Stopping hard

This is where you are moving forward and then you want to come to a complete halt very quickly. Its the equivalent of jamming on the brakes. By watching good riders in the uni hockey team I've realised that this is a critical skill and one that really needs to be mastered equally for each leg doing the breaking.

Places where this gets used are delaying reaching a spot because you're ahead of where you need to be to get the ball, your racing towards a corner or wall perpendicular to it so you'll need to stop to dig the ball out or you want to come to a standstill with the ball to give your team members time to get into position.

It seems that the opportunity to apply a breaking force is only there when the breaking leg is at the bottom of the stroke and it starts coming up. At this point you can bear down hard on that leg to oppose the forward moment. This was the singular focus I had when I started trying this but I soon found that it was really hard to stop this way if you have any speed on you because and the problem is exacerbated the shorter you cranks get. I found that I was applying the back pedal/breaking force but because I had too much forward momentum the pedals where continuing through 90 degrees and with my backwards lean this meant that the pedal passed through top dead center and so my back pedal force then became a forward pedalling force and the uni was shooting out from under me.

After another lucky mistake I realised that I needed to do some other things at the same time to be able to increase the force so that I could decelerate to zero before the pedal reached top dead center.

Here's some things I tried:

1. The first thing was to prevent myself rising off the seat by gripping the seat between my legs, my knees almost touching. The effect is similar but less effective than gripping the seat handle with my hand and pulling up on the seat.

2. Next was to make use of the upper leg to assist breaking by sweeping it from front to back as the same time as applying the breaking force with the extended leg. This also helps to stop the uni rotating under you due to the asymmetrical forces you're exerting on the pedals.

3. The next thing was to bend at the waist so that unicycle continued to move forward ( much like in the rocking motion with disembodied torso floating above it) but at the same time let my upper body also being forward ( basically bending in half as if touching my toes). This helped balance but more importantly it meant that my upper body still had some forward momentum during the initial breaking effort. This meant that the initial decelerating force was mostly being applied to decelerating the uni and my lower body but not my upper body. As a result deceleration was quicker.

UPDATE: Tried a variation on this. Instead of bending I tried letting my hips continue to move forward (pushed torso back) seemed to work a bit better a slightly higher speeds but I am not sure sure why. It seems counter intuitive.

4. The final thing, and this sounds slightly counter to the first point, I raised my self off the seat slightly as the breaking leg passed through top dead center + about 45 degrees. The action here is almost as if you are going to accelerate and kick the uni forward before the breaking leg reaches the bottom of the stroke. Then when the pedal passed the bottom of the stroke you can then use the weight of your upper body dropping downward to add to the breaking force. I've found that its most effective if you're still slightly off the seat when you come to a stop. So, when you start to break drop your weight down onto you back leg but stop yourself short of sitting on the seat. This deceleration of your upper body adds to the breaking force you're legs are contributing.

Although this last point sound a bit counter to the first points its actually not because the knee/thigh that you hook under the seat will have a bend knee so that you can easily stand off the seat and you knee will still be bend and hooked under.

This has been working when there is a little bit of speed and I have been practicing on a slight downhill run to strength up the muscles that apply the breaking force.

I had been favouring my non-dominant leg on this exercise so started practicing with the other leg down and that seemed to go okay once I started very slowly and methodically applied the above steps ( adding one element each time I go comfortable).