dx sif hopping...the saddle makes it hard

before any one says any thing....i searched this so many times and came
with nothing

any ways im am very happy with my torker dx, but i found sif hopping
quite hard with the saddle that comes with it ....is there any kinda of
cheep way i cand mod the saddle so its easier ...i dont want 2 buy a
new one.... but it just seems that the saddle is so bulky its like
impossible 2 grip let alone pull up harde enough 2 go very high or go
at all

plz help me

warren


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first go to home depot buy some hose and cut it longways. Now place
that on the edge of the saddle it will make it easier to hold...

NOW....you shouldn't be pulling on the saddle...when you bounce you
should be putting preasure down on the tire so the unicycle bounces up,
all you are doing is guiding the unicycle, don't man handle it. if you
find urself man handling it your hand will tire quickly.

John

but i'm a newbie so what do i know....


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oh god cry me a river.. it's not the uni that makes it hard..practice
and u wont need to change anything..


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j5isalive wrote:
first go to home depot buy some hose and cut it longways. Now place
that on the edge of the saddle it will make it easier to hold...

NOW....you shouldn't be pulling on the saddle...when you bounce you
should be putting preasure down on the tire so the unicycle bounces up,
all you are doing is guiding the unicycle, don't man handle it. if you
find urself man handling it your hand will tire quickly.

John

but i'm a newbie so what do i know....


I don't agree, you do have to pull on the seat. The height of the hop
does not come from the bounce of the uni. That may help to get a few
extra inches but the majority of the hop comes from "handling it".

The seat is like a KH and it is fat. You can take the cover off and cut
the foam then staple the cover on again or make some draw string like
the fusion seats...or you can just buy a fusion cover.


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litldude2 wrote:
I don't agree, you do have to pull on the seat. The height of the hop
does not come from the bounce of the uni. That may help to get a few
extra inches but the majority of the hop comes from "handling it".



Uh, so, how's that work? I don't have to push down on my tire? All I
have to do is stand in front of the ledge and jank on my seat as hard
as I can, and I'll float up? Cool. This sounds the same as trying to
lift yourself by pulling on your own shoulder.

All of the energy in the hop comes from the spring-like behaviour of
the tire. The only thing you want to be doing with the seat is guide it
up. If you're pulling it, the only thing you're doing is resisting your
legs. Let your legs move up in a nice fluid motion, pulling lightly on
your seat to keep your feet on the pedals. The unicycle is virtually
weightless when you're moving upward, so little force is needed to keep
your feet on.


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maxisback wrote:
oh god cry me a river.. it's not the uni that makes it hard..practice
and u wont need to change anything..



im not looking for the easy way out her im just wondering if there was
somthing i could 2 to improve my sif hops on this new unicycle i know
im going 2 have 2 practice ....it comes with the sport


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Erant wrote:

All of the energy in the hop comes from the spring-like behaviour of
the tire. The only thing you want to be doing with the seat is guide it
up. If you're pulling it, the only thing you're doing is resisting your
legs. Let your legs move up in a nice fluid motion, pulling lightly on
your seat to keep your feet on the pedals. The unicycle is virtually
weightless when you're moving upward, so little force is needed to keep
your feet on.



Much of the energy in my hops used to come off the tyre. I couldn't hop
very high at all and had real problems hopping on my road uni or my
coker, or anything where you don't have a high volume tyre. This
technique is also pretty limiting if you want to get into trials and/or
doing grabs, as you get up onto the crank hang, and then suddenly you
can't hop at all.

Watching the good people hop, it looks like they're sort of almost
jumping off the pedals and holding the unicycle as they go up, so
you're not really pulling on the seat, you're holding onto it as you
jump. It's obviously not just the tyre spring, as I recently saw
someone do a crank grab on a 26"x3" wheel. The tyre isn't touching the
ground yet you still need about a foot of hop height. It comes from the
almost jumping off the pedals thing. Changing to do this both improved
my hop height and made it much much less effort.

If your hand is hurting, it's quite likely that you're pulling up
really hard and not pulling your feet up quick enough, so your hand is
effectively pulling against your feet. I used to do this and it made my
arms ache.

Tyre spring / pre-hopping is an extra thing to help even more. The good
people also use body shape to pull up the uni more.

There are some workshops by Kris Holm on hopping here that might help.
He's quite good at it.

http://tinyurl.com/8y98t

http://tinyurl.com/bzwqx

Joe


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What you're describing is the shifting of your center of gravity. The
center of gravity itself however remains in place (even moves down a
bit due to that nagging force of gravity). You will notice a high SIF
hopper (or any hopper for that matter, but it's a bit easier to explain
with SIF) will crouch to a tiny little ball. The actual energy moving
your (shifting) center of gravity is still that force from the squashed
wheel however.

This might be a bit hard to understand, maybe someone else has an
easier way to explain?


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Erant wrote:
The actual energy moving your (shifting) center of gravity is still that
force from the squashed wheel however.




Okay, in the same way as when you jump off the ground, the energy is
all from your shoe pushing into the ground that's true. But in
practice, what you're doing is more like jumping off the pedals,
because it doesn't rely on a squashy tyre, and the pedals are where
your feet are attached to the unicycle, so feel wise it's more like
jumping off the pedals. A lot of the energy comes not from the spring
like behaviour of the tyre, but from the solid-like behaviour that
gives you something to push against, it wouldn't matter if you had a
solid metal tyre, you could still do an alright hop, although obviously
less than with a springy tyre.

You can easily demonstrate that tyre squishyness isn't all you use to
do a big hop, by doing a crank grab to rubber on any unicycle.
Alternatively, grab a traffic cone, stand on the body, a good trials
rider can get a six inch hop or more no problems at all, without any
tyre / wheel.

Joe


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Erant wrote:
Uh, so, how's that work? I don't have to push down on my tire? All I
have to do is stand in front of the ledge and jank on my seat as hard
as I can, and I'll float up? Cool. This sounds the same as trying to
lift yourself by pulling on your own shoulder.

All of the energy in the hop comes from the spring-like behaviour of
the tire. The only thing you want to be doing with the seat is guide it
up. If you're pulling it, the only thing you're doing is resisting your
legs. Let your legs move up in a nice fluid motion, pulling lightly on
your seat to keep your feet on the pedals. The unicycle is virtually
weightless when you're moving upward, so little force is needed to keep
your feet on.


That's not what I meant. The hop comes from your legs but you pull up
on the seat to do a tuck. I was trying to say that the hop isn't just a
big bounce. I can hop almost as high without a prehop as I can with one
(somewhere over 20") so the spring of the tire does help but it is not
where all of the energy from the hop comes from.


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