Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Laugh if you want but I'm serious...

I own a Madison that I absolutely love riding but so far I've only ridden it as a SS. I'd like to flip the hub and try riding fixed but I have one major concern...How do you stop efficiently? (Insert laughter and ridicule.) Yes, I have brakes but it seems that with the momentum of the spinning wheels that the efficiency of the brakes would be greatly diminished. Do you simply need to go a bit slower and try to anticipate better? Are you supposed to try to stop the pedals by slowing your legs and fighting the forward momentum? (That just doesn't sound too good for the knees.) I'm too old (old dog new tricks thing) to skid to a stop and I'd like to use the bike for group rides occasionally so even if I did choose to skid, it probably won't be very popular while surrounded by others.

You stop just as good using the front brake as you would with a freewheel bike. You can also stop by resisting the pedals, which i do most of the time, with the occasional skip stop. I use my front brake for emergency stops mostly. So flip the hub and try it, you will be able to stop without problems.

The front brake gives you a lot more stopping power than you would think. Add that to a little leg resistance and you'll stop soon enough.

Just not too soon...

Flying over bars with cages kinda sucks.

I own a Madison that I absolutely love riding but so far I've only ridden it as a SS. I'd like to flip the hub and try riding fixed but I have one major concern...How do you stop efficiently? (Insert laughter and ridicule.) Yes, I have brakes but it seems that with the momentum of the spinning wheels that the efficiency of the brakes would be greatly diminished. Do you simply need to go a bit slower and try to anticipate better? Are you supposed to try to stop the pedals by slowing your legs and fighting the forward momentum? (That just doesn't sound too good for the knees.) I'm too old (old dog new tricks thing) to skid to a stop and I'd like to use the bike for group rides occasionally so even if I did choose to skid, it probably won't be very popular while surrounded by others.

You can answer your own question simply by running the fixed side and finding out for yourself. Seriously.
You'll immediately find that there's really no difference.

If you have proper braking skills then you won't have any issues riding the bike on the fixed side... even without any resistance from your legs a front brake should stop you on a dime and going OTB happens when you aren't doing things right.

Try making some runs and stops where you only use that front brake and as you apply the brake shift your weight back as far as possible... keep doing this at higher and higher speeds and after about 1000 repeats the action will almost become reflex.

:)

same wheels spinning at the same rate posess the same momentum...whether fixed or singlespeed. the spinning drivetrain of the fixed gear is a negligible addition. as has been said repeatedly, you can expect no difference in stopping power.

I own a Madison that I absolutely love riding but so far I've only ridden it as a SS. I'd like to flip the hub and try riding fixed but I have one major concern...How do you stop efficiently? (Insert laughter and ridicule.) Yes, I have brakes but it seems that with the momentum of the spinning wheels that the efficiency of the brakes would be greatly diminished. Do you simply need to go a bit slower and try to anticipate better? Are you supposed to try to stop the pedals by slowing your legs and fighting the forward momentum? (That just doesn't sound too good for the knees.) I'm too old (old dog new tricks thing) to skid to a stop and I'd like to use the bike for group rides occasionally so even if I did choose to skid, it probably won't be very popular while surrounded by others.Yeah.. you don't need to worry what posters' thinking and saying stuffs..

Remember that city community/ downtown aren't track field... you ride in heavy traffic area...

If you using brakes on your bike. thats SOO AWESOME.. I do use the brakes within my bike too, Because I aint interesting in any wild tricks.. But just surface trick, thats it.. smile..

if u can brake w/ ss... u can brake with fixed. just make sure u tighten that chain.

Where is the sense of adventure?!

Turn it around and try it out....

And hey... if it doesn't work out, your wife just gets the life insurance a bit earlier.

lulz

don't ride fixed unless you're ready to die fixed

Gmergod.....everytime I read your posts they confuse the **** outta me, and make me lol most of the time.
Where the **** are you from?

http://www.independent.ie/multimedia/archive/00178/JohnMcEnroe1_178859t.jpg

You cannot be serious !

The only difference is where you have most of your weight when you are trying to stop. I still have an old MTB habit of throwing the bike forward when I hit the brakes hard. This is easy on a SS, but hard on a FG. You can't get the behind the seat when the pedals are still moving.