Jumping/hopping high--What am I doing wrong?

A 24" wheel with a tire that has what cross section and is being run at
what pressure? I run a 24"x3" Gazz with 18 psig and it's a VERY springy
tire. My 24"x1.75" Torker with 60 psig in it is a brick. Your technique
will develop with time, too. Even with the brick I can get up curbs or
stairs easily.

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Ok:

I'm not the best unicyclist, but I think I maybe can help. For hopping,
a lot of your height comes from the distance your'e pulling the seat up.
there's the height you get from the bounce of the tire and your push off
of the ground, but more of it comes from pulling the unicycle up so that
the seat hits your crotch. It's like jumping on your feet, really. you
can jump and leave your legs straight, and that only gets your feet a
few inches off the ground, whereas if you pull your feet to your chest,
you are perceived as jumping a lot higher.

Second, "a foot or two" is a lot. I can get a little over a foot, and
that's with a trials uni and a lot of time spent trying. two feet is
freaking awesome, and would require a huge amount of practise, skill,
and muscle.

I'm not sure if this will help, but i hope it will.

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Skippii said:

*I've got a 24" wheel, which I know isn't the best, but I think I
should still be able to get at least a foot or too. *

Two feet with a 24"er is pretty good. I'd guess lower the pressure as
harper said. Also try to work the height up gradually.

I sort of am in the same postion. I can't seem to get passed the 20"
ceiling. My hp has been there forever. I can sometimes get 21" seat in,
but although I feel comfortable with seat out I see no improvement.
Stuck at 20". My Rolling hop is way higher too.

David

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So lower tire pressure is better for jumps?

I'm not sure what mine is--I filled it to 50 (recommended on the tire)
and I think it's gone down a bit.

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I like to get the big Gazz to almost bottom out just as I apply as much
downward force to it as possible to hop. This gives me about 20" or so.
It also means that any drop I take greater than that height, the tire
will likely bottom and there is the threat of a pinch flat. If I know
I'm going to be doing a four or five foot drop I like to have more
pressure in the tire to keep it from bottoming out.

The skinny 1.75" will probably bottom out at 30 or 35 psig.

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Yeah thats probably too high. I think recomended means max. Although I
don't have a gage on my pump, people who are hopping generally run it at
25 psi I think. Mines pretty soft. I read somewhere Dan Heaton's was
like 15.

David

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darchibald said:

*Although I don't have a gage on my pump, people who are hopping
generally run it at 25 psi I think. Mines pretty soft. I read
somewhere Dan Heaton's was like 15.*

Yeah, apparently Dan Heaton bottoms out when he does rolling hops. I
personally wouldn't recommend this, but I'm clearly not one to give tips
to Dan Heaton on rolling hops.

An average tire pressure for trials would be around 20-25 psi.

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I like mine at about 20 psi, myself, but yeah, 20-25.

--
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"Unicycling is more about the center of concentration than the center of
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Dan keeps his tire pressure so low that I tried it and I literally can't
ride his uni in a circle. The best I did was one pedal rev and a bunch
of seat out hops. You can bottom out his tire on an 8" drop. But
whatever works for him, right?

I think that nothing anyone says on here will help you more than simply
going out and practicing. It took me over 1 year to break 12". It's been
over a year since then, and I've since broken 24". No offense, but
after the initial teaching that I got to get me past 12", nothing anyone
said ever made a drastic difference in my hop. You will get to 12", I
promise. Just practice.

I personally think that almost anyone who practices hard enough can get
at least 20", and anyone of average build can get at least 24". I am
very scrawny at 5'6" 125lbs, but I can still hop about 32" sidehop (20"
trials uni. For comparison I get about 28" no prehop on my muni), so I
know that muscle isn't an issue. The uni shouldn't make a difference
until you start getting past around 12" or so. Almost any decent trials
rider you ask wil be able to hop around 20", even on a freestyle uni
with a tire at 120 psi. To put it simply, the uni can help or make
riding harder, but 85% of a good rider is the rider, and not the uni.

darchibald: I know how you feel. I was stuck at 20" for about a month.
Try increasing the height very slowly, around 1" at a time. that helped
me. I also had the same problem at 28". My solution was to learn to
prehop again. If you don't prehop, try it, it ought to help. Also, I was
comfortable seat out even when I could only do 18" seat out and do 20"
seat in. You will be comfortable with seat in long before you are better
with it. Keep practicing, and you'll get it, I promise.

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Hmm...
Just practiced a bit more. One of the times I did something a bit
different and got some more height--I don't know what I did, though, and
it wasn't all good because I didn't land it. I've got the KH seat on my
uni, and if I yank up too hard on the handle, the wheel comes up a bit
in front of me and I usually crashland.

I'll keep practicing...

Thanks for the advice.

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Skippii said:

*Hmm...
Just practiced a bit more. One of the times I did something a bit
different and got some more height--I don't know what I did, though,
and it wasn't all good because I didn't land it. I've got the KH seat
on my uni, and if I yank up too hard on the handle, the wheel comes up
a bit in front of me and I usually crashland.

I'll keep practicing...

Thanks for the advice. *

Check out this Kris Holm video for some basic techniques. Its about 3
minutes long or something.

http://tinyurl.com/5ahbf

Its is posted on Andrew Carter's site, www.unicycle.2ya.com Thats a good
place to get different techniques for things.

One of the things i tried to do when I was learning to hop higher was
use my body mass to my advantage. Start next to the thing you want to
jump on to. Begin to lean in its direction. Bring your torso down a few
inches. Then, just before you jump, spring your body up and at the same
time snap your legs to begin the hop. After you get good at this you can
start learning to pull the unicycle up underneath you.

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Gerblefranklin:
Thats good to here from someone as good a rider as yourself. I'm really
gonna start working on it. It sucks cause its like rained for the last
week and a half, but no school tomorrow and its supposed to be sunny.
I'm gonna try and find some place dry to stick a stack of pallets where
I can practise side-hops for the winter.

Later,
David

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Darchibald: I would suggest simply continuing to ride. It gets kinda
cold over here a lot, and it rained today. I lok at rain as not a limit
to riding, but something to help. The rain makes everything harder, so
you have to be that much mroe perfect on everything. FOr example, a 26"
hop onto a ledge for me takes very little concentration when it's dry,
but in the rain it takes every ounce of concentration to keep my balance
directly over the wheel to prevent slippage. But if a dry riding spot
makes you ride more, then go for it. The way I practiced hopping for a
long time waas ai had a 20" box, a set of risers, and a 24" box. At
first it was a fight to get onto the 20" box, but eventually I started
warming up on it. I added a riser to the box to get 22", and got that
down, and then would go onto the 24" box. This was really helpful to me.

Skippi: I think that if you are tipping over when you pull up too hard
then you aren't leaning forward enough and your seat is too high. It
sounds as if you are pulling with your torso and not using your arm to
help. Basically, when you have problems with something, rather than just
blindly repeating stuff, make subtle changes to technique and style on
each hop. I find that concentrating on a certain part of my hop, often
the spring (simply because at this time that's the weakest part of my
technique), will improve the height by as much as an inch. So if you
find yourself tipping over backwards, try leaning forward more on the
next hop. Just play around with technique, and try to mentally analyze
your technique. Things get more complicated as you hop heigher. On no
prehop hops you tend to have to work on leaning into the object more.
But that's a bridge you can cross when you get there...

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Skippii said:

I've got the KH seat on my
uni, and if I yank up too hard on the handle, the wheel comes up a bit
in front of me and I usually crashland.

This makes me wonder if you bend your legs actively while you pull up
on the seat. You should. If you keep your legs straight you can pull
on the seat as much as you want but the unicycle is not going to go up
more.

Do this for gaining insight: Stand next to an object of, say, 8" high.
Jump on it with two feet at once. Notice how you bend your legs during
the 'flight' phase. Now transfer that to your uni hopping.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
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