Static SIF hops

The only thing that matters is you should make your preffered hops be
AWAY from the hand that holds the seat. So if you hold with your left
hand, jump to the right. This makes tucking far easier.

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gerblefranklin said:

The only thing that matters is you should make your preffered hops be
AWAY from the hand that holds the seat. So if you hold with your left
hand, jump to the right. This makes tucking far easier.

... in your opinion.

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pete66 said:

... in your opinion.

I think it's kinda like how people naturally walk forwards. It just
works better than the other way.

But hey, whatever works for you.

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I'm actually as orthodox as it comes coz I do hops left foot forward, to
the left, right hand on seat. I don't think anyone would be limited if
they happened to use their other hand on the seat and it was gerble's
mistake to state his idea as a fact when there's no proof...

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TrialsUni said:

I noticed that you use your right foot for the forward foot...while you
hold seat with the left hand, and hop towards the left.

Commonly, as I'm sure you've noticed is that riders either hop left
with the right hand on seat, and left foot forward...or right foot
forward, hopping right, with the left hand on the seat.

Not quite, I jump to my left, right foot forward, right hand on the
seat. This makes for an awkward pedal grab, as I have to do a crankflip
like manouver in order to jump with the pedal orientation that feels
'right' (Which is the exact opposite of what I do normally). I'll be
riding a bit again tomorrow, so I can test out the tucking, which I
think will improve my height by at least 4 or 5 inches in the long run.
It'll also make my jumps visually more pleasing, as I think this
doesn't look too good...

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pete66 said:

it was gerble's mistake to state his idea as a fact when there's no
proof...

and it's your mistake to doubt the gerble. just think about the
mechanics of what he's saying... the hand you use determines the tilt
of your unicycle...

you want your seat to be tilted away from the direction in which you
land. you're going to land a sidehop with some sideways momentum,
especially if you use a prehop... you can use that sideways momentum
to take you and your uni to the point where your uni is straight up
(perpendicular to the ground)... this will give you maximum traction on
landing and leave you in perfect balance. for an illustration see
ryan's latest vid.

if your seat is tilted towards your landing you're going to have to
work harder to gain your balance when landing, and you're sacrificing
traction at the same time.

Erant said:

Not quite, I jump to my left, right foot forward, right hand on the
seat. This makes for an awkward pedal grab, as I have to do a crankflip
like manouver in order to jump with the pedal orientation that feels
'right'...(snip)... I also need to lower my seat a bit

I execute my side hops just the way you describe and they feel quite
natural to me. My left foot is my "chocolate foot"... is this the case
for you? I believe you would want your chocolate foot back for
take-off, and for landing I've seen riders land with their foot both
forward and back... so I don't see why one would need to crankflip.
Perhaps you need to practice with a different pedal orientation, or
hopping in the opposite direction to lose the awkward feeling. Of
course, SIF hopping feels awkward for some time while you're learning
it...

From what I've heard and experienced, lowering your seat is going to
hurt your hop more than help it. When your seat is lower you'll have
to hunch over more to grab it... this will reduce the amount your body
can tuck when trying to gain height on your hop. This also makes for
less comfortable SIF riding.

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Erant said:

Not quite, I jump to my left, right foot forward, right hand on the
seat.

My mistake...it was a typo

I second that lowering your seat won't help. It looks like you have it
pretty low to begin with.

If you notice from videos, a lot of trials guys ride with the seat up
higher than normal/average (myself included...though I haven't posted
any vids YET...eventually I'll get to it). The post above this one
describes why.

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pete66 said:

... in your opinion.

Jason explained it for me. I'm not saying I'm the last word by any
means, but there is a reason behind it, I just didn't feel like
articulating it for the 50th time.

I've practiced hops to each side without changing pedal or hand
position. The issue with jumping towards your holding hand is twofold,
both of which Jason touched on:

You can't stick your arm out over the object to shift your weight onto
it. This is relatively minor.

When you tuck, the unicycle willnaturally angle away from the hand
holding it, so when you land on a ledge the unicycle will try to pull
its self out of your hand because it's angled away from the ledge. I'm
speaking form experience here, BTW. I spent well over a day of riding
and trying out hops while wondering why I could jump away from my hand
about 10" higher than I could do towards it. I was getting the height,
but when I landed anything over ~24" the uni would be ripped from my
hand, every time.

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http://gallery.unicyclist.com/Trials-Muni

Nick's main man.

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TrialsUni said:

I second that lowering your seat won't help. It looks like you have it
pretty low to begin with.

If you notice from videos, a lot of trials guys ride with the seat up
higher than normal/average (myself included...though I haven't posted
any vids YET...eventually I'll get to it). The post above this one
describes why.

Problem was that I always had great problems hopping up low obstacles
SIF, this static hopping seems to have fixed that. I'll just put my
seat up as high as I can still ride comfortably, I've had it that high
once, and it felt good (especially on my back, because the hunching
does take it's toll...). I'm going to do some SIF hopping later, and
overall SIF things, as I want to switch to a completly SIF rider,
instead of just using SIF for the hops.

maestro8 said:

I execute my side hops just the way you describe and they feel quite
natural to me. My left foot is my "chocolate foot"... is this the case
for you? I believe you would want your chocolate foot back for
take-off, and for landing I've seen riders land with their foot both
forward and back... so I don't see why one would need to crankflip.
Perhaps you need to practice with a different pedal orientation, or
hopping in the opposite direction to lose the awkward feeling. Of
course, SIF hopping feels awkward for some time while you're learning
it...

I didn't mean in the actual sidehop, I ment the pedal grab. I land on
the object, with my pedal, move the right pedal back, hop, do a sort of
crankflip in the air, and land with my left pedal back.

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(Where's that edit button gone?)

I just had a talk with my father, who's a gymnastics teacher, and
apparently my basis is all wrong. My actual jump is wrong, so first I'm
going to practice jumping without my unicycle, to get this technique
correctly down. According to him, getting that down will enable me to
jump higher and tuck better at the same time.

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