I always firmly believe that many people are looking at flatland in the
wrong way. To many people flatland is: do anything on flat ground or
even off small stairsets... that technically makes me a flatlander in
their eyes then... well, anyone is a flatlander then... haha...
Unicycle disciplines are like *mirror images of their bike
counterparts*... I mean look at trials... muni... street...
respectively: biketrials, mountain biking, and BMXing.
Flatland in unicycling is derived from flatland BMX. The key to
flatland BMX is all about *flow*. Look at how they ride? They pretty
much always keep at least one wheel on the ground rolling and do a
truck load of *rolling balance tricks*. You don't see them doing street
BMX tricks like bunnyhop-barspins or bunnyhop-tailwhips in normal
circumstances because they are considered street tricks. Thus doing
crankflips off curbs and 3 sets are not flatland. It's in the name for
pity's sake: FLAT... LAND... therefore all of it is done on a flat
plain of land. As shown in the following picture:
[image:
http://www.bmxflatlandworldcircuit.com/nc/media/1/20070415-IMG_1225.gif]
Most 'flatland' riders and 'flat' videos are just *mini-street*. The
only riders capable of true flatland that I have see so far are:
Spencer Hochberg, Arthur Caron, Loic (to some extent), Xavier (to some
extent). There are more out there, but I haven't noticed yet,
apologies.
Spencer especially as he sees flatland in the proper light: i.e.: about
balance tricks, flow, no hops. Sure, him and Arthur do crankflips and
street tricks in their vids as a mess-around, but in the serious
flatland parts... they are fully capable of doing impressive balance
combo tricks, which many so called 'flatland' riders don't ever do.
Flatland vids are quite monotonous sometimes i.e.: unispin, pause, hop
hop hop, doubleflip, hop hop hop, 180 crankflip, bail, hop hop...
*Where's the flow? Where's the balance trick combos?*
I know a lot of so called 'flatland' riders will think I'm an 'ignorant
trials [censored]' that knows nothing about flat.. but hey... read what I
typed out above and think about it. I'm all for unicycling to evolve
into something truly impressive... partly the reason why I took the
effort into creating the Triton Sponge titanium frames. I take a
genuine interest in seeing things grow and evolve in the right way and
I like contributing to it by helping to un-cloud some people's opinions
and judgments.
_Someone_PLEASE_prove_me_wrong__about the general 'flatland' scene in
unicycling and bang out a proper video taken from the mold of Spencer
and Arthur's continuous rolling balance trick combos. Because to me and
many many others, it is just mini-street right now. No crankflips or
stairsets please. Just balance, rolling, and flow. No hops. BMXers
generally laugh at us, *especially at flatland*... *every* BMXer or
friend of mine that sees 'flatland' unicyclign they say: *"what the
hell, how is that flatland... it's bunch of sketchy street tricks with
no flow". *I agree with them 100% to be brutally honest. Let's see
flatland move in the right direction... go and watch Spencer's vids on
youtube and try and learn his balance combos. I'd be FAR more impressed
to see people doing 20 second clips on youtube doing one balance combo
consisting of crankrolls, legwraps, tyre-step overs etc.. rather than a
5 minute video of crankflips off 2 sets and curbs.
On a less critical note: Anyone reckon they could do megaspins on unis?
^My idea of it is: Get in a donkey kick position, but instead of
kicking the tyre backwards, do continuous backwards scuffing of the
tyre as if you are doing backwards standing 1-foot wheelwalks, but spin
in a circle whilst doing it. I chatted about this with Spencer, and
sure it is damn hard in theory, it would be sweet if someone pulled it
off.
--
Sponge
MSN: [email hidden] feel free to add🙂
Quoted message said:*"Bikes are made to do trials, unis aren't."- Joe Hodges*
*'TRITON SPONGE' (http://tinyurl.com/2r7jk6)*
-Titanium frames, available in 19", 24", 26", 29", 36"-
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