balance yes,no?

Practice on rollers! Once you have mastered rollers, anything else is a piece of cake.

Rider.Norco said:

i do a lot of free-ride when i bike and my balance sucks, since its almost mandatory to have good balance when doing skinnies and and teeter-toters in wondering if there is some techniques to improve my lack of being able to ride in a start line or do i just kiss my ass good bye and hope i fall off.

THANK!!!!

Ride your bike a lot. Beyond that, there are some things you can do. The key is to shift your weight gradually and get used to the feel of the weight transitions before you speed them up. Do balance exercises with flat pedals unless you are very good at unclipping or don't mind injuries.

On the bike, try rolling to a stop on a slight uphill, then balancing for as long as you can. You will probably fall off to start off with - try not to jump off quickly, just hold yourself up and slide to the side slowly. Eventually you will be able to balance for as long as you like. Once you can 'trackstand' like this, try to learn it eyes closed, one hand or even no hands (very hard). Try looking at objects that are close, and far away objects, try looking at one thing and also try shifting your gaze. Also try to nail it with you wheel crossed left and your wheel crossed right, and with both left and right feet forward.

Learn to ride no hands. Practice, and once you're comfortable, get used to pedalling no hands, then shifting your weight and cornering no hands.

Wheelies - using flat pedals, select a reasonably easy gear, pedal hard and lean back. Leave your hand on the back brake so you can grab it if you are going to over balance. Try to move slowly and fluidly, even if you need to brake, and always 'feel' where your bike is and how your body moves. After a while you should be able to put your front wheel up slowly and roll with or without pedalling.

Endo's - practice transitioning into endo's smoothly and slowly. Work up to endo 180's, backhops, etc. All the tricks you learn will help if you do them slowly and think about your weight transitions. If you just throw yourself into them and hope you won't get as much out of them. And you'll hurt yourself.

You can also work on your balance in the gym. Try swiss ball exercises and balance board exercises - trainer should be able to help with these. General core stability work - abs and pelvic stability - will also help.

Finally, a good exercise for general balance and bike familiarity is to find a reasonably tight but smooth bit of singletrack. Select an easy gear, and a 200m length of track. Pedal the gear to the end of the track, with no stops for corners. Just keep smooth and pedal through the corners. This forces you to be poised, keeping weight transitions smooth and pedalling in a relaxed way. You will need to use a very easy gear at first. Just focus on being relaxed and fluid. Once you can do it easily, pick a bigger gear and repeat. Continue until you are smooth, fast and balanced.

Good luck, hope this is helpful. 🙂

gruppo said:

Practice on rollers! Once you have mastered rollers, anything else is a piece of cake.

Too true....

Trackstands; you can't go wrong. Can practice anywhere, anytime.
For the first while I'd suggest practice riding SLOW, IE about to stop. Try to get a feel for it. Then come to a stop. I myself found that to start with I could balance better using the front brake only. Turn your wheel to help (it will feel natural which way it should go). Use a combo of body movement and braking to balance.

Practice up hill, downhill, off camber stuff, wind, different terrains. Eventually do it with no brakes (unless you go trials like me 😉). For trials you use mor eof a rocking motion versus just twisting the front wheel. I myself am pretty competant at it. I can go one handed, no handed, I no longer use brakes unless on a downhill, and on a variety of obstacles. Trackstands are helpful for city traffic riding (messenger), freeriding, and trialsin.

As to riding skinnies and such, DON'T look directly in front of your wheel. Look several feet ahead. Best practice is to ride curbs while commuting/training.

heheheha said:

Trackstands; you can't go wrong. Can practice anywhere, anytime.
For the first while I'd suggest practice riding SLOW, IE about to stop. Try to get a feel for it. Then come to a stop. I myself found that to start with I could balance better using the front brake only. Turn your wheel to help (it will feel natural which way it should go). Use a combo of body movement and braking to balance.

Practice up hill, downhill, off camber stuff, wind, different terrains. Eventually do it with no brakes (unless you go trials like me 😉). For trials you use mor eof a rocking motion versus just twisting the front wheel. I myself am pretty competant at it. I can go one handed, no handed, I no longer use brakes unless on a downhill, and on a variety of obstacles. Trackstands are helpful for city traffic riding (messenger), freeriding, and trialsin.

As to riding skinnies and such, DON'T look directly in front of your wheel. Look several feet ahead. Best practice is to ride curbs while commuting/training.

i usually try to ride along the white lines at the edge of the carrageway, trying to remain on them without straying onto the road, a little easier than riding curbs, and shocks of falling off them, other than that. find a wall, allow one side of the wheel to rest against it and try to maintain your balance withou falling over away from the wall, try to make it so that the wheel is slightly away from the wall so that you can stand upright, then lean against the wall if you feel your going to fall.

try and do it over short periods of time, increasing the time you balance as your confidence and balance improves. A friend of mine used to use a uni cycle for just that, he used to do trials, so perffect balance was essential.