Congratulations on your accomplishments thus far!! Welcome to the
diverse world of unicycling.
What I'd suggest is that you view Andrew Carter's website. Go to the
trials and MUni sections and watch the vids, especially the Kris Holm
trials demo vids. The address is: www.unicycle.2ya.com
Your drop technique will improve the more you practice, and the more you
practice the tips in those tutorials.
For future references, what gets absorbed in a higher drop is your
momentum translated into the rolling of the wheel. You have to watch
the tutorials to see exactly what I mean. Essentially you roll out of a
drop. Meaning, that once you come into contact with the ground, you put
your weight on the forward crank, and try to roll the wheel using this
weight, when you touch down. Sometimes you will land a big drop with
the upper half of your body bent all of the way forward...like your
chest maybe touching the front handle of your seat. Then, you just use
your abs to get you back into the upright position. Your legs stay
locked, or at least pretty close to being locked. You wouldn't want to
smash 'things' on the seat upon impact.
Stopping to hop, or just riding into a drop depends on what a particular
drop is like. You can practice dropping in both crank orientations.
That will allow you to roll more into drops, and then land with either
foot forwards. Sometimes you'll only be limited to dropping a certain
way. For a bigger drop you may be comfortable with doing in only one
crank orientation. If so, it's always helpful to learn how to flip your
wheel. Okay, think of this: If you come up to a curb and your cranks
aren't going the right way for you to hop up onto it, what do you do?
You hop and spin your wheel 180 degrees, and land with your cranks going
the right way--oh and landing in the same spot you did the little hop
from. And then you hop up the curb.
For other drops you do even different techniques. Some drops may not
have good roll outs, and if you have a nice set of splined cranks, you
can just do the drop seat-out/seat-in. Which leads me to gapping. If
you do a gap-drop, your cranks will need to be going the right way
before you hop over/down or both, and some gaps done with accuracy
cannot be done with roll-outs.
Did this make sense?
If it didn't, download all of those videos first, and then come back and
read this message after you've seen the techniques demonstrated
visually. Then you'll get what I mean.
Later,
Evan
--
TrialsUni - Urban Trials Rider
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