uncomfortable for the first couple of times you do this step. Don’t mind it too much because the discomfort will go away.
Step 2: Practice Moving with One Foot
While your dominant foot is on the pedal, bend your knee and walk forward. Keep your other foot on the ground and try hopping or walking around. Move at your normal walking speed.
If you’re super uncomfortable, try switching feet. Keep your dominant foot on the ground and the other one on a pedal.
Once you’re comfortable with this motion, move on to the next step.
Step 3: Practice Using both Feet on the Unicycle
Try mounting your second foot onto the unicycle and kick off. You will feel unstable and have trouble balancing initially, so having someone to spot you is very useful here.
Note that you can always stop and put one foot on the ground to balance yourself and try again. It will take a bit of time to get used to being able to balance on the unicycle, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you can’t figure it out immediately.
Keep trying until you can stay balanced on the unicycle with both feet on it.
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Step 4: Set a Goal to Ride to and Push Yourself to It
Pick a goal to ride to. This can be anything from a wall 5 feet from you or a friend standing 7 feet from you.
You can push yourself off from your starting point. Then lean forward and try to maintain balance.
Keep repeating this step and practice riding to a goal until you can get to it without losing balance or having to start over.
Step 5: Practice Stopping
The best way to think about stopping is to shift weight down and imagine you’re about to do a trust fall. Don’t actually fall backward but pretend like you are about to.
You can also imagine you’re about to sit down.
Either way, the idea is to push back through your heels.
Step 6: Try Turning
Turning on a unicycle is somewhat like turning on a bicycle. While you can try to make the movement consciously, it’s a lot easier to just look toward your destination. Your device will go wherever you’re looking.
It’s the subtle change in your weight that turns the unicycle. It’s a lot easier to make that shift accurately when you’re not thinking about your body movement too much and just letting it happen.
Last Word
The easiest way to learn how to ride electric unicycles is by taking it slowly. The learning process is somewhat like the learning process of riding a bike which means that you’ll fall a lot.
However, you’ll wake up one day, and everything will click. Then you’ll know exactly what to do and have a super rewarding experience.
