[MENTION=501549]Priyank[/MENTION],

Any luck with your attempts?

There are upright trikes & adult training wheels.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Bicycle-W...r-Kit/15734254

They significantly change the dynamics of the bicycle. They keep you upright, unless on a banked corner, or are tipping to the outside on a corner.

Nonetheless, one may give you some basic pedaling practice.

Whereabouts are you? Bike New York has awesome learn to ride classes for adults.

My stepson was OTA when he learned to ride. I removed the pedals and have the good fortune to have a fairly long gentle slope in my yard that ends with a shorter uphill slope. He spent about an hour learning to balance, steer and brake before we put the pedals back on. Another hour of pedaling practice and we moved to an empty parking lot. It wasn't long and he was doing figure 8s on the hard surface and had sufficient control to begin riding on quiet residential streets in our neighborhood.

One suggestion I have is to raise the seat a bit. For most bikes, you shouldn't be able to plant both feet flat while seated. Being able to have the balls of your feet on the ground is sufficient. Too low of a seat position actually makes a bike harder to control. Another tip is to make sure that your tires are properly inflated. Underinflated tires + low speed will make the bike want to squirm and feel unsteady.

Hey all!

First off, I am so sorry for going missing the past two weeks. Obligations and some life stuff completely swamped my time.

Also big news, right after my previous post I went to practice again and this time I quickly got the hang of coasting with my right foot on the pedal. The next day, I practiced for the first time with my left foot and got a hang of it in about 30 minutes.

Having some confidence with both legs separately, I pulled up the other leg on my next try and caught the pedal under my foot, and managed to pedal, swerving, about 30 meters!

It's a little thing but it felt so great, haha. The next few days I got better with maintaing a straight line, keeping my head pointing forwards and pedaling continously for longer. As of a few days ago, I can pedal without stopping, turn, u-turn and also have gotten a little better at balancing at slow speed.

A huge, huge, thanks to everyone in this thread. Again, this is a little thing, but I have always been the clumsy, uncoordinated, unfit, weak guy and never having learned how to ride a bicycle was a part of that image and self-image. So being able to get on top of this is personally a big deal for me, I feel confident and capable in a way I rarely ever have and seriously, in no small part due to all the help I got in this thread. I have never had encouragement like this and the positivity went a long way, as did the stories some of you shared about your own experience learning, the tips and the insights.

And a huge take away here is, if I can learn to ride anyone who is technically physically capable of it can do it! In total it took me 7~ hours to get to pedaling and 10~ to be able to.pedal continously and make turns accurately and confidently.

Congratulations! Now get out there and ride, the more you do it, the more confident and capable you'll get, and it will start to feel as natural to you as walking.

That took a lot of courage to face down what's obviously been a big issue in your life, and am very glad to hear how you've started to turn around your image of yourself. Your post made me happy today.

It sounds like you are doing well. Just keep up the practice, and miles will be slipping by shortly.

I mentioned that an Exercycle, or going to a gym may help with leg strength, and coordination. However, you may rapidly be getting beyond that need, and can just get on the bike and ride outside (in a quiet neighborhood until you get your legs under yourself).

Hey folks, we created a cyclist.

I know the OP had a role as well, but I'm going to claim some credit for making a positive impact.

Cheers.

Dood! This is just fantastic to read! Seriously, after a "classic Monday" at work, it warmed my soul to get home and read your update. Congrats all around on the accomplishment!

Crossing the can-do-it threshold puts all of the benefits of the skill within your reach. Economical transportation, exploring, general and cardio fitness, weight loss (if that's a goal), and then there's the social side of it if you are inclined to find a rider's group.

Congrats again, and thanks for posting the update.

This was a GREAT thread. Congratulations to [MENTION=501549]Priyank[/MENTION] and a big thanks to those who contributed advice and encouragement to him.

Keep at it, and soon you will no longer be fat. You will be fit. I quit riding street motorcycles nearly a decade ago due to distracted drivers. Got on a cheap fat bike last year and lost 30 pounds while having fun (started at 206). Rewarded myself with a good fat bike. Look where you want to go and routinely practice swerving.

Congratulations! That's for sticking to it.

Congratulations! That's for actually getting it.

I hope you get great enjoyment from your new found freedom.

Thanks for this. A while back I was trying to remember how that went, steering toward the direction you're falling, or the opposite way. Balancing a bike is something that's so ingrained into my brain that I do without thinking, that I can't do it if I think about it. But yes, you'd have to steer the direction you begin to fall.

And this is why the faster you go, the easier it is to steer, and why when you're riding slower you move the handlebars more than you do when you're going fast.

Technically, this is called counter steering, and it applies even at fairly slow speeds. It's actually the reason that learning to stay upright is so difficult initially. Your muscles want to do the opposite, which just makes the bike tip faster.

Some people, knowing how countersteering works makes it easier to learn, but for most, it's just a matter of letting your body figure it out. It does help later though, as one advances in skill, to consciously be able to do it and avoid target fixation.

This is false. Balance bikes have exploded because it has been shown time and time again that the hard part of biking is NOT pedaling. It’s staying upright. And while to an experienced rider “the bike balances itself”, we all apply very very small inputs to both a) stay upright and b) go in a straight line.

OP, no matter what anyone tells you, do NOT use training wheels or even focus on the act of pedaling. Figure out balancing first. I would go as far as to say don’t even scoot. Sit low enough on the bike that you can “walk” with your butt on the seat. Walk a couple miles like this. Try to keep in a straight line. As you start to pick up speed and confidence, switch to scooter mode. Then try pedaling.

Do you know how to ride a kick scooter? The fundamentals of riding a bike are basically the same as those of riding a scooter. You can get a Razer A scooter from walmart for $40. Once you have mastered this, the transition to biking should be fairly simple.

EDIT: Whoops. Should have read the whole thread. Congratulations OP! I’ll still keep the reply above because I think a scooter is a much cheaper and simpler entry point into the mechanics of biking.

I'm excellent on bikes, and mediocre at best on kick scooters. They are manifestly NOT the same balancing skill. It's absurd. It's a completely different position with an entirely different center of gravity and a completely different propulsion system.

The balancing part on the bicycle is actually quite easy -if the bike is going, it pretty much is going to balance itself. The trick for an adult is to get it going first, which is easier on a slope, get the feel for the balance, and then learn to pedal to keep it going. Scooting is just basically walking. An adult has had enough practice at that that there's really no reason to stick at that stage for any length of time.

Yes, you really should have read the thread first. If OP had listened to you, it would have screwed it all up.

The physics and intuition behind staying upright and turning are identical between a scooter and bicycle. You cannot refute this. The positions are different, but less so if you stand on the bicycle, which I would argue is an essential skill to biking.

The main reason why I suggested the scooter, though, was because the OP stated that the bike wasn’t his. A scooter would be a relatively cheap investment if he wanted to try practicing his skills on his own time. A scooter is lower maintenance and is easier to bail out on. I’m not going to pretend that there is a direct transition from a scooter to a bike, but if you can’t see the extremely obvious similarities between the handling of a scooter and a bike, I can’t really help with that.

Not to make light of y'all's snit over balance, but if you go back and read post 55 (i.e., the OP's update), the man has "caught on" and is riding confidently. He is well past any benefit from balance work on a different type of two-wheeled conveyance.

Otherwise, I'm hoping he will come back occasionally an update on progress. His experience (to my humble thinking) is a classic example of how the simple act of riding brings positive benefits physically, mentally, emotionally and socially.

Because of the higher center of gravity, the bike is actually easier to balance. If you push a bike without a rider, the bike actually balances itself as long as it's going fast enough. I don't believe you can do that with a scooter. As a kid, I was proficient on a bike long before I became so on a scooter. There's a reason balance bikes are bike shaped. You're just adding a level of complexity and an unnecessary piece of equipment to the process of learning.

There's a superficial similarity, but what you have to do to propel and balance a scooter are most definitely not the same things you do on a bike. Bikes are much easier to balance.

That there are a variety of people who have never experienced some of the things a lot of us take for granted. Today i am thankful for what i have, and delighted by the fact that there are things yet for me to discover...

I don't know about it being a different balancing skill. A few years back when my son was on training wheels, he also had a two-wheel scooter that he liked to ride around. Somehow he taught himself how to balance it as I saw him push off to get it going, then kept his foot up as he rode it around. I knew that he would transition easily to a bike, and the day we took his training wheels off it took less than 5 minutes for him to be riding around on his own.

My 7-year-old daughter, on the other hand, doesn't want me to take her training wheels off and is a bit timid about learning to ride. My plan is to remove her training wheels & pedals and to teach her how to balance just by coasting down a small incline. But she's going to have to want to do it. Convincing her might not be easy.

OP is about an adult trying to teach himself. Both of my kids went seamlessly from training wheels to riding unaided with less than 15 minutes of coaxing to try it. I didn't have to take off the pedals because they were used to using them from when the training wheels were on.

I have no doubt that if you can balance a scooter, you can balance a bicycle, but that's because it's trickier to balance the scooter. I see no logic behind telling an adult to learn how to use a scooter before learning how to use a bike. The other way around might make some sense.

BTW, I think what your story illustrates is that there really isn't one right way to teach kids, they all learn a bit differently.

Oh, and just to be clear, OP tried my idea of how to do it, and it didn't work. That was the way that worked with me as a child and my kids. Doesn't work well with the weight of an adult, apparently. Looks like the people proposing the slope had it about right. Also, note he didn't have to remove the pedals.

It's been a month. How are you doing?

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.

I don't remember how old I was when I learned to ride, must have been about 6 or 7, I think. My family did things like running behind holding the seat (banana seat bike) until I learned balance. I guess they must have known that I knew how to do it and were getting frustrated with me not having the confidence to just do it, because one day my dad took me outside to the sidewalk and said, "Get on your bike and ride to the end of the block." I thought he was crazy, but I got on, pushed off and pedaled to the end of the block & back. I knew how to ride from then on because you didn't mess with my dad.

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.