Originally Posted by
Elkhound
How would you go about teaching a young man such as this? Most of the material I can find about teaching absolute beginners assumes that one is dealing with a little kid.
Well i my self did not learn to ride till i was 9 and i did it on my own. I'm going to teach my grand nephew (hes 6 years old) to ride the same way i learned by basically coasting down a long shallow hill. This way they do not need to worry about pedaling at first and can just learn how the bike feels when it rolls. When your pedaling a bike you do not feel the bikes tendency to want to remain upright. So id say let him coast down a grade nothing huge but something nice and long would be great.
Let him coast down it a few times before he tries to pedal away at the bottom. Once hes not falling over have him pedal once he hts the flat area and go from there. Then you only need to teach one basic skill how to take off.