Cycling is a key life skill and one many parents are keen to teach
Islabikes
Learning to ride a bicycle is one of life’s milestones, a white-knuckle introduction to mobile independence. It’s a rite-of-passage, exciting yet potentially terrifying, too.
When you analyze all the parts that go into the ability to cycle, you realize how near impossible it is. Yet billions of cyclists around the globe manage it, without giving it a second’s thought. Learning to ride is a leap into the unknown, a magical mastery of control that, done right, can be a genuinely wonderful experience for the successful student.
It’s a skill that many parents are proud to pass on. But balancing on tubes slung between two rotating wheels for the first time is not easy, and there’s a lot of pressure on children to master bicycling basics quickly. Parents can find the teaching experience stressful–and often back-breaking.
There’s an easy way to learn how to cycle, and it involves no special tricks, and no teaching whatsoever. Not from anxious adults anyway. Children teach themselves. And the self-teaching method recounted below now supports a burgeoning industry of pedal-free balance bicycles. These are similar to the “Hobby horse” scooting machine developed in 1817 by a minor German aristocrat and which, once pedals were attached to it sixty years later, led to what would become the modern bicycle.
STICKS
The traditional method of teaching a child to cycle–if we ignore the Spartan-like approach of rolling the learner child down a hillside and hoping for the best–is to run alongside, controlling the steering. This may work. Eventually.
Better is to hold by the shoulders only, allowing the child to lean and steer (and crash into the parent’s legs). In Scandanavia, parents use a stick. Not to beat the slow learner, but taped to the child’s saddle or rammed between the seat stays. This does the same trick as the shoulder holding and is better for parental backs.
Sometimes these sticks are ‘invented’ and sold commercially, with anodized finishes, padded handles, and proper bolts. Also commercially available is a ‘teaching vest.’ This has a handle by the child’s shoulder blades and requires a running parent to hold on to the handle.
Neither product is necessary.
SCOOT-WEEEEEEE-BALANCE
At a tender age, children learn best by trial and error rather than formal instruction.
The actual technique of cycling is to use small body weight shifts and micro-movements of the handlebars to lean ever so slightly into and out of micro-turns. Like walking, it’s a collection of continuous small falls counterbalanced by constant controlled recoveries. (Try explaining that to a five-year-old.)
Most children will quickly teach themselves to cycle if you use the ‘scoot-weeeeeeee-balance’ method. (This also works for adult students and there are adult-sized pedal-free balance bicycles to learn on.)
First, throw away the training wheels (known in the U.K. as “stabilizers.”) Child bicycles with 12-inch wheels are for tots and so there’s little harm in letting your toddler terrorise the neighborhood on a bike fitted with training wheels but ditch them by the age of three-and-a-half.
Or maybe you’d prefer to start with a trike? These are more stable than child bikes with training wheels. Most trikes for tots are front-wheel drive, in other words without a “freewheel” on the back.
Children should not learn to ride on two wheels with such bikes; the learner bike must have the ability to pedal backward without engaging propulsion. Bikes fitted with back-pedal ‘coaster’ brakes are easier to stop by a child because legs are stronger than little hands. And many children’s bikes, sadly, have poor hand-lever brakes.
Childrens’ bikes with 20inch wheels, and smaller, generally come fitted with training wheels. Unbolt them and put them in the trash. (This is tough love, but it’s not for everybody. For instance, children with balance problems may find that using training wheels–even on bikes of 24inch and above–is the only way they will ever learn to cycle.)
Likeabike balance bike, with a soft landing of snow.
Carlton Reid
AGE
If children go straight from tricycles to bicycles, missing out on training wheels, most will be able to start their two wheeler education from about the age of three-and-a-half, although five is probably optimal. By the age of five, most children can balance pretty darn well, and they only need a nudge to pick up balancing-while-on-two-wheels skills.
From six onwards most children will take less than an hour to cycle independently once let loose on the scoot-weeeeee-balance method. The parental-handlebar-steering method or pushing-saddle-from-behind-hit-and-miss method usually start with crashes, lots of them. Some children may be put off cycling altogether by such steamroller techniques, especially if there’s any shouting involved.
BRAKING
If your child’s cycle has handlebar lever brakes or back-pedal coaster brakes, it’s sensible to teach the rudiments of braking before balancing. But don’t go overboard, your child will have enough to think about in these early stages.
Explain also about gradual braking, and the use of front and rear brakes at the same time, pointing out the pitfalls of using front or rear brakes on their own (think faceplants and skids). Bikes fitted with coaster brakes, for instance, can be skidded very easily. This is super fun for the confident child but can be downright scary for the timid child.
THE BIKE
Here’s the key to the whole experience of getting your child to cycle unaided: start with a smaller-than-you’d-think bike, or a child’s bike with the seat post lower than the child is used to. Or, best of all, a specialist hobby-horse-style cycle.
If your child’s bike is still too big, borrow a smaller one from another family.
The learner bike should be one the child can straddle comfortably, both feet flat on the ground. If pedals are fitted, remove them, and even the cranks if you wish. (Removing the pedals disables the back pedal brake function on a coaster brake-equipped bike).
A specialist balance cycle–from firms such as Islabikes and Frog Bikes–does not come equipped with cranks or pedals. The first of these modern balance bikes were made in 1997 by German firm Kokua, which marketed them under the name of Likeabike. They were originally made out of plywood, but most brands now usually fabricate with lightweight aluminum frames.
These ‘running bikes’ don’t generally have brakes: feet do the braking. They can be expensive–especially when you consider that for an older child they may only be required for an hour–but the wooden ones are handed down as family heirlooms. If you are going to purchase such a bike, give to the child at an early age. At three-and-a-half, it’ll take some weeks or months before the child gets to the feet in the air, weeeeee stage. This is normal and fine.
The “Tadpole” balance bike from Frog Bikes.
Frog Bikes
Whether own bike made small or built-for-the-job balance bike, you want a bike that your child can really sit on. Many children faced with such pedal-free bikes don’t sit fully on the saddle, preferring to do what comes more naturally: they run with them, bum in almost zero contact with the saddle. Encourage the child to sit. The easiest way to do this–without going purple in the face–is to make up some games involving the child taking his or her feet off the ground while scooting forward, forcing the bum on to the saddle.
SCOOTING
Praise your child for each longer and longer scoot. Scooting involves your child taking larger and larger steps (bum firm on the saddle, remember), using their feet to restore balance as they propel themselves forward. Some children get this method almost instantly, and progress to long weeeee’s within minutes. Other children, probably the majority, take some time to get to this letting go stage. Keep the training sessions short and fun-filled. Don’t make them training sessions at all. Go to a local petting zoo or take an outing to the park, just use the running bike as an aid to walking when there.
Once the child has mastered short scoots, and the intervals between the foot downs get slightly longer, speed will increase naturally. It needs to. It’s tough to balance a bike at 3 miles per hour, much easier twice that speed.
Encourage longer stretches of feet-up coasting, perhaps with small items, or chalk lines, placed on the ground to mark where feet have been raised and then touched back down. Children quickly work out how to keep the coasting bike upright with micro-movements on the handlebars–twisting slightly in the direction of the fall–but without the physics lecture.
WEEEEEEE
As the coasting prowess improves, the child should be able to push from the ground and scoot for long distances with feet in the air (grinning and shouting ‘weeeeeee’ is a normal part of this stage). Hesitant children will raise their feet only slightly, readying for the stabilizing foot-down. More confident children lean back, legs almost level with handlebars, and go for it!
BALANCE
Learning to cycle is nine-tenths controlled balance; pedaling is merely a means of propulsion to keep the balancing act going.
Children, and parents, often fixate on pedaling too early in the process of learning to cycle. By removing the pedals, and using a pedal-free balance bike, a huge mental block is removed.
Once you’re at the fast, fearless ‘weeeeeee’ stage, you’re almost home and dry. The child is, in fact, balancing. Some can balance at very low speeds, a sign they’ve nailed the technique.
Introduce slight downhills. Speed and coasting distances will increase, sometimes dramatically. Your child has cracked it. Now, finesse their technique. Set up ‘slow races’ between you and your child. Take off your pedals too. See who can go the slowest before touching down. Low-speed balancing is required for stopping and starting the bike.
PEDALS
Once balance has been wholly internalized, the pedals and cranks can be re-fitted to the modified bike, or the child can leave the balance bike behind in favor of a ‘real’ bike. It’s critical to raise the saddle back to normal height.
Adding pedals into the equation makes it easier for a child to pick up the required speed for long-distance balance, but the teacher will need to offer frequent verbal encouragement for the younger child to keep pedaling. Many children, even those adept at balancing while using the scoot method, put in too few pedal revolutions. It’s a significant cause of parental stress: “Pedal! Pedal! You must pedal, or you fall off!”
BACK OFF
It’s tempting to hold on to the saddle or handlebars of a learner child, but this is detrimental to their learning and, just like with the use of training wheels, doesn’t allow the child to take control of his or her own balance. It’s also bad for your back.
Three-and-a-half is about the right age for most children to start cycling.
Carlton Reid
CORNERING
Cycling in a straight line for some distance without a helping hand is a major achievement for a young child. Their next major achievement is to master cornering. Life isn’t all straight paths.
Most children, given a big enough training zone, will get to grips with cornering soon after they’ve mastered balancing. Making wide, smooth turns is a simple matter of making slightly larger micro-movements on the handlebars, looking slowly and incrementally in the direction you wish to turn, and making slight center-of-gravity weight displacements. Hard to explain, easy to do, so let the child work it out for themselves. A large, empty school playground or traffic-free cul-de-sac are good places to learn to corner.
Start with large circles. As the child gets more confident, ask for tighter turns, both to the left and right. Cones or stones can be placed as chicanes. Tighter corners require tighter turns, teaching the child to lean further over to steer, an advanced technique that comes with practice. Keeping the pedal on the inside of the turn raised will lead to fewer spills.
SADDLE UP
Once the child is adept at pedaling, can balance at speed, and can turn corners without tumbling, it’s time to raise the child’s saddle, so the pedaling action is more efficient. It’s no longer necessary for both feet to be flat on the ground when straddling a bike, in fact this is positively detrimental. As a rule of thumb, one foot should be able to touch the ground–on tippy-toes–when the child is sat on the saddle. Efficient pedaling requires just slightly flexed knees. Nudge up the seat post in small increments day by day until the right saddle height is reached.
At this early stage in the young cyclist’s life, it’s also a good idea to explain about foot positioning on the pedal. A very common mistake is for the child to pedal with the middle or even heel of the foot. The ball of the foot–the metatarsal heads–should be over the pedal spindle. Many adult cyclists are guilty of this sin too; they make cycling look as though it’s an awful lot of effort.
TEACHING ZONE
The choice of learning area is important. Asphalt allows the child to speed along, aiding balance, but asphalt is not soft. Grass is soft, better to fall on, but sometimes it’s too soft, hindering forward progress.
Whichever surface you choose, make sure the learning area is free of obstacles in a very wide arc.
PROTECTION
Fingerless cycling gloves, called ‘track mitts,’ are useful because grazing hands is the most typical injury for beginners. Wristguards and elbow and knee pads are very much optional (and can impede learning because they’re bulky), you may feel that a helmet is not. If used, helmets should fit snugly, and the straps should be done up tightly.
EYES FRONT
Children tend to look at the person teaching them to ride, leading to falls. Looking at the ground is also a common cause for learner crashes. Ask learners to eyeball an object in the near distance, straight ahead, and to focus on that instead of looking around. When balance has been achieved, gradually introduce the concept that steering on a bike is often accomplished by looking, gently, towards the direction you want to travel.
THE FINAL WORD
Some children are proficient at pedaling soon after they’ve learned to walk, others can still be wobbly at age nine or above. Every child is different. It’s very difficult–and probably counter-productive–to push cycling on a child who’s not ready or not willing.
The scoot-weeeeeeee-balance method is one for your child to take at their own sweet pace, radically reducing the number of falls common with other methods, a self-help confidence builder for your child. Whether learning to ride takes an hour or many weeks, it’ll be worth it in the end.
