I learned stomach on seat first and found it awkward and then easy.
+ To learn seat on stomach, get next to a wall or volunteer. While on
+ your unicycle take the seat out (slowly) and put your stomach on the
+ seat. When learning it is advisable to keep one hand on the seat
+ while the other is flailing about for balance. When going a few
+ revolutions becomes easy try having both hands off the seat.
The guy who taught me (Jay Gilligan) made me keep both hands off the
seat on the first attempt. One important thing is to keep your head
UP. This means bending the neck back as far as you can. This will
make the riding and balancing etc much easier (more like normal
uniing). Also, make sure that you have lots of weight on the uni seat.
Initially this will feel strange and your stomach muscles may
complain.
+ For more advanced tricks with seat on stomach try a figure eight
+ and for really advanced tricks try doing stairs (just kidding).
I will try this (steps) on Friday night, but maybe only a couple :-)
My question is, does anyone have any tips for learning to hop on the
wheel? How do you get into it from normal riding? I can't even get
into it when I'm just standing on the ground. I guess having a foot on
a pedal makes it less dangerous. It's shown on the video, but mine is
in Australia somewhere (hey Mark!).
Also, what about riding with the seat to the side? I find this much
harder than seat out front or back. I know that one tip is to try and
stay as upright as possible. I notice that the levels only require you
to do this in a circle. When I last tried it (almost a year ago), I
couldn't help but go in circular direction, and even then never made a
full circle.
Here's another trick I have been thinking about and have almost done.
Bunny hop with your right leg in front. Bounce higher and higher and
then whilst in the air, do a half revolution and go into bunny hopping
left foot forward. I think this would look pretty good - especially if
you could do it on every bounce. Then it would appear that you were
pedalling all the time but you wouldn't be going anywhere.
Terry.