Text: Chris Ford. Source: This article is from the November 2011 issue of Ride Magazine.
If you are passionate about cycling, you’ll want your kids to get onto their two wheels as quickly as possible. This can be a tough time for parents, but a clear plan can limit the frustration.
Building balance
By their second birthday, most youngsters are ready for their first step into the world of cycling. A balance bike or scooter is a great purchase, and there are many to choose from. A wooden LIKEaBIKE is at the top of the range, but your child may get just as much pleasure from a more budget-sensitive option, or even a plastic scooter. The idea is simple – the youngster sits onboard, feet firmly on the ground, and slowly wobbles forward, walking with the feet and steering with the hands. There are no pedals to get in the way, and usually no brakes.
If you don’t want to buy one of these and then have to purchase a proper bike just a few months later, get a proper bike, take off the pedals and let your children scoot around like that for a while. As long as you buy the right size (and not something for them to grow into), this works almost as well as a balance bike. The main idea is to get them scooting along unaided for as great a distance as possible between scoots.
For parents, these are nervous times, and there is a temptation to jump in and help every time your children look as if they might be falling. If you feel you need to help, do it by holding the child’s clothing at the back – just a handful of T-shirt. This gives them the feeling that they can’t fall, but still leaves them in charge of balancing and steering the bike, and you can gradually hold on less often. Soon they’ll be begging you to leave them alone.
Pedals and brakes
In addition to steering and balance, kids need to learn pedalling and braking before they are able to start cycling freely. If they are on a scooter bike without brakes, they will be able to learn these skills only with their first proper bike.
Stablisers are not popular these days, but they do allow youngsters who already know how to balance and steer to learn pedalling and braking very quickly. An ideal situation is for them to continue riding the scooter bike, while making some journeys on the pedal bike. A bike with stabilisers can quickly be adapted by raising the training wheels a couple of centimetres from the ground so they give less continuous support. This encourages the transfer of those scooter-bike skills to the proper bike, and the stabilisers will be there for only a few weeks, at most.
At this age, using the brakes is one of the most unnatural things, and harder to learn than you might imagine. Use language that is more physical. Saying “use your brakes” is not as helpful as saying “squeeze your brakes” when you want to fix the right ideas in children’s brains.
Try a few games of follow-the-leader in a quiet parking lot or paved area, so they get used to the idea of stopping behind you and you behind them, sometimes slowly, and sometimes quickly. If you have not mastered the track stand yet, this is the time to learn.
At this age, using the brakes is one of the most unnatural things, and harder to learn than you might imagine
Riding and pedalling unassisted is a big moment and you want it to be a positive experience, so go back to holding the T-shirt to offer support and build confidence. Combining pedalling, braking, balancing and steering is a lot to think about, so create easy targets for your child to achieve. Find some level ground and let them know when they have managed to pedal unassisted to the next tree or lamppost. With balance-bike experience, many children make this transition in half an hour or less.
Crash course
All children are bound to fall off their bikes. How you handle it will determine how soon they get back on, as well as their long-term attitude to falling. My approach was always built around the idea of getting them to learn from the fall, calming them down with some gentle conversation while they get over the initial shock.
Even when my heart was racing, I trained myself to say, “Wow, amazing crash” instead of, “Oh my darling, are you okay? Where does it hurt?” as I picked them up and dusted them off, checking for cuts and scrapes. I always asked them what happened, focusing their attention on the train of events instead of the cut or graze they might have acquired. This made them very aware of how they could ride differently the next time.
If you introduce this questioning mindset at an early age, they develop a strong self-coaching attitude as they get older. They become quick to analyse new skills.
Speed and obstacles
The biggest fear, as my boys became more confident, was their determination to go fast. Two things we worked on as soon as they could pedal away from me was looking and reaction times when hitting the brakes. We played simple games in the park, designed to get them looking ahead rather than down. We zig-zagged around cones, raced between trees and played stop-go games. Although they were having fun, there was a serious purpose. They had to see what was coming and maintain quick reactions.
Roughing it
As soon as your young cyclists are free of stabilisers and able to ride a short distance, get them used to lumpy trails, gravel tracks and stony ground. You might have to back-track a bit to boost their confidence by holding onto them again for a while, but this is better than letting them fall off whenever it gets rough.
The main skill to focus on at this early age is line choice. Talk to them about looking ahead and searching for the smooth ground, or the hard-packed gravel where they will find grip. You can work on where they are looking with simple timber ramps in your garden or a park nearby. Even a plank that is 15-centimetres wide and about 1,2-metres long can be raised slightly on one side to make a bridge for them to ride over. They need to learn to look at the front edge as they approach, and then switch their gaze to the exit line so they stay straight and balanced. You can add longer planks and narrower ones as they progress; just ensure they look ahead and pedal smoothly.
Moving around
Riding a mountainbike on a downhill depends on your ability to stand up and shift your weight back, bending knees and elbows slightly and tilting your heels back. The idea is to transfer the braking force of any obstacles that you hit on the trail into your feet, instead of your hands or your butt. Most adults do some of these things, but very few have good footwork. Riders adapt their style to the trails they want to ride, with some compromises.
If we can get our young mountainbike riders to sort out these issues at an early age, their progress will be fast, easy and probably less crash-prone than many of their parents.
For some kids, standing up is easy, but for many it is a move that requires time and space, as they learn to link all the movements together. Go to a park and give them a slow demonstration, emphasising what they are doing. Get them to shout out the main points: level cranks; stand up; move back; toes to the sky.
From these beginnings, you can get them to brake harder, using both front and back brakes, building confidence as they link good body position to overall control.
Spin to win
Often, the first bike has just one gear and kids learn to push the pedals harder to go faster. As soon as they get geared bikes, you need to teach them about spinning a light gear, and show them how to be comfortable at a high cadence – around 80 rpm is ideal. This early introduction to spinning a light gear will have a dramatic effect on how far (and where) they can ride. By spinning a light gear, they engage their slow-twitch muscle fibres, which generally have good endurance. As soon as they need to push hard, they engage the fast-twitch muscle fibres, suited to quick bursts of speed, but not recovery. Now that my boys have learned how to spin, they can ride longer climbs and even loose, rocky surfaces, spinning a light gear.
Even when my heart was racing, I trained myself to say “wow, amazing crash” instead of “oh my darling, are you okay? Where does it hurt?”
Trail time
Perfect technique takes time and should not be the goal. For children, cycling should be about fun, getting some exercise and exploring new trails besides the kiddie tracks in bike parks. Topping up skills from time to time is important, but getting out on the bike is what really matters.
Pedal to the…
If you are into racing, and your kids want to follow suit, they might need cleated shoes and pedals, but if your riding is mainly for enjoyment there is no real reason to push them into using these until they are in their teens. Besides, your child is likely to develop far sharper skills by riding without them.
Until recently, BMX novices and riders younger than nine years were not allowed to use cleated pedals, as the goal is for riders to be safer and develop good technique first. Remember, the better you teach your children when they are young, the more you will be able to learn from them when they grow older.
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