How do you teachsomeone to ride a bike

shouldbeinbed

take the pedals off & let them find heir balance and braking technique at low speed. usually very quick and 90% there when the pedals go back on.

deptfordmarmoset

UndercoverElephant wrote:

AidanR wrote:

Rich158 wrote:

I can still remember turning up at my uncles farm with a shiny new bike and stabilisers. he took one look at it, exclamed you dont need those bloody things and took them off. I was then gput on the bike and given a hearty shove down the sloping farmyard. In hindsight teaching me how to stop before I hit the wall at the other end may have been advisable.

i haven't looked back since

Did you suffer some kind of neck injury?

That is quality.

Yay, excellent

desmosedici

The trick is teaching the concept of counter steering, which is not intuitive for some folks. Minion #1 took ages to learn this, minion #2 got it in 20 minutes.

When teaching minion #2 I took the pedals off, brought him to a tennis court, and let him wheel around till he could steer the bike properly. I then put the pedals on, gave him a shove off and he never looked back. Well, he looked back once to see if I was behind him and ran into a pole. He never looked back again.

As with all things teaching, patience is the key.

t4tomo

stabelisers are the work of the devil, all it does is teach kids (or adults) to ride the bike at 85% to the floor rather than 90%. Throw them away.

as said above, remove pedals and use like a balance bike until they are comfy with that and can steer and use brakes.

Once pedals are back on they are usually away. I think I had to hold teh saddle for about 5 yards with my youngest, after about 20 yards she said "you can let go now". "i did a while ago honey" was my reply.

mudcovered

PedalPedant wrote:

I saw an article (may have been on the local news) where cycle training was being given to adults who had never ridden before. They did this but took the pedals off first to avoid banged shins. Once they were confident coasting along they put the pedals back on.

Did this with both my sister's children and it helped out a lot. Think it took both of them about a couple of hours of scooting along like this in the parkland behind my house to get the hang of it.

Mike

Vitessetortoise

My dad got fed up trying to teach me and just took the stabilisers off, refused to put them back on and left me to it

I then used my bike like a balance bike (as this was the late 70s I guess balance bikes didn’t exist) just pushing myself along with increasingly bigger strides. The things is I wanted to keep up with my older brothers and whilst the pushing thing was ok it was slow plus the pedals occasionally whacked my legs as they span round and so after next to no time I got fed up and I decided to use the pedals. Thing is, it had to be my decision, Dad couldn’t teach me, had to do it on my own terms.

I can still recall it vividly, exactly where I was and the purple Budgie bike. My 1st kid is due in 4 weeks, I'll never teach them with stabilisers.

Jay dubbleU

lost_in_thought wrote:

Put the saddle up a tiny bit at a time.

For kids, do it when they're not around, they'll never notice. If the same approach won't work for adults, or kids old enough to be canny, tell them it'll make it easier (which it will) or faster (which it will); whichever appeals.

Not (necessarily) true - I snuk Mrs JW's saddle up a little at a time and she didn't notice - she did say a couple of times that she thought peddling was getting easier