Forrest has a lot of great advice.
Someone asked me a similar question in the thread about my first video,
and here was my response, even though it's about more of what I
do...But I hope it helps you nonetheless:
Basically what I do, is warm up how Zack Baldwin said that he warmed
up. I stretch my arms and legs before a ride. I might also do some
static jumps without the unicycle, and with those jumps I tuck my legs
up under me so that my knees basically hit my chest area. I also mount
the unicycle, pull the seat out, and lower my body, and seat over the
tire, until my butt touches the tire. Essentially I'm doing sif squats
with the unicycle. I try to make it a fluid motion without using a
corrective hop until I'm upright after dipping down. This helps so that
I don't bash the back of the seat into my ribs or collarbone when
landing a big up. It keeps the seat anywhere from a little to farther
away from my torso when I land on bigger stuff, for that reason. I do
about 4-6 squats before I consider myself warmed up and ready to go.
And if you notice in video Ryan Atkins and Zack Baldwin will, before a
big up or pedal grab, quickly drop/push the seat away from them and
bring it back in right before they compress the tire, like they are
adjusting it and their center of balance. It's another part of the
technique.
Everything else is just timing, tuck and practice practice practice.
The more you practice, the easier it is to judge how far away to be
from a ledge, and how much to compress and then snap into a tuck. I use
the rebound from the tire compressing (play with the tire pressure to
see what gives you the best bounce response) to boost me into the air.
As soon as I'm coming up from the rebound, I pull my knees/legs/feet
up. I also pull up on the seat, but my legs do most of the work. The
seat just helps, along with your spare arm (with the exception of your
spare arm being able to throw your weight in different dirrections), in
angling where you want to go. The tuck part is just like when I said
that I practice a high static hop without my unicycle. I bring my knees
to my chest. With a unicycle there's a little more weight added to the
game, of course, and your feet are in a different position along with
your arm on the seat, and you are balancing on a small footprint of
rubber. A lot of hopping is a mind game. I trick my mind into believing
that a big ledge is actually smaller than it is, when I first attempt a
new height. My static sif hops, no-pre-hop top out at around 34 inches,
as we speak. Zack once told me he'd done 37" without a pre-hop. I'm not
sure if I can go 34" seat-in. I've never tried anything over 24 inches
as far as I know...and that was rolling. I really don't have any use
for rolling seat-in, or static seat-in hops. But, if I practiced I'm
sure I could go 34 inches.
Start small. Work your way up. Defeat your mental blocks. I start on
smaller things to warm up during rides. And besides, there are some
small things that I ride that are a lot harder, more precise and
technical than some bigger stuff that I do.
--Evan
--
TrialsUni
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