Originally Posted by
DropBarFan
From physics class I had thought gyroscopic effect of spinning bike wheels helped a lot with bike balance but apparently it's minor, the steering geometry is more important.
https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/201...ycle-balanced/
Weirdest learning-to-ride thing I've seen was on the local bike path: a 10-yr old kid was riding, followed by his mom & dad who kept hollering 'advice' & 'encouragement'. I saw the kid fall over twice...parents kept saying 'do this' & 'don't do that' etc. I realized the kid was basically capable of riding but he was getting so sick of the parents' hectoring that he was actually deliberately ditching the bike in the hope they'd give up. But the parents were oblivious.
Basically, the bike is self balancing while moving, so most of what we do is actually learning not to mess with that.
My opinion is that there's a lot of ways to teach someone to ride and it almost doesn't matter which non-abusive method you use, but having two people trying to use two different theories must have driven the poor kid nuts. The lesson I would take from that story is one "coach" only, and if you can't decide who, flip a coin.