If there was a "Learn to speak German like a 5 year old" course then I would love that. Give me something usable to motivate me further, then I can come back for more complexity when I actually want and need it.
But isn't this the case for all language courses? They start you slow and build up? I feel like it isn't, although perhaps it is just the courses I have seen. It seems to me that the people who teach languages generally really like languages, so they understandably revel in the details. I, however, do not (although I wish I did).
I realise now this is a bit of a rant. Apologies!
Then I learned about 2000 nouns from several lists. Then I learned some common "weird" constructions like darse cuenta, and hace falta.
Now I can read paperbacks on the plane without a dictionary, and follow the plot. I can communicate simply, and send pretty good texts. I have a lot of trouble with TV and radio, but it's progress. This took 2 years with mainly self study and Duolingo for accountability. I don't think an app alone would do the trick.
This is pretty much the methodology behind "comprehensible input", where you consume lots of content that you can just about understand and "let your brain figure it out".
There's quite a lot along these lines. LingQ helps you learn as you read books, and I built https://nuenki.app, which gives you constant comprehensible input as you browse the web.
I also really like Language Transfer, which isn't really a comprehensible input course, but tries to draw parallels to English and talks through the etymology a little. The approach appeals to me.
Along similar lines, I subscribed to r/nederlands, so that random reddit scrolling features intermittent Dutch practice. I figure that this sort of everyday exposure will help me build a subconscious, pattern-driven sense of grammar and word usage.
I haven't been doing much proper German studying for a while - partially because I've been focused on Nuenki. However, I've been getting into it again recently, and I'm going to go to a language exchange.
There are a lot of sentences I can intuitively just sorta understand, even if I might not be able to tell you what a certain word or grammatical feature is. I think it's quite useful for getting you over the mental block of "ah I don't follow it" to getting the gist. I wanted to find something on the German Wikipedia a week ago, and I was able to navigate it as if it were all in English - even though, if you asked me what a specific word meant, I probably wouldn't know.
You definitely need to pair it with something with more active recall, though. My passive vocabulary is much larger than my active one after this break.
Everyone learns languages in a different way. There are some people who like to be told what the basic rules of the language are and can use that to structure new sentences. Like giving someone K&R I suppose. Other people need to hear it. Personally, because I am only learning a language for practical purposes like travel, I'd love a course that dispensed with the grammar and taught contemporary phrases used in everyday life. For example, I am never going to ask and be told where the library is. But I'm very likely to hear, "cash or card?" or to ask "does this train go to Bologna?". So practicality for me wins early on, and then later I'd like to learn the top 500 words, and then the grammar structures.
To that end, my theory would be that a program of imitation & mimicry would be the most effective way to learn. That you would hear a native speaker say a phrase and attempt to fluently imitate it. Specifically, record your voice as you speak and listen to what you say and try to as perfectly as possible imitate the prototype phrase.
Learn vocabulary and grammar later; focus, like children do, on hearing the language and imitating its use. Learn reading and writing last of all; formal grammar and especially spelling are the pedals on the bike.
For me the critical thing is hearing the playback of your own voice and being able to learn to hear the difference. I've encountered this with professional mimics / celebrity impersonators -- the most important thing to do is to hear what your voice sounds like.
the book is very good for who likes to think about learning.
For example, at a certain point the only words you will have learned are que and lo, so the quiz sentances will be like :
I want you to eat it -> I want que lo you eat
This prpgram has been extremely useful to me and helped me learn spanosh far quicker than other methods. They also use memory palace techniques and have an unusually effective way of organizing vocab learning
"Taking the pedals off the bike" advice for language learning:
- Learn pronunciation first
A lot of people never master a native (or semi-native) accent, but if you sit down and figure it out, it's easier than it seems at first. Getting the native pronunciation down matters because otherwise you literally can't distinguish between certain words, and it will be a habit you'll never unlearn. It makes everything else easier. It also gives you massive cred with native speakers who will overlook your atrocious grammar and paltry vocab because "wow, you sound good! I'm impressed." It's taken both as a sign of respect and that you're putting in the effort, and makes you punch above your actual weight. This does wonders for confidence and makes you less shy about trying to learn by speaking & listening, which is crucial.
Gabriel Wyner does a good job explaining it in his book "Fluent Forever" (his method is pretty cool too but I have some critiques of it overall, "learn pronunciation first" is the best single lesson to transfer to other language learning methodologies).
It’s the only language learning system that has ever worked for me. It focuses on speaking and every day language rather than reading, writing, and memorizing vocabulary, conjugations, etc.
It isn’t cheap, but it’s designed for you to learn enough to not need it anymore.
It probably doesn’t work for everyone, but it did feel like a different approach than many of the other language apps I tried in the past.
I'm reminded of the approach taken by the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP): start with this magical thing called Scheme and learn simple programming techniques and general principles like abstraction, then gradually add the "pedals" back until you've basically learnt to program in assembly and write a compiler for your high-level language.
A similar but related lesson: the best way to teach something is to design a task that is just difficult enough that the learner can figure it out on their own.
When I was reading parenting books in preparation for my own kids, this is one consistent theme that kept coming up, sometimes called "scaffolding." The idea is that you provide a safe environment, design a task that is just the right level of difficulty, then let the child figure it out themselves. (For example, rather than directly holding a kid climbing up a ladder, let them climb it by themselves while you stand by to catch them just in case.) As a result, they develop more independence, self-confidence, and the lessons stick.
"Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly for the rest of his life." -- Jean Piaget
If you don’t allow them to complete all the previous steps, they may just keep failing at the next task, because they’re not yet in the “zone” to be able to acquire the next skill.
If a child can’t balance annd move forwards unaided, they won’t be able do the next thing (pedalling) even with help.
Children have different skills and capabilities and Vygotsky is not prescriptive about who needs to help, and the ZPD theory often encourages learning from peers rather than adults (parents/teachers).
You see it all the time. A post comes through your feed. It's insightful. It’s bold. It’s… mostly ignored.
Why? Because people don’t actually engage with the core idea — they react to what they think it says.
The same thing happens in business: - Founders get stuck in the weeds of their product without seeing the bigger market opportunity. - Teams hyper-focus on the tech, missing the customer pain point. - Investors hear the pitch, but miss the deeper vision driving it.
People miss the post for the trees.
Here’s the thing: breakthroughs happen when you push past surface-level reactions. The best founders? They’re not just building products — they’re connecting dots others miss. The best marketers? They’re not just optimizing campaigns — they’re shifting narratives. The best investors? They’re not chasing trends — they’re seeing past the noise.
If you want to stand out in a noisy world, here’s the question to ask yourself: Am I reacting to the surface? Or am I leaning in to understand what’s really being said?
The magic is always in the nuance. The signal is often buried in the noise. The big ideas? They’re the ones that most people scroll past.
So… don’t.
(I'm sorry I had to)
https://www.pressherald.com/2024/01/27/opinion-critical-thin...
>Opinion: Critical thinking is authoritarians’ kryptonite; let’s use it.
>The culture of MAGA Republicans is antithetical to critical thinking. Which is exactly why the rest of us need to insist on it.
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/texas-gop-no-more-c...
>Texas GOP: No More Critical Thinking in Schools
>Teachers, you may want to be sitting down for this one.
>The 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform, adopted June 9 at the state convention in Forth Worth, seems to take a stand against, well, the teaching of critical thinking skills. Read it for yourself:
>"We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."
Always start them on a blue (or blue-black) slope, because it forces them to learn to use the edge of the board. Lot of easy drills like side slipping and simply turning your head to control direction.
If you start a snow boarder on a green run, it always results in them catching an edge and eventually face planting. Not a fun experience.
great analogy!
Likewise, music. The most popular method -- Suzuki -- starts kids out without sheet music. Reading comes later.
In both cases, it's also just less gear to manage. The benefit becomes obvious in group lessons and recitals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse
Also, is it shocking to anyone that pedal+chain bicycles were invented in 1885, less than 20 years before powered flight?
(Unfortunately, we'd already started him on the old-fashioned route with pedals and training wheels. Fortunately, he wasn't all that heartbroken when we "discovered that a thief must have stolen" the pedals and training wheels. And he was quite ecstatic when later "the thief must have returned the pedals".)
So I really recommend the ordinary-bike-with-removed-pedals method to start with. The trick is just to get the saddle low enough. Old-fashioned[1] saddle mounts with a multi-piece clamp on the saddle post usually have that below the longitudinal rails on the saddle. You can flip the bits around so the rails go below the bolt of the clamp, and thereby lower the saddle by a couple centimeters / about an inch. This is a rather fiddly job within the narrow confines under the saddle / above the rails / inside the side flaps of the saddle, but it's possible. Three guesses as to how I know this.
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[1]: And most stuff on not-exorbitantly-expensive kids' bikes is quite old-fashioned; kids' bikes are much cheaper than "serious" adult ones, so manufacturers have to scrimp wherever they can.
It changes gravity! This is sort of like managing a double pendulum under water^ and then trying it in the air
The video: https://youtu.be/9gQQAO4I1Ck?si=Hs_3GxrZgmhr2xSn
^ haha not sure this would be easier
Yes yes, I was trying to show "here's a simplification one made to train a simple network how to do a hard thing" and much like removing pedals, I think it's effective
Unrelated, in dog agility they sometimes train weave poles using the channel method. So they set the weave poles to form a channel that the dog runs through. And then they gradually narrow the channel. Finally they have narrowed the channel until the poles are in a straight line
Now, the funny thing is that most parents, when their kids are ready for a real bike, they put them on one with side-wheels (support wheels?) [1, 2]... My wife and I were looking at kids doing this and were thinking the same thing: "Wait, this is unlearning the whole thing they learned about balance and steering on 2 wheels! Let's go straight to no-support-wheels!" And voila, there they were, within a couple of attempts (we ran along) they were riding around! While many kids struggle when their support wheels come off.
Since then we joke that we are part of the anti-support-wheel-club when we see kids steering uncomfortably on such a bike. Which is really awkward since the bike has to stay upright, the kids have to hang to one side for balance when steering. And yet, it remains the most (or at least, a very) popular way.
[0] https://www.babyhomepage.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Loopf...
[1] https://media.s-bol.com/qQv4Y69p8j33/1155x1200.jpg
[2] https://bike.nl/loekie-booster-kinderfiets-12-inch-jongens-g...
As a data point, we tried this with my son, who is physically very capable if not advanced, and despite many attempts over months, it never clicked for him. We eventually went the training wheels route, which he instantly adopted, and once he was comfortable on that for a while, he learned to ride without them in a single session.
We've since met other parents who had similar experiences, so I think it's definitely not a universal thing that balance bikes are better or even useful.
Kids are different, try out different things.
It’s fairy obvious but I like to keep this poka-yoke’ish concept in mind: it’s not about the person, it’s about the process.
I maintain that it's looking at the pedals. Looking itself doesn't do anything but a newbie will move the handlebar or lean while looking and or won't generate enough speed. Couple of days on the saddle and they can look anywhere while riding.
The only downside was that he figured out that if he got wobbly, he could stick his legs down and a bit out and it would help him stabilize by lowering the center of gravity. That seemed great at the time, but when the pedals were put back on, he would still use this trick when he got wobbly, which isn't a great instinct. Took a bit of time to train that out of him.
But in the end, it was faster than the training wheels, and it's cheaper than buying a specialized balance bike.
We've now taught both of our kids to bike by starting with a balance bike, and the comparison with their friends who learned with training wheels was amazing - the balance bike kids were zooming around earlier, confidently, and with many fewer spills than the training wheel cohort.
Also, you can get a balance bike with a handbrake, which sets them up well for getting a bike with handbrakes instead of coaster brakes. Kids bikes in the US have to be sold with coasters but there are several manufacturers (like woom) who make it really easy to remove the coaster and have front and rear hand brakes.
Also also, most kids bikes in the US are too heavy: they're tough and cheap but it makes it hard to control them. Woom and Isla and probably a few others now make aluminum frame bikes for kids that are much more appropriate weight for their sizes, though at a bit of a cost.
When she was 4, we bought her a regular bike. The "learning process" went like this: I told her "it's like your old bike, but with pedals to drive faster". She sat on it, used it like a balance bike for 3 rounds in our driveway, and then started to test the pedals. After literally 5 minutes, I went for a drive with her through our neighborhood.
We were completely flabbergasted. It took both me and my wife 2 long Sunday afternoons with our dads in a large parking space to learn to ride a bike. We both started with training wheels when we were 2.
[0] https://www.gigasport.de/puky-laufrad-12-lr-1l-br-pink-72928...
My daughter never enjoyed or wanted a balance bike, and only gave up her three wheeled scooter about age 7. We tried getting her to cycle a few times, but she couldn't get her head around it. Then last summer she grabbed a 2 wheeled scooter and picked them up quite fast, and the evolution from that to the bicycle seemed pretty easy. We just had to wait until she was ready and interested - I'd tried to encourage her before, but my style for everything now it just to riff off their interests and let them find their place.
Same for swimming, I went swimming with a friend who tried to teach their child 'drills' - which obviously bored them (both). I just let my kids jump in and dive for sinkies - in time (swimming twice a week) they have developed further and further - but they are always up for the pool as they know I'll let them do what they want and focus on having fun.
She did have a bike with stabilisers but she didn't use it much like that as she didn't enjoy it. Between getting "high sided" on bumps and the feeling of falling over before the wheels took the weight.
When her first friend started riding properly she asked me to teach her to ride without stabilisers. I bought one of the push bars from Amazon which was a confidence booster for both of us as I could run behind her and make sure she was safe. It only took 5 minutes before she was riding off on her own. Sadly she got a bit over confident and had a bit of a spill which gave her a bleeding lip which set her back a couple of weeks but the next time she was off without assistance almost immediately.
A few months later she was cycling 10km around the Ile d'oleron in France!
I think that coaster breaks (and maybe steel frames) are better suited to kids who want to be rough with their bike. My wheels were never very true, and they would have rubbed awfully with rim breaks. (Disk breaks were unheard of on kids bikes then, and I think are still pretty rare now.) The main downside is that if you loose the chain, you loose all breaking power. That happened once to me, but thankfully there was a nice dirt ditch close at hand.
We kept this up into our teens (bc we were rural way outside of town and our parents were luddites about the internet so we had little else to do after playing all our video games to death) and I got to the point I could drift down the latter portion of the trail and right the bike and ride away without touching the ground. I had moved on to a regular "mountain" bike by my teens so I had to tighten my rear brake and true my wheel so it didn't rub to get enough stopping force to lock out the rear wheel. At one point I was using that move as a core workout lol. (That and side flips on the trampoline.)
I broke my jaw this way when I was 6 or 7. :-) Tried to do a 90 degree skid going down a steep alley and did an endo, landing on my chin. Do not recommend.
I mean, I probably would have broken some bones anyway with the way I biked at that age, but this particular one might not have happened without the coaster breaks.
We haven't quite gotten to that stage with my 7yo yet. 12yo wasn't too rough on her bike but 7yo is, um, er, let's say he doesn't have the wisdom of being older yet.
As the author said, training wheels are learning backwards. You learn to pedal, but not to ride. You need to ride, then learn to pedal. And the motivation is also positive: removing training wheels is bad, cause you will fall. Adding pedals is good, because it allows you to go faster.
"Protections/guards" of some kind are so common (not just in software/tech, but all life) that "training wheels" has become a huge metaphor/analogy. I wonder how many other examples there are of the motivation inversion?
It is better to use the positive form: "take your time and make sure you have both feets secured before moving your hand" (on a climbing wall) "stay this distance from the end of the edge of the sidewalk, the bus can pass really close"
Same thing though. I was ruding the bike like a boss pretty quickly.
My biggest problem with learning to ride a bike is they seem to assume the user has a certain amount of flexibility and range of motion. Also in order for me to have 'feet on the ground' I have to be off the seat. If I'm off the seat all of a sudden I'm straddling a massive metal crossbrace that's uncomfortably close to 'the boys'.
This post has me wanting to find a women's cruiser and remove the pedals. I'm ~ 5'10" I should be able to find a bike where I can easily touch the ground from the saddle
Turns out it is also really useful when you are using your bike in a urban area and want the seat down at the traffic lights and I can see those becoming popular on city bikes in the next few years.
Right now there is one particular city/step-thru kind of bike that sports one because it is built to also handle dirt paths:
The Marin Larkspur 2 https://www.marinbikes.com/ww/bikes/2021-larkspur-2
So you could totally buy a bike this bike in your size, sliding down the saddle and removing the pedals to use it as a balance bike for a little before you get confident enough to use it with pedals.
Additionally I think it looks super cool. I don't need it, yet I want one for myself. I think they just released an e-bike version that I may gift to my partner.
Especially as a cargo carrying bike they're pretty cool.
At 5'10" -- which is about my height (am I 5'9½"?) -- I'm fairly sure there exist bicycles that let you put the saddle low enough that you can reach the ground with your feet. [1] Sure, pedalling isn't super-comfortable at that height; it's a bit more effort than if you have your legs almost straight at the lower end of the stroke (but then you can't reach the ground while on the saddle). But it's not all that bad, and it certainly doesn't wholly prohibit the use of the bike.
Once you've used it for a while and got your sense of balance, you may not need the option of foot-on-the-ground-from-the-saddle any more, so you'll be able to raise the saddle to the "correct" (=more comfortable for pedalling) height. Or if not, the little bit of inefficiency will mean a more efficient workout! :-)
And hey, if you're really nervous about finding your balance, do what everyone recommends for little kids and remove the pedals, and use it as a "balance bike" to begin with. Anyway, I'm convinced you should be able to find a used mountain or "ladies" (=step-through) bike to try this stuff out on. Talk to the folks at a bike shop, they're often (not always, of course) knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and therefore helpful. Good luck!
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[1]: Dunno how tall the guy in the video is, but this sure looks like it should fit you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV88C5ZK0x0 . Not that I think you need that super-heavy brute, specifically, but the frame looks like quite a lot of mountain bikes you see around. So here's a cheaper alternative that also looks OK(ish, for its price). : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLPpTFLgEb4 .
I looked at the balance bike, thought "what a waste of money" and told my kid "just scoot up and down this level pathway while I fix the pool pump. don't worry about pedaling." and 5 minutes into the pump repair he was balancing just fine.
I'm not buying a toy that gets used for 5 minutes only. Whether I can afford it or not is irrelevant.
It is also alot more light weight than a normal bike so it is actually better for you and the kid. I transported a kid and a balance bike easily on a normal bike for more than 20 km, they managed about 10 km on their own.
Let me clarify - I'm not saying you can't continue using it for years after.
I'm saying there is no point to continuing using it once the kids has developed their balance. That development typically takes only a few dozen minutes, at most.
As an analogy, consider reading. Your kid can, after learning to read, continue reading the level-1 (Fun With Dick And Jane type) books for years, but why would you encourage that?
Well yes there is a point. At the age of 2 or 3 bikes are so small and their cranks so short that the gearing is very low. Which means kids are usually faster on a balance bike at that age so it is much more rewarding.
At age of 4 or 5 kids can realise they might be faster and get tired less by riding a real bike so they have a motivation for it.
By the way, buying things that are useful for a short amount of time is not such a waste if you embrace the second hand market. Which at least in my country, is very lively for kids' stuff.
Sounds like second hand.
IME balance bikes is the greatest thing for bicycles since the safety bicycle. My family are cyclists, my kids easily cycled 20km per day before turning six. I got a balance bike for my second child because I needed to get around faster and I do not like having to transport my children. At 3 years old we could do 3 km with the balance bike in a pinch.
There is a reason electic bikes are cheap and easy to use, when you remove pedals and chain the construction get so much easier the same is true for an balance bike.
Since before the safety bicycle: Balance bikes came first. Then the pedals were added -- driving the front wheel, like kids' bikes still did when I was a kid -- then the front wheel grew into the "penny-farthing", then came the safety bicycle. But the balance bike -- for adults! -- came first. Invented by a baron (Carl?) von Drais; that's why they're called "draisins" in some languages. (Which is also the name for muscle-powered rail vehicles in some languages; presumably via pedal-powered bicycles --> pedal-powered rail carts.)
Compare that to me as a kid, where would I had the training wheels nonsense, and it took me waaaay longer to learn how to ride a bike.
I'm slightly surprised this is such a revelation in this thread, around these parts (Berlin, Germany), balance bikes are extremely common and training wheels are seen as a maladaptive thing from yesteryear.
Round here loads of kindergarten-age kids use their balance bike for transportation every single day. I saw one zooming along behind her/his parent (who was pushing another kid along in a buggy) first thing this morning.
A toy? The balance bike was our kid's secondary mode of transportation for 2.5 years, after our bike trailer.
They also hold value well. I’ve been buying/selling used kids bikes on FB as my kids outgrow them, and so far been averaging about $15/year to keep my kids on primo bikes.
Small kids need smaller components, but it's hard to make small components reliable and cost effective. I really appreciate the folks who took the time to translate the same darn brake levers used all over the world to a size suitable for a 2 year old's hand. They're the cutest thing and they're the first thing I had to teach my son how to use after he was cooking it down hills on the balance bike. They get banged up first on a fall, they get merciless treatment, and they perform the same way I expect mine or any other to perform.
There is actually a third way. Learn to ride a bike the correct way first time. It is not that hard, I got it in a few minutes when I was a kid.
The thing is it can't be easy if you have used trainer wheels before because trainer wheels teach you stuff you have to unlearn first.
Note: I am not arguing about the merit of the balance bike. A balance bike is indeed faster for a small 2-3y old kid than a bike is at that age anyway. But most of the benefits of a balance bike is less to teach balance than to put the idea of trainer wheels away from parents.
This makes starting hard (an already hard problem when learning), it makes falling off worse because there is so much weight pulling down, and then they get pinned under all that weight so it can be hard to get up again. It makes walking the bike uphill physically impossible so if it is hilly you can't actually go out for a ride.
There will be at least some people out there whose road bike weights less than their toddler’s bike.
in practice, this winds up applying to 14" wheel bikes and maybe some 16" wheel bikes.
definitely a silly rule though.
My son had a balance bike when he was around 2 or 3. It then became too small for him. We bought him a normal bike when he was 5. We thought that maybe he would still need training wheels because it had been a few years since he last used the balance bike, but said "let's try without them just in case". He learned to ride in literally less than an hour, without any fears or surprises, and has never fallen so far unless when he gets cocky and thinks he can ride behind very slow pedestrians at like 1 km/h.
I remember coming across Isla while researching online for my kid's second bike, but sheee! were they expensive.
It's so different than the challenging, scary attempts to remove training wheels when my siblings and I were 5 or 6 years old. One of those things where I didn't realize the science and tradition on teaching kids to ride bikes could change so dramatically within two decades!
Me on the other hand, I had a tough time back when I was a kid on training wheels, only really grokking it at 6 or so.
> only really grokking it at 6 or so
Probably the more relevant factor: we replaced one of cars with a cargo bike when she was 15 months old, so she does 1500+ miles a year "on" a bike, and a tiny fraction of that in a car (we live in a totally car-centric US city, so this is pretty out of the norm). Bikes are the fabric of her daily life so she is really, really motivated to spend time on a bike.
I do it exactly the other way: put them on an empty road with a slight uphill.
With the parking brake on, let them practice getting a feel for when the clutch "bites". When it does, put the parking brake down and the car remains stationary.
Do that a few times (10m, or less) and the learner develops an intuition all by themselves for how the clutch pedal works (there's some travel until it "bites", the expected type of progression of the pedal, etc).
Can't teach that when they learn to use it like a button (which is what happens when they learn to change with the car in motion).
This is how I taught myself how after having multiple people tell me things like "it's just a continuous motion you do with both legs", "you just let the other pedal out while you give it gas", etc. Driving a manual seems to be one of those things that few people seem to be good at teaching because they forget how frustrating it can be to learn.
Instead what you want to do, what most people do subconsciously is let the clutch out partially until it is allowing the engine to apply some of its available torque but not all, and then pause there until the car’s speed roughly matches the engine speed, at which point the clutch will stop slipping even though you still have the pedal partially depressed, after which you should be able to rapidly raise your foot from the clutch and feel no acceleration or deceleration. For an experienced driver that pause is less than like half a second from standstill. Also technically the point at which you want to pause the clutch let out depends on a whole bunch of things like how quickly you want to pull off, how much torque the engine can provide and whether you’re on a hill etc, but we just do this intuitively with experience.
This is like a super over-complicated way to think about it and I would never try to teach a learner driver by first explaining this lol but the point is, you find the engagement point and hold there for a while and then release when the car is moving. This is what we all do but it helps to understand why we do it so we don’t explain things wrong.
I feel like people also don’t get what applying more throttle does while the clutch is slipping. All it does is raise the engine rpm, it will apply absolutely no more torque (and therefore acceleration) no matter how much you press down the throttle. While the clutch is slipping the clutch pedal controls your torque and therefore acceleration. You need some throttle though to give you some room for error and some minimum torque to work with.
But you’re totally right. You can pull away quickly by letting your rpm build up and choosing an aggressive clutch position while applying enough throttle to keep the rpm constant, alternatively in most cars you can pull away on a fairly steep hill with no throttle if you just barely let the clutch engage and hold it at that point until the car is moving steadily
Talk through the next bit first: Hold engine at 1.5k rpm. Ease off clutch just enough to start engaging and rolling forwards. Back on the clutch then gently break to a stop. Repeat until confident.
Etc. etc. The whole time the learner is in control of the car and they learn the basics without having to worry about steering.
Cars spend no time at .5 mph but plenty at 60. Tractors spend almost no time above 15 and tons of time at .25mph. tractors will pull your house over. Cars won't.
You can pop the clutch in idle in 6th in a tractor and it'll likely start
Meanwhile some gas cars will stall without accelerator input at straight road.
By the way, did you know that the the right pedal is right hand thread, but the left pedal is left handed thread? If it wasn't, the left pedal, being right hand threaded, would come loose easily. And that was a Wright Brothers innovation.
On a somewhat related note, the reason why Peugeot cars have a "0" in their model numbers (e.g. 208, 308, 408, etc.) goes back to the days before electric ignition, and when you still needed a crank to start the engine. The model number was in the middle of the grill, and the crank would go into the "0".
I can find claims that it was so, but nothing substantial. For example, this 1959 kids book - https://archive.org/details/wilburorvillewri0000augu/page/17... .
On the other hand, I can find cranks which had reversed threads, pre-dating 1900, like US643349A filed 1895 where "The screw-threads on the parts b b' of the shaft are oppositely directed, or, in other words, are right and left hand threads".
It's described as protecting the ball-bearings, not to prevent coming loose.
https://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Fa... says:
> In 1900, the Wrights announced a "bicycle pedal that can't come unscrewed." Pedals were mounted to the crank by threaded spindles. On early bicycles, both crank arms had standard right-hand threads. As the cyclist pedaled, the action tended to tighten one pedal and loosen the other, with the result that one pedal kept dropping off the bike. British inventor William Kemp Starley had solved a similar problem years before when the right-hand cups that housed the crank or "bottom" bearing on early bicycles kept coming loose. He simply reversed the thread direction on the right cup so the pedaling action kept it tight. It wasn't long before bicycle makers realized the same solution could keep the pedals in place. Wilbur and Orville were in the vanguard of those manufacturers that offered right-hand threads on one crank arm and left-hand threads on the other.
That is, the Wright Brothers were early promoters of the design, but not the innovators.
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tancrank.html
Left-threaded pedals and cranks are reputedly an invention of the Wright brothers, bicycle builders from Dayton, Ohio. (They also built airplanes).
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/left.html
The left-threaded left pedal was not the result of armchair theorizing, it was a solution to a real problem: people's left pedals kept unscrewing! We have read that the left threading was invented by the Wright brothers, but we are not sure of this.
> The Centaur Crank is first screwed up to a shoulder on the axle with right and left-handed threads, so that the pressure of the foot tends to make it all the more secure ; whilst, to prevent its loosening by “ back-pedalling,” a slightly tapered conical pin is driven through both crank and axle, and secured with a nut.
I assume that was helpful for me, as they gave less and less support as they deformed over time and I had to properly balance to stay upright. I was still quite surprised with myself after they were taken off.
Every time a post like this comes up a bunch people haven't heard of them. I'm sure it helps, especially with really little kids, but honestly kids learn to ride bikes pretty easy once they decide they want to really learn regardless of pedals or not.
It's also often recommended not to use training wheels. Just go balance bike -> pedal pike.
Training wheels should be mocked off the market.
This part confuses me a lot. Where I'm from you teach kids to ride by attaching a broom (or similar) stick to the back of the bike. That way you can gently hold them when they mess up the balance, but they still get the appropriate feedback that they need to balance on their own. As a plus you feel when they are getting better at it, and the "release" is softer. It is not an all or nothing process, you just hold the stick less and less, and suddenly the kid is cycling on their own.
I couldn't imagine doing the same with holding the handlebar. It would be hard to do. Would mess their feedback loop up. And what is worse it would telegraph to them when you are releasing them thus making it more likely that they panic.
Does anyone really do the "grabbing the handlebars" method to teach kids to ride a bike? Is it a regional difference?
I didn't even bother with a broomstick for my kids. I just ran along, holding the cargo rack. It didn't take them long to learn. A few hours spread out?
Yeah. The story in my family is that my dad decided to teach me how to ride. We drove to a park to do it because our road was too busy. He got the bike out of the car first, and went back to get the broomstick. By the time he was back I was already cycling away from him. Undoubtedly due to all my experience with balance bikes. :)
But possibly to this day I couldn't ride if someone would grab my handlebars and push me for a bit then release them at some point. :D
Watching peers of theirs who used training wheels, I've realized they're a trap. The mechanics of how a bike actually steers are completely different when you put training wheels on it. Whenever a third wheel is touching the ground (something that seems to be hard to avoid while turning, from what I've seen) it starts to steer like a trike instead of a bicycle. So transitioning from that to riding without training wheels is doubly difficult, because you also have to un-learn the instincts and muscle memory you developed with training wheels.
Transitioning from a balance bike to one with pedals is much easier because the main instinct they'll be taking from it - putting a foot on the ground when you get into trouble - remains useful. It naturally helps prevent skinned knees during the transition period.
One thing I think gets lost in the discussion of training wheels: people act like you have four wheels flat on the ground, with no opportunity to balance. But proper training wheels should have two or three wheels on the ground, depending on if the rider is balancing or not. In other words, the training wheels should be lifted slightly up: https://www.twowheelingtots.com/training-wheels-faq/
Bicycles achieve balance because the rider counter-steers to prevent the bike from falling aside.
Destin from SmarterEveryDay had a friend build a special bike where the actions of the handlebar are inverted: when you turn it to one direction, the front wheel turns in the other direction.
It's impossible to ride such a bike.
Well, not exactly impossible: you have to completely re-learn riding, like you never knew before. Which shows that steering is the core (only?) skill to riding.
It's a great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
This is only partially correct. A rider can compensate for road irregularities to keep the bike upright, where an uncontrolled bike would topple over, however an uncontrolled bike is stable when rolling on flat terrain. That there exist bikes that, by making countersteering impossible are unridable, doesn't support the proposition that countersteering is the primary mechanism by which a bike stays upright, it just shows that countersteering can have a much more powerful effect that the dynamics of angular momentum.
I think his name is Destin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destin_Sandlin
The "something about the geometry" is called caster, and is the same effect that makes the front casters on a shopping cart go straight: the point where the steering axis intersects the ground is ahead of the contact patch of the tire. On a bike, this is mostly determined by the angle of your head tube when looking at the bike from the side (if the fork is "bent" from the side view, this would also contribute to the caster effect).
But I've now googled, and found a paper that says that a bike can be stable without gyroscopic or caster effects [1]. It seems like the specific mass distribution of the steerable mass (front wheel, fork, handlebars, etc) vs the rest of the frame matters, and of course all of these variables interact in complex ways. They do agree that caster plays an important role though.
Vehicle dynamics is notoriously tricky stuff. I can say with experience that it doesn't get easier when you go to four wheels.
[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51051995_A_Bicycle_...
Yup. Plenty of videos on youtube where they send a bike down a hill with no rider and as long as there is forward motion it will self-correct and stay upright.
Bikes in motion are self-balancing, and with no rider on, will continue indefinitely until the forward momentum has been exhausted.
Terminology: balance is from steering (not counter-steering aka push-steering) which is to get the bike (usually motorcycle) to lean faster which allows taking a corner sharper. To balance upright, one steers the bike in the same direction the bike would naturally steer (as it's falling to one side) by the way the forks are raked/offset.
My understanding is that it means "briefly turning the handle-bars to point the front wheel in the opposite direction of the intended turn, causing the vehicle to start tipping over in the direction of intended turn", which is exactly how you steer both motorcycle and bicycle.
When I learned to ride a motorcycle I was taught to push the handle bars with the hand on the side I wanted to turn (so, if trying to turn right, push with the right hand); this causes the bike to "fall" on the side of the turn, and follow the turn.
This is what I meant by "counter-steering" but 1/ it only works at relatively high speeds (above, say, 20 mph, which isn't high on a motorcycle, but pretty high on a bike) and 2/ it doesn't "prevent" the bike from falling, it makes it fall, which is what we want.
Following the same principle, staying upright on a bicycle involves steering, not counter-steering: when a bike starts falling to one side, turning the wheel to that side makes it want to fall to the other side; and if done fast enough and often enough (as all riders to), maintain the bike upright.
No, it works at much lower speeds. This guy is not going 20 mph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Counters...
https://mytoys.scene7.com/is/image/myToys/ext/13468895-01.jp...
This means the kids can easily try it with pedals on, take them off again if it doesn't work, etc, and it looks less like a "baby bike" (which matters for some kids). I think they're really nice.
"Balance bikes" [1] have been the norm for 10-15 years now, at least within the cycling community. You can start kids on them pretty much as soon as they can toddle about.
1 - https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-0vqb0rkahl/images/stencil/19...
We're a long way from everyone who buys their kid a first bike at Walmart knowing about balance bikes (or the cheaper option of taking the pedals off)
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cortina+u1&t=ffab&iax=images&ia=im...
Also, ebikes are making it more unsafe by easily going twice the normal speed, and we need to have a public discussion about that. Many ebike riders do wear helmets, especially the elderly.
[0] https://swov.nl/en/fact/bicycle-helmets-4-why-do-cyclists-ch...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/bikecommuting/comments/dwca9c/why_d...
Graduation from a balance bike to a slightly larger bike-with-pedals-removed worked great for both my boys. They could pedal and ride a decent distance before they were out of nappies.
The pedalless bikes aren't as effective. One of the kids I sued this technique with used to have a pedalless bike and was fine with it for a year but could not handle a bicycle at all. This is how I remember learning to bike from my own dad when I was probably around 5-6.
I taught my two kids to ride a pedal bike when they were three, after enjoying their balance bike for like six months before that. The switch from balance bike to pedaling was very simple, and because they had enjoyed their balance bike for so long, they were very skilled at staying upright.
I'm not saying your method was bad. I'm saying that there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Coaster bikes also teach kids to dab instinctively, which is a great skill.
what does dab mean to you? my meanings don't fit in this sentence.
I've mostly heard it in the context of technical mountain biking (where it's fairly common, but usually a sign of not quite getting through a section cleanly - you didn't actually fall off, but you couldn't keep your balance with your feet on the pedals).
We started on an indoor bike-like ride along, thing.
Then a balance bike outside, then a small kids bike with no pedals, then pedals with freewheel, (no coaster brake) but two hand brakes and the sheet.
I used a muslin baby blanket for the sheet.
We did not take the support away suddenly at any time though.
We jogged with them a lot, constantly ready to catch her. I did, a handful of times save her from wrecks. This took a fair amount of athleticism, attention and reflexes.
But it also allowed us to talk about core bike safety and new nuances like “watching your white circles” (the handle bar ends were white) and make sure not to let them touch anything while riding.
Our kid got really comfortable pedaling and toward the end of the sheet use, I mostly just let it hang jogging along. It was the sense of security that allowed plenty of practice in advance of going without.
One day they just picked up their bike and started riding across the playground. Plenty of miles since then no wrecks yet.
We were not going for precociousness, but it was really great to get it down so young. I can ride my old coaster bike alongside when it’s dry, and we’ve done night rides.
We did not push any step of it, but did have the next bike available to them to see and look at and talk about. It was very smooth, I wish something like this process was available when I was a kid.
There's an alternative philosophy that kids will learn safety by experiencing accidents. This only works for types of accident that the kid can reasonably predict. Crashing a bike seems like a perfectly good type of accident to learn from. This is my approach with my kid. Helmet and not going where cars are to prevent serious injuries but otherwise, crash away and I'm not going to save them even if I'm within arm's reach.
Do not worry, they will experience falls. It's just good that they don't experience them first thing when they're learning a new thing as they may be put off by the bad experience.
You need to compare this against the base method as a control (see above for my anecdote using my own kid).
The control method (i.e. do nothing other than scoot around) is about 5m. Maybe 10m at most. I don't know what I'd be saving if I got that number lower using props like a rope (or the sheet mentioned by a sibling).
Holy smokes it works. She learned how to ride in maybe 10 minutes. Tops.
Incredible.
She used a balance bike for about 12 months before that.
For children, there are companies that sell progressive balance bikes[1][2], that start off as balance bikes but can be converted to pedal bikes later. In the US, I've seen tons of cheap Strider bikes on Craigslist, and then you can get the pedal conversion kit separately (you have to get the 14", not the 12").
[1] https://striderbikes.co.uk/collections/14x-balance-pedal-bik...
[2] https://www.littlebigbikes.com/shop/convertible-balance-bike...
My 3-year-old and 5-year-old learned in one day and the "pedals off" part took 30-minutes to an hour (more for my youngest). For the first few years, every time someone would pass my 3-4 year old riding a two-wheeler without training wheels they'd stare in amazement and ask me how I taught her to do that. I'd explain "training wheels until they can pedal/steer, then pedals off for an hour until they're balancing, back on with a 'hold the seat and let go' and that's it". A couple of weeks later, I'd see that same child rolling down the sidewalk without training wheels. I taught every one of my nieces/nephews using the same technique. I've yet to find someone it doesn't work on.
Neither of my kids fell the first time. Both of them understood I'd be letting go on that "saddle holding/running part" at some point without telling them when. I just warned them "if you see I'm not there, DON'T PANIC(tm), because you've already been riding on your own for a while by then!" Every single kid had the same thing happen ... they'd see I'm a house behind them catching my breath, they'd get a look of terror in their eyes, the bike would "dip" a little and they'd catch it, then the look would change to a ridiculous grin as they realized "I did it!"
It was one of the best experiences as a Dad and I'll admit I choked up with each of my children when they nailed it, especially my autistic son who has a really hard time with anxiety/fear related to learning skills that might involve getting injured in the process.
This is a 1926 Harley-Davidson motorcycle.[1]
This is a fat-tire "ebike".[2] Take the pedals off, and it's a motorcycle.
[1] https://kbcmotorcycles.com/1926-aa-harley-davidson-ohv-024/
[2] https://bestelectricbikesmade.com/product/addmotor-motan-m-6...
shakes fist
(good for them, kids need more ways to rebel nowadays)
Someone's never ridden an e-bike before. 500 watts on an 80 pound fat-tire bike is gonna get you like 10-15 mph cruising speed max.
Just because something provides 500W at low speed intermittnet cycle, doesn't mean that it does so indefinitely with lots of back-EMF.
> That top speed is usually 26kph in Europe and Australia.
So like 16MPH?
I feel there are lots of parallels in e.g. Maths education in the more generalised form:
In education, skills that allow you to utilise technology are prioritised and these are often directly opposed to skills needed for mastery.
I'd even go further and say that training wheels optimizing for utility instead of mastery teaches the secondary skill first, so the child can pedal and add power without needing to learn to balance the bike. So, when the training wheels come off, they've got effectively nothing.
And this certainly applies to every other sort of teaching, where learning the mastery-related skills can seem so irrelevant at first.
I'm not sure this is actually true at all. Kids can go pretty fast on a balance bike. Probably as fast as on a bike with training wheels. And for kids that small, gears are mostly useless anyway.
I was flabbergasted.
Steering dynamics (steering to counteract bike lean) and trail effect (bike are built to automatically counteract lean), along with rider input (steering, leaning body), are more important components.
The easiest bike to trackstand is a fixed gear, you turn the front wheel about 45 degrees to one direction or the other, then find the balance point, with the cranks leveled out. Pedaling forward leans you one way, pedaling backwards leans you the other way.
The next difficulty step is a conventional bike, if you have a slope to point your wheel up, that replaces the ability to pedal backwards.
The final difficulty level is replacing the slope with just brake modulation and body weight.
Without forward movement you miss the centrifugal force that tips the bike back up.
Here's me doing it: https://gopro.com/v/QoMmEVLp7pJyX
Author here. This was the point of the post -- but fwiw I did in fact learn about pedal-less bikes shortly after I learned about the "take the pedals off" method. I figured if I went forty years without learning about this, how many of my other peers did too? [1] These bikes were not available when I was a kid, and never came on my radar for any of my three young children until now.
The other point of the post is to make the connection that if this obvious-in-retrospect method makes teaching something difficult easier in this domain, how many other domains am I missing applying a similar method to, no matter how "obvious" ?
[1] I guess I was just one of today's lucky 10,000 https://xkcd.com/1053/
They were ridden exactly the way you're teaching your kid. Adding pedals later is just following the history of bicycle tech development.
Velocipede, the French word for that vehicle, remained being the word for "bicycle" in several languages.
I guess if there's any moral to this, it's that learning history makes a lot of things far less surprising — and makes a lot of what we have today far more meaningful.
Or: one doesn't really understand something without knowing its history (and the best way to find gaps in your own understanding is to teach or explain the concept to someone else).
Using the metaphor of your post: to find out what are the "pedals" to take off, learn about how the "bicycle" came to be before explaining it to others.
One wonders how many HN commenters stepped out before that conclusion was given. Adopting BLUF[1] may help in that regard!
https://www.veloretti.com/products/mini-kids
Of course, putting the pedals back on can be difficult with these...
Granted, it didn't happen in 1 day because she didn't have a bike when she started "riding" (We got her first a balance bike, which she out grew rather fast due to her size). But when we finally did get her a bike, it took an afternoon - really just a couple of hours - for her to start riding it.
My partner is still baffled by this, years after the fact (Science, girl!)
To put it funnily, the second she started riding the bike it felt very Forrest Gump.
I think this is the key - holding the seat. The author of the article says "I did so in the usual manner - have her sit on the seat while I grab the handlebars and run along side her" - this surprised me, it would never occur to me to grab handlebars. I am not sure why exactly, it's an intuitive thing. As a lifelong road cyclist and an ex-racer, I have a pretty good feel for a bike... and you don't actually steer with handlebars, you "steer" (as in 'control where the bike is going') with your ass (which is why every experienced cyclist can easily turn with both hands off the handlebar). Someone grabbing your handlebars would misalign where your body is going vs where your front wheel is going and this makes you fall.
EDIT: I just realized that "steer with your ass" is something our coach used to say when we were kids. I think "your ass" is a kid-friendly proxy for "your center of mass".
Also the people that are 'good with bikes' are the absolute dog shit at teaching other people how to do it. In fact I consider every advice from them with the maximum caution possible, because it is, a lot of times, actually harmful
As for the "teacher".. I forgot to mention that: The kids did it all by themselves. One of the older kids, i.e. 7 or 8, would hold the seat and run behind/besides the kid learning to bike. The trick was clearly to stay far enough behind so that the kid learning didn't notice when the "teacher" let go of the seat.
Our child got a kickbike for his 2nd birthday an was proficient in using it within days. From there he moved to a pedal-bike when he was around four or so. No training wheels, and no real difficulty.
Balance bikes are the way.
Balance bikes also exist in the US and have for just as long as they have existed in Europe.
But this is not about either. A real bike without pedals is needed, because the transition from gliding to riding can take as little as 30 minutes. I mean, for sure, get your small child a balance bike and let them use it for fun. In my opinion, a razor scooter-type thing is even better. The key is to get the child to not worry about being slightly off-balance and instead of panicking they steer and/or lean to correct.
Years ago, I paid REI $50 for a learn-to-ride class for my oldest son. They did this remove-the-pedals thing for 100 kids in a group and had every single one of them riding in an hour with just 5 or 10 instructors. I watched the whole thing in amazement and did it on my own with each of my younger kids. It turns out that it is really easy to teach, and my youngest was riding a real bike at age 4.
I'm 44 and still can't ride a two-wheeled scooter. I don't know if it's harder or different from bicycles (which I have ridden regularly and enthusiastically since I was about 7), but it just won't click for me.
Looking back, perhaps I was offensive for suggesting that Europe and America were pretty much the same on the topic of learning to ride a bicycle. If that was the issue, I do not apologize.
My 3yo rides this 'running bike' as it's called here, no prob. My training in childhood, on normal one with pedals, was a nightmare.
Earlier I thought of the way to transition from 'running bike' to normal pedal bike, and thought of teaching first to ride while standing on pedals, and only then to sit down. Another comment here, about 'women bikes', confirms this idea.
Getting them to use the brakes consistently is another thing.
No they don't. If that were true you could cycle along at a 45 degree angle. They balance because you steer into a fall.
They naturally steer themselves into a fall really.
Furthermore you will notice a bicycle wheel rolling down the street often won't roll in a straight line (as it starts to tilt sideways, it will turn to bring the contact patch back underneath it), so even with just the wheel, the gyroscopic stabilization is insufficient on its own to keep it upright.
Veritasium made a video about it: https://youtu.be/9cNmUNHSBac?si=8cbWXgoqg-uuVidb
At very low speeds, yes, the bike will fall over. But a bike with some minimum amount of speed can roll upright on its own just fine. You can try it yourself with your least favorite bike and an empty parking lot. All it takes is a good solid push. It has to do with bicycle frame geometry and center of mass.
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains it in this video at 2:52: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIrgwWQqqts
It only really enters the picture during wheelies, if you've got the front wheel spinning fast enough.
We had a balance bike but they rejected it.
The kids used the kick scooters to get school (faster than walking, so they were motivated, and not yet allowed to ride a bike, "insurance reasons", whatever), so they used them a lot. After that, switching to a real bicycle wasn't hard.
The threads are different in their direction per side so that the rotation during forward pedaling further tightens the pedal.
Another related interesting fact is that on a unicycle, especially one used by someone who can ride backwards, needs to be checked often to ensure the pedals don't back themselves out due to pedal rotation in the opposite (loosening) direction.
I'm from Uruguay, and here we have something really cool called a "Chivita" - it's basically a wooden bike without pedals that toddlers use. Kids learn to balance on two wheels before they ever touch a regular bicycle. When my 5-year-old moved from the Chivita to a real bike, it only took just a couple of tries. Its amazing! If you're curious, just Google "Chivitas bikes Uruguay" to see what they look like! (Chivito is our traditional sandwich so you might get false hits ;))
> The ideal bike for learning to ride, whether for a child or a deprived adult, is a bike that is "too small" for efficient riding. For learning purposes, the rider should be able to sit on the saddle with both feet flat on the ground and the knees slightly bent. The bike can then be used as a hobby horse or scooter, with the feet always ready to stop a fall. It may even be useful to remove the pedals at first, so that the feet can swing freely. (In case you are new to all this and haven't read the pages about pedals on this site: the left pedal unscrews clockwise!) Ideally, a bike for this approach should have at least one handbrake, so that the child can stop while using both feet for balance. A good place to practice is on a grassy field, perhaps with a slight downgrade.
> Unfortunately, it is often difficult for parents to justify the expense of a smaller bike that will be outgrown shortly, so there is a constant temptation to buy a bike that is a bit too large on the theory that the child will "grow into" it.
I did, however, nose around the site a bit more, and found this[0].
I have known a number of folks that have lost kids, for various reasons. It's not something any parent should suffer, but I do see them (usually) move past it, and get to a state of (probably grudging) acceptance.
[0] https://www.fortressofdoors.com/memory-eternal-nikolas-douce...
It's easier for kids to start pedaling when the other foot is on the stool, so they're balanced while starting.
Once they got it they will find natural stools in the park and use them, until they don't need them at all.
There is some difficulty in starting pedaling: you need to simultaneously give a boost to the bicycle, balance yourself on a non-balanced bicycle, and leaving the breaks. The stool remove one hard task - the balance.
BTW till this day I still search for natural stools when I stop at lights, it's just more comfortable to stay this way, more balanced.
It doesn't work well for young kids because their legs aren't strong enough - it takes a lot of leg strength to pedal a bike effectively when the seat is that low. (the classic "adult on a BMX" posture, with your top knee level with your ears)
I taught a 10-year-old to ride in about an hour or two that way, using my 6yo son's bike, and the next day the 10yo and her mom were off riding all afternoon on rented bikes.
They also have balance bikes.
Also recommend Islabikes and Frog bikes for two companies that offer lighter offerings. Again you have to pay for it, but they can often be resold and a decent value later. Especially if you keep the bike clean and loved.
Gets the balancing/steering stuff out of the way and you have all the control of speed you need (as long as it's not too steep!) with the feet.
Someone gave me their old second-hand bike as a gift. But - I needed to get that bike back to where I was staying; and you can't bring bikes up onto the tram. So I could either walk for maybe an hour, or ride the bike home. One might still be tempted to walk, but here, another feature of Amsterdam came into play: It was raining, and looking like the rain would get heavier.
I fell off of that bike a dozen times if I did once. But - I just got up and tried again, right away, since there was really no other option, not even getting tired and taking a break. But once I got the hang of falling off of the bike a little more gracefully, I could actually apply trial-and-error to the riding part without worrying about the fall. Within... 15 minutes I was riding the thing.
Riding a skewed bike was very annoying for me, and I learnt to keep the balance in a couple of days.
(We still used the balance bike long after he could ride a regular bike because it was so much lighter to carry and had no greasy chain to get on clothes and car seats.)
I picked up my kid's ukulele in 2022, and it was so much easier and more approachable. Only 4 strings (one per finger), lower string tension, less finger pain. Ukulele was able to get me over the initial difficulty hump and now I know how to play ukulele, guitar, bass, mandolin, and even a little banjo.
Instead I just took them to a slight hill and we went down it with me holding or them skimming their feet for about 10 times. Then they were able to just pedal. She then was comfortable enough to go around the neighborhood. My neighborhood is really flat. She actually didn't want to stop for about 3 miles because she was doing well. We had to go to the hill for another start and then she was just good.
Same deal teaching my wife to drive a stick. Got her to go in a large gravel parking lot along a rural highway. She got going a few times and I had picked a lot with enough of a ramp out you could get to the highway without stopping. She went for about 60 miles without stopping. It took her 20 seconds to shift initially, so long she was slower than the gear needed. But it was a mini-s which had plenty of torque. She was then able to drive in stop and go traffic for another 50 miles.
Taking the pedals off is effectively almost the same thing, except that you sit instead of stand. Maybe a bit scarier at the start, but also close to the final goal.
Note: the point though the author is (or should be) making is to take "baby steps". Break down learning into smaller problems. Taking on whole new things at the same time is difficult and overloading causing frustration (esp for kids).
anyway, don't remove the pedals. find a road that slopes down slightly and have the kid just sit and coast to the bottom. add in turning and eventually pedaling.
The easiest way to get it right is if you have a ratchet and a 15mm crow's foot socket. Set it for lefty-loosey before you attack the left side of the bike and you probably can't go too far wrong. Of course, if you have a breaker bar out, this doesn't work.
The other left-threaded bit on a bike is the drive-side of the bottom bracket. Spoke nipples appear to be left threaded, but that's because in the usual case, you're looking at them from the wrong side in a truing stand.
skill one: getting off the bike
you/teacher straddle the front wheel, hold the bike stable and still, and they climb on, hands on the handle bars, sitting on the seat, feet on the pedals, then have them put their weight on the pedals instead of the seat, pedal backward (coaster brake or not). with them standing on the pedals, show them how to brake, and with the brakes on, teach them to jump off the pedals, feet onto the ground. Get them to climb on and off with brakes on but without you holding the bike. repeat till they are comfortable.
skill 2: braking, and getting off the bike
on a very shallow incline, near the bottom of a hill, i.e. bunny slope that turns flat. hold the bike from behind the seat so it doesn't roll down the hill, have them get on (and get off to test that skill again) and explain you are going to let the bike roll down the hill (you can run along and keep your hand on the seat), and their job is to experience that for a second, but brake and get off the bike. repeat as many times as necessary for them to feel comfortable and capable.
next steps are flexible/obvious. now that they can stop and get off of a moving bicycle, start higher on the slight hill so they can pick up more speed, before braking and getting off. segue into pedaling, but always with a goal/option of "stop and get off the bike". When they are comfortable, they will stop stopping and ride.
(you don't need to teach "balance" because the physics of bicycles is self-balancing. It's hard/impossible to knock over a bicycle with its wheels spinning, there is nothing to teach. what you need to overcome is the beginning cyclist's fear and tendency to do things that don't make sense)
My oldest (age four) is able to modulate his front brake usage immaculately, both when slowing down and stopping quickly. I didn't learn that skill until well into my 20's, and my wife still avoids the front brake to the point where I'm worried it might become a safety issue at some point.
Do not grab the handlebars. Grab under the back of the seat. This lets you tip the frame of the bike without touching the rider or the steering mechanism, and also modify speed by pushing or pulling.
I had training wheels but I live in the Czech republic and grew up in England.
1. He learned to ride a balance bike.
2. He learned to ride a bike with training wheels.
3. I took off the training wheels, then had him practice, without actually pedalling around yet, catching himself with his feet. He would place his feet on the pedals while I held the bike upright, than I would let go of the bike and he'd move his feet to the ground to stop himself from toppling over.
4. Once he was comfortable catching himself, he was able to start pedalling around for real, easy peasy, because he was confident in his ability to stop himself from falling if necessary.
If you do not quite remember how it was when you were first learning to ride a bicycle, you may recall (or carefully experiment with) learning to ride hands-free, and note the increase in difficulty when you start to pedal as opposed to just coasting.
The advice to start teaching kids by taking off the pedals completely is perfectly reasonable as a way of making the initial learning curve less steep.
1. He discovered balance bikes!
2. Removing a degree of freedom simplifies things
3. Removing extrinsic hard-to-control forces makes force balancing easier
4. What does it really mean to take off the pedals?
5. Solve for static stability, then dynamic stability, then controllability, then orientation/objectives, then energy management.
6. Humbly simplify
7. Share
It's similar for managing development and evolution of any real system - bikes, airplanes, software, business...
tl;dr: Front wheel fork angle causes uprightness, the overall cause of turning is due to tire shape and contact patch at lean. Countersteering is the input to start and maintain leaning.
Bicycle and motorcycle physics have a lot of different forces at play, but the main one for keeping the bike upright is the front wheel, causing corrective steering at lean.
When a bike starts to fall, the rake angle causes the wheel to "self correct" and steer the bike towards uprightness. With speed, the bike wants to stay upright and will self correct.
To steer at low speeds (most bicycle speeds), you actually turn the wheel in the direction you want to go very briefly, "fall" into a lean and switch quickly to counter steer in the other direction, keeping the bike upright.
At high speed it's a bit different. You don't need to initiate the turn. You can just skip straight to counter steering, which forces a lean and causes a turn. At speed you are constantly upright, so you need some input to tilt the bike.
The effect of leaning to the right with the wheel self-correcting left, is an overall arc to the right (vise versa).
As for gyroscopic forces, these are at play but the force is negligible for keeping the bike upright. Heavier wheels have higher angular momentum, making the bike a bit harder to force a counter steer. They also affect how quickly a bike can accelerate given a certain force.
Recommended reading: https://www.amazon.com/Motorcycle-Dynamics-Second-Vittore-Co...
Cool video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSZiKrtJ7Y0&t=3s
Run bike for the win.
Also decent kids bikes are expensive, but you can run multiple kids through them and sell for close to what you paid. Don't bother with junk department store bikes.
I didn’t realize this was why those bikes existed but that makes sense.
When they are ready the progress to a pedal bike, and they need some assistance, do not hold the bike (either by the handlebars or seat or anywhere else).
Instead, gently place your hands on their shoulders to stop them falling - this forces them to be in control of the bike’s balance without you interfering directly. They will learn to balance and pedal much faster this way.
More anecdata. All of the coaster learned kids went on to join the mountain bike team.
Not sure if it helped, but we had a Strider-brand push bike which you can and add pedals to when ready. He was already familiar with that exact bike.
He switched seamlessly from løbecykel to this one with the pedals removed, it was just the same thing, only a bit larger !
Then when he got comfortable with it, I added back the pedals. He got the hang of pedaling in ~10 minutes and a couple of runs down the street. Ever since he has been bike-mobile ! Never even thought about helper wheels.
By the time they were ready to switch to a real children's bike, didn't even need to temporarily take the pedals off, they just picked it up more or less instantly.
At least that's how it is in London for the last few years, while my kid was learning.
Training wheels always seemed to me like a wrong technique from a last century.
There's a hospital here that does a clinic on teaching kids to ride a bike and this is what they do as well.
Re: the article: he picked up riding a bike with pedals in <5 minutes after a summer of his balance bike.
I haven’t read the article yet. The question of the wipe out had to be resolved first.
It sounds like balance bikes make children more confident. I’m all for them if that’s so. They seem true to their name.
The switch to a full bike is then flawless.
Dear OP: don't worry about HN. They are insufferable cunts and have been for as long as I've been here (well over a decade).
> The accepted view: Bicycles are stable because of the gyroscopic effect of the spinning front wheel or because the front wheel "trails" behind the steering axis, or both.
https://ezramagazine.cornell.edu/summer11/researchspotlight....
If you're not already read into bicycle or motorcycle dynamics, the top google result sounds reasonable. Which makes it all the more ironic because they're talking about research which demonstrates, among other things, that it's a misconception to believe that gyroscopic forces are necessary.
Point: you can ride a bicycle without hands. That would be completely impossible without gyroscopic effect. Or you can push a bicycle forward without a rider.
Counter-point: kickscooters exist, with tiny little 6″ tyres which have almost no gyroscopic effect, and yet you can balance those in the same way as a bicycle.
over here (Europe) we give one of those to our 2-3y olds. when they get their first real bike about 1-2 y later, they just get on the bike and start cycling.
then they need to learn how to brake :-D
Obviously I was very young at the time, but I basically remember I'd initially be balanced on the training wheel which was maybe "too short" so I'd be leaned over to my left as a tricycle, but as I would get up to speed I'd be on just the bicycles wheels.
It didn't take me long to learn. It did take my dad a long while to take it off the bike however.
I'm not an expert but it seems like a decent enough way to learn that doesn't result in too many wipe outs.
The article does not mention the important difference in the steering wheel behavior: when you ride with trainer wheels (or a tricycle) you learn to steer by turning the front wheel; but when you balance on a bicycle you steer by rotating your body and turn the wheel only afterwards to "catch" the bike. These two modes of riding are almost opposite and if you learn the first one, you'd have to unlearn it the hard way.
...and that's it! Turns out the hard part is not riding a bike but riding a bike in a straight line. Once you've got the hang of riding wherever the bike seems to want to go, you can gradually learn to get it under control. Surprisingly easy!
My older kid started a little later (like 3) but after going pedal less for a year or so, adding the pedal was totally natural. He just took the bike and went off.
(unfortunately this method only really works on paved surfaces, so the scary way was probably the best option available for me growing up in the sticks.)
I literally admit that this is something that must have been obvious that I never knew before, lighten up, it's my personal blog.
Some of us learn things for the new time, and then tell our friends, and they all heard about it for the first time too, so decide to share it with others. This will inevitably reach some portion of people who have never heard of it before, as well as people like you who know about it already. Information is not uniformly distributed and some of us like to get excited about new things we just found out.
I'm sorry for being ignorant about something you already knew. I'm just one of today's lucky 10,000, and evidently there are many others on this very board. Not everybody knows everything already. https://xkcd.com/1053/
I believe the idea back in the day was so lug nuts would want to screw themselves tighter if they were loose whenever you braked as a safety feature so the wheels don't fall off. In practice it isn't really effective at unless you are doing some crazy hard braking like in a race but they should never be anywhere near loose enough to start with for such a minor force to screw or unscrew them. Your wheels aren't really suppose to be holding you up through the shear force across the studs, but held by the clamping force friction between the wheel and the wheel hub.
Tutorial complete. You just have to keep those two words in mind.
If your wrench/spanner is pointed straight up to the sky like a clock hand at 12, rotate towards the back wheel to loosen, and towards the front wheel to tighten. Important! When you put the pedals back on and rotating toward the front wheel isn't working, you've grabbed the wrong pedal. Use the other one.
The trouble with training wheels is that they are exactly backwards to really riding a bike. You turn the handlebars like you'd be driving a car, not like you do to affect balance. You can lean to the outside of the curve to go around, rather than leaning in.
I've been a balance bike evangelist ever since.
get a used balance bike off craigslist, use it for a while, send it back to craigslist. Super duper. Do recommend.
I have two kids, taught one with pedals and one without. The pedal-less was immediate in a single day, and the training-wheels pedal bike kid struggled for days until we took the pedals off. Pretty sure my training wheels experience took multiple days, though I can’t remember it clearly.
It only took about half an hour or so of effort to get over the "I'm going to fall" fear and get the feel for how a bike actually works.
The ones none of my kids could ever figure out how to ride? Nor would I expect to, because they ask you to learn too many things at the same time? The ones that have no stable position other than lying on their side?
I'll consider trying this for the "training wheels off" period, so thanks for the tip. At the same time, I don't know who figured it's a good idea to push these contraptions as starter bikes.
EDIT: balance bikes, they're called. Maybe the ability to use them is determined by a gene that isn't present in my lineage, or something.
The reverse three-wheel Mini Micro scooter fared much better, though. Not the same as balancing a bike, but the kids were able to gradually pick up on how to push off the ground with their legs - something that, more than balance, turned out to be the hurdle with the balance bikes.
Thinking about it much more now, and going off memory, they had no problems with those silly ride-on cars that are like balance bikes, except with no balance and more plastic. Now I'm not sure what's going on, why none of them could figure out they have to actually sit and push off when on the balance bike.
