idling and wheel sizes

The foray into the definition of 'tricks' was mere semantics. In my
local dialect of the English language, it is legitimate to refer to
something as a 'trick' if it is a clever, entertaining, amusing set
piece, regardless of whether it contains an element of deception or
trickery. Dialects of English from elsewhere may legitimately restrict
the use of the word 'trick' to cases where there is 'trickery'.

The important distinction between the two concepts: foundation skills
and stunts; go and show; basic competencies and advanced skills - call
them what you will - is what I was trying to emphasise.

I doubt that anyone here strongly disagrees with the statement,
"Freemounting is an essential skill for any unicyclist wishing to
advance in any discipline of the sport."

I doubt that anyone here strongly agrees with the parallel statement,
"Backwards wheel walking is an essential skill for any unicyclist
wishing to advance in any discipline of the sport."

Once this distinction is drawn, then it is fair to debate which skills
fall into the first category, and which fall into the second. I put
mounting, riding, turning, stopping in the first category, and idling,
reversing just that little bit further along the spectrum. They are not
'essential' but they are 'generally useful'; they are not 'stunts' or
'tricks', but they are perhaps the first small steps in that general
direction.

I don't think I ever suggested that learning advanced (or even
intermediate) freestyle skills offers no benefits in other disciplines.
If I did, then it was clumsy use of language on my part, as that has
never been my opinion. Of course, any skill which requires fine control
of the unicycle will tend to increase the unicyclist's general level of
ability, confidence, and enjoyment. My ability to idle one footed has
greatly increased my confidence and skill in normal idling, for
example.

I have no complaint about the Skill Levels, except my general point that
I don't understand the need for 'official certification' in such an
individualistic sport - and I accept that it's each to his/her own. No
doubt many of you think I'm a bit weird riding mile after mile until it
hurts. I am.

But whilst I have no 'complaint', I did think it was worth making the
point that the Skill Levels are only one approach to developing a skill
set, and that whilst they are progressive, well thought out, and no
doubt fun, the Skill Levels are geared more towards freestyle than
towards, say, MUni, touring, racing, hockey, or trials.


--
Mikefule - Roland Hope School of Unicycling

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we
fall."
Confucius
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john_childs wrote:
*

I would also differ with your opinion that learning the "advanced"
skills doesn't improve your overall riding. I firmly believe that
learning freestyle skills like seat in back, seat on side, one footed,
wheel walking, backwards circle, etc. improve your muni skills even
though you'll never do something like seat on side during a muni ride.
Learning how to balance and control the unicycle while it is held in
different positions improves your balance, improves your overall
riding, and improves your muni riding. *


and

Mikefule wrote:
*

Of course, any skill which requires fine control of the unicycle will
tend to increase the unicyclist's general level of ability,
confidence, and enjoyment. My ability to idle one footed has greatly
increased my confidence and skill in normal idling, for example.


*


What do you guys reckon to the value of practicing these compared to the
value of practicing an equal amount of muni?

i.e. while it makes sense that learning to idle one footed or seat in
back, will improve muni and genaral riding ability, will it be more or
less valuable than an equal amount of time spent muni-ing or riding?


--
onewheeldave - Semi Skilled Unicyclist

"He's also been known to indulge in a spot of flame juggling - but it's
the Muni that really fires him up."

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Oh boy! More semantics. I had spotted one of these possibilities and
had hoped it would slip through...

Yes, my choice of the labels, "skill" and "trick" could be taken to
imply that a "trick" (stunt, or whatever) doesn't require skill.
Interpreting it this way would be a little unfair, as the statment (for
example) "wheel walking backwards does not require skill," is clearly
arrant nonsense.

So the choice is between adjusting the labels, or relying on people to
interpret them fairly. Given that I was not aiming to set up a new and
permanent system, I didn't put too much thought into the exact choice of
labels.

Much as I enjoy semantics (if "semantics" is the correct word) I
wouldn't want to get too tied up with this. The distinction is between
what might reasonably be termed, "core skills", and "specialist
skills".

Using thse labels, core skills would be (e.g.) freemount, ride, turn,
idle, and dismount. The wider term, "specialist skills" could then
apply to specialist freestyle skills (e.g. backwards wheel walking);
specialist MUni skills (e.g. downhill gliding); and specialist trials
skills (e.g. jump seat out in front onto a 2 foot obstacle).

This would not exclude the possibility that learning specialist skills
in one discipline might help in another. Nevertheless, there will be
few occasions when the MUniist (qua MUniist) needs to backwards wheel
walk, or the freestyler (qua freestyler) needs to glide downhill.

Applying these labels to the current set of Skill Levels might suggest
that the emphasis of the higher Skill Levels is on specialist freestyle
skills, rather than on specialist MUni skills (etc.).


Now the second bit of semantics: the word "important". Philosophically,
we could argue whether anything at all is important. A case could be
made that honesty, or kindness, is important. A case could be made that
nothing is important except if someone decides to treat it as important.
So some things might have objective importance (honesty, kindness),
some things, or everything, might only be subjectively important. I
tend to the view that importance is a purely human concept. Importance
is attributed to things by humans. Let's not go further into this in
this forum.

Be that as it may (and I've wandered off topic a bit!), there are few
people who would argue that unicycling is important except in the very
limited sense that it is important to those people who enjoy doing it,
or who make their living from manufacturing or selling unicycling
equipment or performing on it.

In my earlier argument, I was using "important" (and/or words of broadly
similar meaning) in the sense of "of general importance to the
unicyclist". Better words might be "basic", "fundamental", "core",
etc.

In the wider sense, the only thing about unicycling which is important
to all of us is that we enjoy it. In this sense, the ability to achieve
one's own objectives is what is important. It is important to some that
they can ride one footed in a figure of 8; it is important to others
that they can leap lemming-like from tall buildings; it is important to
others that they can ride 50 miles in a day.

This is all getting a bit autoproctological. Let's move on.


--
Mikefule - Roland Hope School of Unicycling

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we
fall."
Confucius
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Mikefule wrote:
*Oh boy! More semantics. I had spotted one of these possibilities
and had hoped it would slip through...

Yes, my choice of the labels, "skill" and "trick" could be taken to
imply that a "trick" (stunt, or whatever) doesn't require skill.
Interpreting it this way would be a little unfair, as the statement
(for example) "wheel walking backwards does not require skill," is
clearly arrant nonsense.
*

I should have put a smiley or two in my post about "trick" vs. "skill".
I didn't mean that post to be critical.

In any event, the battle is already lost in the war against the use of
the word "trick" to refer to unicycling skills. The BMXers use the word
"trick" and the general population has latched on to the use of the word
"trick" also. For example see 'bmxtrix.com' (http://www.bmxtrix.com/)
where they describe all the specialized skills as tricks. Sigh...

I do like the distinction between core skills and advanced skills.
Getting solid in the core skills is important to becoming a solid rider.


--
john_childs - Guinness Mojo

john_childs (at) hotmail (dot) com
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Mikefule wrote:
*Oh boy! More semantics. I had spotted one of these possibilities
and had hoped it would slip through...
*


When you label a bag of marbles 'a', and I label it 'b', that is
semantics. When you open up the bag and find a quality by which you can
separate the marbles into two groups, that is not semantics, that is a
judgement. If you label one group 'a' and the other group 'b', that
leads to confusion, not because of semantics, because of the private
definitions chosen and the application of common words to encompass
specific meaning.


--
iunicycle - Old back, new cricks
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When you say 'marbles,' what are you really trying to say? And why did
you choose 'A' and 'B'? Are you sure that these letters would be the
best options, because...
Okay, that's enough.


--
paco - Creator of the "BUni"

"One thing is for sure. Inspector Clay is dead. Murdered. And
-somebody's- responsible!"
-Plan 9 From Outer Space
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onewheeldave wrote:
*
What do you guys reckon to the value of practicing these compared to
the value of practicing an equal amount of muni?

i.e. while it makes sense that learning to idle one footed or seat in
back, will improve muni and genaral riding ability, will it be more or
less valuable than an equal amount of time spent muni-ing or riding?
*

If your concern is to improve your muni riding then the time spent
working on muni skills is much more valuable than time spent working on
freestyle skills. The payoff for the time spent working on freestyle
skills is small, but it's still there.

What you get from practicing freestyle is smoothness and better balance.
Since I've been practicing freestyle skills my pedaling has gotten
smoother. I'm not wasting as much pedaling energy making constant
corrections to my balance. I'm also able to entertain myself on level
sections of logging roads and smooth sections of trail by riding one
footed. One of these day's I'll be able to entertain myself by wheel
walking along the trail.

Time spent working on climbing technique, rolling over obstacles,
endurance, jumping, etc. will improve your muni riding more than working
on freestyle. When you get to the point that you want to work on
balance and pedaling smoothness then consider working on some freestyle
skills.


--
john_childs - Guinness Mojo

john_childs (at) hotmail (dot) com
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