How to learn riding electric unicycle?

As our friend from the previous post is struggling with his first steps in the EUC world, we’ve decided to give you some tips on learning to ride the EUC, as this is often a struggle for someone who is just beginning. 

How to learn riding electric unicycle?

Riding an electric unicycle is quite simple and straight forward process, that is essentially pretty intuitive. To accelerate you need to lean forward, to brake you need to lean backwards. The more you lean the faster you go or brake. For turns you shift your weight left or right and balance on the wheel. It sounds complicated, but in reality, it goes very natural, as soon as your body gets used to it.

Learning

Even though the process of riding is pretty simple, you will have to learn to do it. The best way to begin the learning is to find a good place for it – even surface, plenty of space, no expensive, easily broken items around. Also, it would be best to have something to hold on to in the beginning – like a fence. This way you will feel safer during the learning process and avoid falls after mistakes.

One of the more popular methods of learning is long step method, which consists of the following:

1. First step is to understand which leg is leading. To find this out you will need to stay straight and ask someone to push you in the back. Your leg, which makes the first step is the leading leg.
2. You put leading leg on the pedal of the EUC and it should always stay on this pedal. You put this leg in the center of the pedal, the way you feel comfortable.
3. Then try shifting your weight from your second foot, which is on the ground, to your lead foot, which is on the pedal. Back and forth, you raise your second leg, hover for a couple of seconds and drop back second leg to the ground. Lead leg stays always on the pedal. All this is done without forward movement.
4. After you are comfortable with step 3. start not only raising the second leg, but also pushing yourself forward, so the wheel would go a little bit forward. You push off the ground with your second foot, do a little cartwheel movement with your weight on your lead foot, and then put your other foot back on the ground.
5. This process should look like a step, where you push with your leg, move forward and put it back on the ground and then again and again. And while you are getting better at it, you will need to prolong the movement, at first the steps are really short and quick, but the more you do it, the more comfortable you are getting, make these steps longer and longer.
6. When you feel that your steps are long enough, you can try to make such step and put the second leg not on the ground but on the second pedal and start riding. If you managed to completely feel through previous steps, this step should come pretty naturally.
7. As soon as you can ride forward, try shifting your weight to make some turns.  If it is hard for you to understand how to shift your weight, the easiest way will be to turn your shoulders to the side where you wish to turn.

The best thing about this method is that after you went through all the steps, you already can start  the movement and stop without holding to anything, so that part is already done, and now you just need to practice.

Also remember that like in cycling – it’s hard to go slow (keep your balance on slow speed is an advance technique), so try to go faster, it will be much easier.

It usually takes a couple of days to start riding the EUC, but you will need another couple of weeks to feel safe enough to ride in a city, around people, stop and turn without disturbing anyone. Take this into account, it is not, probably, best idea to start commuting on the second day of your learning.

General tips for the beginners

The most important aspect of riding an electric unicycle is safety, and it is generally connected to the safety gear that rider is using. Majority of unpleasant situations on the EUC comes from the cases where rider didn’t use protection or used inappropriate protection.

That is why we recommend to have your gear ready as soon as you beginning to learn riding. Basic set includes roller blade type protection – hands, elbows, knees, plus helmet. This protection will be sufficient while your speeds are below 30-35 km/h. To the moment when you get over this speed  - you will have much better understanding what extra protection do you need and what is best for you.

During learning process, you wheel is bound to fall on the ground, not once and probably not twice. Electric unicycles are usually quite sturdy in terms of construction, so usually it will result mostly in cosmetic damages, but nonetheless you might want to protect your expensive piece of equipment.

There are couple of ways to protect it from the damage during learning. Simplest way is to buy a body protection, either from factory – currently available only for Inmotion or custom made, these we will soon have here at Oneride (or most probably already have, as you are reading this article not on the day it was written). The other way is to buy some soft material and stick it to the wheel for the time being, there are different kinds, you can find some advice on forums. And the last method, which is useful only in the beginning, and not everyone likes it, but it is worth mentioning nonetheless. You can take a rope, put it around the EUC handle and hold it while riding, this way when you jump of the wheel, you can still catch the wheel with the rope. There are some drawbacks to this method, but on the plus side – this will also help protect people/cars/objects around you while you learn, because without the rope wheel can continue movement even after you jump off, and in urban environment this might be dangerous.

One more thing to consider – legs will hurt after your first days with the EUC, because until you can control the wheel well, it will push hard in the side of your leg, so we recommend putting some protection to the places where top of the wheel touches your leg, this way you can avoid bruising and pain. Also, when you are choosing your first wheel, you might consider its shape, as it can severely influence leg pain in the beginning.

These are some general tips and tricks for the beginners, hope some of you will find it useful.

Electric unicycle is an amazing invention and we cannot let learning difficulties stop us from enjoying it!