riding wheelies

• 1.5 mile wheelie (good example of position)
• short video
• tips [1] [2]
  • WEAR A HELMET. Hopefully you avoid flipping backwards, but it's NOT UNLIKELY that this happens, and a helmet is the very least you can do to protect your head.
  • Lower your seat. (not sure why exactly, but everyone recommends this) Lean very far back.
  • Start by practicing uphill, since this allows you to modulate using ONLY the pedals. Once you graduate to flat ground, you'll have to use BOTH your pedals and brakes, but brakes are harder to control. So practice uphill for a while.
    • alternately, if you have a fixie, it's much easier because you can just slow down the pedals
  • You should NOT pedal ferociously once you have the wheel up high. You do need to pedal hard at the very beginning to get the front wheel up. But once your wheel is at the right height, the way you stay up is by finding the balance point, and staying there only by balance. Once you're there, you can use your pedals to help stay right at the balance point, but you won't be pedaling very hard at all to do that.
    • If you find yourself having to constantly accelerate to stay up, that means you're not leaning far back enough. This is a common problem on unicycles too. It initially feels a little scary to lean far back enough, but you have to.