Street Written Tips
Shifties
When you jump, twist your lower body in the direction you don't usually spin (this makes it easier to straighten back up), then twist back.
John Glazer
I always turn the opposite way of my normal 180 direction. This is because you want the hard part (coming back to your original spot) to be the easiest, and most natural. Also, try to do them by rotating at the waist. I think thats all.
Kevin McMullin
360's
If youre doing the 360s with a rolling hop, its best to start out be turning a sharp 90 right before the hop. You only have to hop 270 and it gives you the feel for turning completely and riding out in the same direction. Once you can do this pretty smoothly, you can start to actually try to get the extra 90 degrees in. Also if you watch Dan Heaton and Dan Doerkson do them, their arms make a funny movement above their heads... hard to explain, but if you see it you know what I mean.
Kevin McMullin
I find that the biggest reason why people can do 180s, but not 360s, is because its really easy to just pivot 180 really quickly. Like you can jump, and pretty much just twist your legs and spin 180. But for 360, your whole body has to go rather than just the lower body. So it takes a lot more flow from the body and twist in the upper body. Very hard to explain. I find a 360 is a trick that will just come to you one day. Thats what happened to me.
Kevin McMullin
Motivating Yourself To Do Something Scary
As for motivating yourself to do something scary, theres lots of stuff I do.
It's important to realize that if you're even realistically thinking about doing
it, then you probably have the skill to do it. What I usually do is look at the
obstacle (usually stairs or a handrail for me) and start listening to a song in
my head. Something that pumps me up. And then you just get into and it start
bouncing aorund and stuff. Close your eyes and go through the trick. Do it in
your head until you land it in your head. Don't even think about falling.
Think about similar tricks you've done. And I always remember and tell myself
"You won't get hurt if you land it".
Kevin McMullin
Grinding
Find a ledge or rail or bench that skaters usually use. There will
already be wax on it, and the skaters will know how much should be on it, and
its usually the same amount for a unicyclist. Basically, its like a pedal grab
or crank stall except rolling. You carry some speed into it, and once your onto
the object, anticipate the slide. Make sure your body stays directy over the
unicycling or it will slip out from under you. If you are just learning, its
good to start with hopping onto the very end of the object. If it were a bench,
you would ride beside the bench and hop when theres about 6 inches of it left to
grind (assuming your pedals are in the right position). From there, build up
the distance and it will allow your grinding to progress.
Kevin McMullin
Keep in mind that most pedals are aluminum, which is a soft metal. When you try
to grind level concrete ledges, you will stick, if it is not heavily waxed and
worn by skaters. Even then, you won't go very far. You should switch to plastic
pedals if you can afford to replace them once a week. At least till you get
grinding down.
Metal benches are prefect for learning how to grind. Do as many pedal/crank +
pedal stalls as you can stand, then do some more.
Now, try to roll into a crank stall slowly, you should now be able to slide a
little bit, you want to put as much weight as you can on your grinding foot
(chocolate foot). Just go faster and faster till you can slide further than the
bench is long and move on to longer/taller/harder stuff.
The best advice I can give you is, just get out there and try it, alot of things
in unicycling are alot easier than they look.
After you have mastered flat pedal grinds and pedal grinds on fun boxes
or sloped ledges and want to kick it up to rails, find a low rail, this is a
must for beginners. Make sure the rail dosen't have a kink, you will find that many rails are
sloped and then go level at the bottom this makes it alot
harder when you are learning.
REMEMBER TO LEAN!!! when you are on a rail, all of your weight is going
to try to pull you down towards the stairs. for example, take your uni
and put one of the pedals on the rail, watch how it wants to fall, or
lean to the opposite side. so when you hit the rail you want to lean
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy foreward and waaaaayyyyy toward your chocolate
foot. If you grind on your right foot picture yourself falling over the
right side of the rail.
PULL UP!!! you want to pull up as hard as you can on the seat. this will
lock you into your pedals, and when you are locked onto your pedals it
makes your leaning more effective.
Hit the rail, dont let the rail hit you. you have to be aggressive. When
I started hitting rails I thought that all I would have to do is get my
pedal on the rail and let gravity take care of the rest. not true. a
while ago I saw a wooden rail (my friend was filming me) since wood
dosen't really slide I thought I could hit it and the rail would come
crashing down. I approached the rail with more speed than I ever had
before and hit it with a vengance. I was supprised to find that I
actually slid and it was one of the smoothest grinds I had ever done.
P.S. "you can't be afraid of the rail, you can't be affraid of pain. If
you are going to hit rails, you will eventually get hurt."
Mike ('onetrack' from unicyclist.com)
Footplants
There are lots of variations on this trick. The way i do it is i
ride alongside a ledge that is no higher than my knee. I wait until my pedals
are in the correct hopping position and hop. Imediately remove your foot from
the pedal and plant it on the ledge. Leave your other foot on the pedal for
control, but take all of the weight off of it. From this position, use the foot
thats on the ledge to do a little hop, and place your foot back on while its
still in the air. It might help to try hopping onto the pedal while just
standing on the ledge, and to practice getting into the footplant and then put
them together. Thats how I learned.
Kevin McMullin
Crankflips
1. Ride at a slower pace forwards.
2. Concentrate, keep your head clear.
3. Know your footy and where you plan to kick.
4. Approach the point and lean over your uni right before you jump off.
5. Kick the front foot down towards the ground and pop up in the air as much as possible. Try harder for the kick down than the jump up, the kick is more important.
6. Pull the uni out infront of you slightly while in the air (this is hard cause it's hard to think about while doing all of that, but if you're about to miss it saves a lot of pain, easier to bail from.)
7. Spot the cranks, YOUR FEET WILL LAND IN THE SAME SPOT AS THE LEFT IF YOU DO IT RIGHT, don't worry about landing with them anywhere else but normal footing. Just like a unispin, the pedals will be there since you kicked more than jumped, just gotta get back on.
8. Land on the pedals (easy enough?). If you're worried about your kick, remember step 6. Just pull it completely out from you and watch the cranks, do they come around enough? If they do, try sticking it.
9. Practice practice practice. after you hit it.
10. FIND A STAIR SET!!!!
Shaun Johanneson
Building Grind Plates
Click Here To Download A Full Set Of Instructions On Building Grind Plates
To download a full set of instructions on building grind plates, with full-size, high resolution pictures, to your computer Right Click the above link and select 'Save Target As'
Note: Reasonable amount of experience advised as tutorial requires cutting metal with a jigsaw and bending metal.
Try and get some metal you can bend easily, you may have remake the grind plate if its weak but stronger metals are too hard to bend and are usually quite a bit heavier. I started out by looking at the dimensions of the grind plate, then working out how much overhang I wanted off the side of the pedal. When I knew how much I needed I went to school and cut myself the right size, you might not have access to free metal but buying it won’t cost you much anyway, and you might have a bit just lying around the house. I also took the pins out, you don’t have to but I preferred it this way as it gives a tighter fit. Sure I could just grind directly on the flat surface of the pedal but the pedal will die eventually and cost $40 to replace comparing to half an hours work to build a grind plate. The idea behind my grind plate was that it was going to be fully removable, but it wasn’t at first. This problem fixed itself when I was crank grabbing something one day and it fell off, so I secured it on with 2 thin bolts.
Before I start you’re going to want a few things. A jigsaw, not the type you played with when you were a kid but the one for cutting things. Mole grips, if you don’t know what these are they are featured in the picture above. Sure there’s ways to get around without using these but I would say I use these more than screwdrivers so if you don’t have them, buy them as they are extremely useful. They also can be used in taking off street signs that are surrounded by circular bits of metal so you can’t get socket wrenches in there… but um… ignore that. I used the mole grips for bending the metal around the pedal. You’ll want to mark out how you plan to bend the metal, I lost my plan but I’ll give you a picture of the grind plate off the pedal (above) so you can see how the metal ends up.
Once you have a plan of how you want to bend the metal (mine looked like the grind plate does, except it was flat) cut the metal with a jigsaw. Some ‘tabs’ will be easier to bend than others, so I started out bending those so the grind plate is in position for the harder tabs to bend, for example the double bend. I can’t really give you much advice on how to bend it which is why I recommended you have a bit of experience. But this is where to use the mole grips, and another person to help hold the grind plate is always helpful.
Try and see in this blurred picture the little holes at the front and back of the pedal. These were used to hold the reflectors in, so I took them out and this is what I pushed the bolt through. If you have these it’s probably the best way to attach a grind plate if not you’ll have to find another way. Put your grind plate on, mark the holes and drill them about the same size as the holes you see here. When it’s fixed in place it should look somewhat like the pictures below.
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Now you can do what you want to decorate the grind plate. You could just write something cool on the flat side of it or if you are bored you could spray paint it like I did. I got that effect by originally spray painting the whole thing yellow then deciding that just the flat bit should be black. Hope this helps you somewhat. If you didn’t understand some of the things I said, I can respect that as I’m only 14 years old and can’t really word things properly. If you did understand the tutorial and you make a working grind plate go test it out at the local skate park or something.
Robbie
