This guy was not really trying to explain to hacker parents how they should teach their kids to ride a bike. As has has been adequately demonstrated in the comments they already know aaaaaaaall about that. His actual point, which seems to have whooshed past most people’s heads, is much more interesting: can you learn a thing more effectively by first simplifying that thing so radically that a seasoned user would find it useless? Also not exactly a totally new idea but, depending on context, just counterintuitive enough that you may miss it.
I would love to see this approach in language learning, which I am fairly bad at. I'm very much driven by results rather than accuracy, and so often a teacher will correct me on the finer points of the language I'm using and I'll either no idea what they are talking about, or know that I am certainly not going to remember that detail. In either case I find it very demoralising.
If there was a "Learn to speak German like a 5 year old" course then I would love that. Give me something usable to motivate me further, then I can come back for more complexity when I actually want and need it.
But isn't this the case for all language courses? They start you slow and build up? I feel like it isn't, although perhaps it is just the courses I have seen. It seems to me that the people who teach languages generally really like languages, so they understandably revel in the details. I, however, do not (although I wish I did).
I realise now this is a bit of a rant. Apologies!
I would think such a course might ingrain bad habits. The case system sounds strange when used incorrectly, and it'd be much harder to re-learn it if the wrong version started to become familiar to you.
Folk sometimes can't see the Linkedin post for the trees.
Don’t Miss the Post for the Trees – Here’s Why Most People Do
You see it all the time. A post comes through your feed. It's insightful. It’s bold. It’s… mostly ignored.
Why? Because people don’t actually engage with the core idea — they react to what they think it says.
The same thing happens in business: - Founders get stuck in the weeds of their product without seeing the bigger market opportunity. - Teams hyper-focus on the tech, missing the customer pain point. - Investors hear the pitch, but miss the deeper vision driving it.
People miss the post for the trees.
Here’s the thing: breakthroughs happen when you push past surface-level reactions. The best founders? They’re not just building products — they’re connecting dots others miss. The best marketers? They’re not just optimizing campaigns — they’re shifting narratives. The best investors? They’re not chasing trends — they’re seeing past the noise.
If you want to stand out in a noisy world, here’s the question to ask yourself: Am I reacting to the surface? Or am I leaning in to understand what’s really being said?
The magic is always in the nuance. The signal is often buried in the noise. The big ideas? They’re the ones that most people scroll past.
So… don’t.
(I'm sorry I had to)
And now you’re all just being mean.
It's funny really. I assumed by the context of being posted here on HN that this wasn't literally about teaching children to ride a bike.
I'm reminded of the approach taken by the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP): start with this magical thing called Scheme and learn simple programming techniques and general principles like abstraction, then gradually add the "pedals" back until you've basically learnt to program in assembly and write a compiler for your high-level language.
Agree with the point of this post. I'd never heard of balance bikes, and then my wife did some research when we had our first kid and found out about this.
We've now taught both of our kids to bike by starting with a balance bike, and the comparison with their friends who learned with training wheels was amazing - the balance bike kids were zooming around earlier, confidently, and with many fewer spills than the training wheel cohort.
Also, you can get a balance bike with a handbrake, which sets them up well for getting a bike with handbrakes instead of coaster brakes. Kids bikes in the US have to be sold with coasters but there are several manufacturers (like woom) who make it really easy to remove the coaster and have front and rear hand brakes.
Also also, most kids bikes in the US are too heavy: they're tough and cheap but it makes it hard to control them. Woom and Isla and probably a few others now make aluminum frame bikes for kids that are much more appropriate weight for their sizes, though at a bit of a cost.
We were also skeptical, but bought a used Puky balance bike [0] for our daughter when she was 1,5. It cost 20 EUR and basically had everything a normal bike has (brakes, added reflectors, bell) and she was able to use it for longer distances (2 km to daycare) very quickly and safely. This was a huge benefit for us, as walking this distance was usually an endless litany of "don't wanna walk, carry me please, take me on your shoulders please, etc", and a 2 year also doesn't really like sitting in a stroller anymore.
When she was 4, we bought her a regular bike. The "learning process" went like this: I told her "it's like your old bike, but with pedals to drive faster". She sat on it, used it like a balance bike for 3 rounds in our driveway, and then started to test the pedals. After literally 5 minutes, I went for a drive with her through our neighborhood.
We were completely flabbergasted. It took both me and my wife 2 long Sunday afternoons with our dads in a large parking space to learn to ride a bike. We both started with training wheels when we were 2.
[0] https://www.gigasport.de/puky-laufrad-12-lr-1l-br-pink-72928...
I remember coaster brakes fondly. As an American kid, all of my bikes had them. What was great about them was that you can engage them so suddenly and forcefully that you instantly lock the rear wheel. If you did that on wet asphalt at high speed and jerk the bike just right, you could spin the bike around 180 degrees or more. It was a great day when I (accidentally) found that out. You can also do that somewhat on dry pavement, but your rear wheel is going to have a reduced lifespan.
I think that coaster breaks (and maybe steel frames) are better suited to kids who want to be rough with their bike. My wheels were never very true, and they would have rubbed awfully with rim breaks. (Disk breaks were unheard of on kids bikes then, and I think are still pretty rare now.) The main downside is that if you loose the chain, you loose all breaking power. That happened once to me, but thankfully there was a nice dirt ditch close at hand.
I prayed for long stretches of dry days during the summer when I was a kid, because we had a tree-lined trail with an incline leading to a back field. The trees were such that there was little to no grass on the house side of the trail, so when it dried up nice it would become dusty and loose. My siblings and I would spend all day taking turns ripping down that trail then locking up the brakes to go sliding into the dirt patch, sending up dust clouds and competing to see who could make the biggest.
We kept this up into our teens (bc we were rural way outside of town and our parents were luddites about the internet so we had little else to do after playing all our video games to death) and I got to the point I could drift down the latter portion of the trail and right the bike and ride away without touching the ground. I had moved on to a regular "mountain" bike by my teens so I had to tighten my rear brake and true my wheel so it didn't rub to get enough stopping force to lock out the rear wheel. At one point I was using that move as a core workout lol. (That and side flips on the trampoline.)
You can definitely lock up the rear wheel with hand brakes. Still happens to me semi-regularly purely by accident when I have to stop suddenly.
You can even do 360s with coaster brakes. We wore out many tires at the park down the road from my house. It had a gentle slope that got you up to the perfect speed for coaster break fun on the smooth asphalt entrance road.
You could technically footjam, just need to show the kids enough BMX or fixed gear videos first...
It's very true! (about locking the wheel with coaster breaks)
I broke my jaw this way when I was 6 or 7. :-) Tried to do a 90 degree skid going down a steep alley and did an endo, landing on my chin. Do not recommend.
I mean, I probably would have broken some bones anyway with the way I biked at that age, but this particular one might not have happened without the coaster breaks.
We haven't quite gotten to that stage with my 7yo yet. 12yo wasn't too rough on her bike but 7yo is, um, er, let's say he doesn't have the wisdom of being older yet.
> We've now taught both of our kids to bike by starting with a balance bike,
I looked at the balance bike, thought "what a waste of money" and told my kid "just scoot up and down this level pathway while I fix the pool pump. don't worry about pedaling." and 5 minutes into the pump repair he was balancing just fine.
I'm not buying a toy that gets used for 5 minutes only. Whether I can afford it or not is irrelevant.
How old was your kid? I mean apart from learning to balance itself there is a matter of how strong the thigh muscles are in order to pedal. If your kid was like 5 then it makes sense that it would not be that interesting. If your kid is like 3 or sth, then a balance bike can be a great means of transportation for them. They can use it really a lot and enjoy it, until they can actually pedal on a normal bike in a way that it can be practical. The point of the balance bike is not "to learn balance", but to actually be used for moving around.
We got about two years per kid out of it (age 2-4). 4 years of amortized bike for something like $100 seemed pretty good, and it was in good enough shape after that we gave it to a neighbor. It's definitely not a 5 minute thing if used as the primary bike for a child too young for a pedal bike.
A balance bike is a way of transportation for kids, they can use balance bikes for a long time before they are comfortable with biking with pedals. We are talking years with a balance bike and then there is an overlap where they prefer the balance bike.
It is also alot more light weight than a normal bike so it is actually better for you and the kid. I transported a kid and a balance bike easily on a normal bike for more than 20 km, they managed about 10 km on their own.
> We are talking years with a balance bike and then there is an overlap where they prefer the balance bike.
Let me clarify - I'm not saying you can't continue using it for years after.
I'm saying there is no point to continuing using it once the kids has developed their balance. That development typically takes only a few dozen minutes, at most.
As an analogy, consider reading. Your kid can, after learning to read, continue reading the level-1 (Fun With Dick And Jane type) books for years, but why would you encourage that?
My son kept using it because it was fun. You don't have to optimize everything.
By the way, buying things that are useful for a short amount of time is not such a waste if you embrace the second hand market. Which at least in my country, is very lively for kids' stuff.
Second hand? What a waste! The neighborhood co-working space has a free pile of kids stuff divided by age range. It works pretty much like a library: people take some and leave some. Every once in a while some stuff gets thrown out because it's broken or too used up and donations come in regularly. They got to a point where they had to refuse some donations because they had no room.
> It works pretty much like a library: people take some and leave some
Sounds like second hand.
A kid that can use a balance bike is a lot faster on that than on a normal bike for a long time, they have a lot more fun as well. So it is practical as a transportation, which is what bicycles are for me.
IME balance bikes is the greatest thing for bicycles since the safety bicycle. My family are cyclists, my kids easily cycled 20km per day before turning six. I got a balance bike for my second child because I needed to get around faster and I do not like having to transport my children. At 3 years old we could do 3 km with the balance bike in a pinch.
There is a reason electic bikes are cheap and easy to use, when you remove pedals and chain the construction get so much easier the same is true for an balance bike.
The point you're missing is that your kid could have played on a balance bike years before it was old enough to be introduced to the real bike.
Also, there might be plenty of cheap used balance bikes out there. We bought ours for 10-20 bucks, our 2.5 year old used it until she got promoted to real bike with 3.5 or so and had zero issues.
Compare that to me as a kid, where would I had the training wheels nonsense, and it took me waaaay longer to learn how to ride a bike.
I'm slightly surprised this is such a revelation in this thread, around these parts (Berlin, Germany), balance bikes are extremely common and training wheels are seen as a maladaptive thing from yesteryear.
Usually people get balance bikes for kids that are too small for a normal bike, so they use it for some time before they get tall enough to change (around a year or 2).
> toy
A toy? The balance bike was our kid's secondary mode of transportation for 2.5 years, after our bike trailer.
> I'm not buying a toy that gets used for 5 minutes only
Round here loads of kindergarten-age kids use their balance bike for transportation every single day. I saw one zooming along behind her/his parent (who was pushing another kid along in a buggy) first thing this morning.
Isla discontinued selling in the US. Frog is another UK company that makes cheap and light. Also look at Prevelo or Cleary (slightly heavier). These bikes all hold up well, other than replacing tires and occasionally brake pads.
They also hold value well. I’ve been buying/selling used kids bikes on FB as my kids outgrow them, and so far been averaging about $15/year to keep my kids on primo bikes.
The ins and outs of that coaster brake rule provide a lot of wiggle room. My kids started on balance bikes and have moved up to a 12" and 24" ( wheel size ) from Cleary with hand brakes. They missed the regression of coaster brakes and training wheels. Geometry for kids bikes mainly comes down to the scale of the cranks. Small cranks are needed to lower the foot position and center of gravity enough to be 'in scale' with how we tend to consider bike geometry to work, but the shorter cranks also limit the suitability to a shorter leg length, so my kids' Cleary Gecko is pretty small on my 4yo, but she's ridden it for two years.
Small kids need smaller components, but it's hard to make small components reliable and cost effective. I really appreciate the folks who took the time to translate the same darn brake levers used all over the world to a size suitable for a 2 year old's hand. They're the cutest thing and they're the first thing I had to teach my son how to use after he was cooking it down hills on the balance bike. They get banged up first on a fall, they get merciless treatment, and they perform the same way I expect mine or any other to perform.
Balance bikes are all the rage in Tokyo. I have heard from parents that their kid learned to ride a regular bike in a day or two after pushing around a balancing bike for a couple of years. We agreed that learning to ride a regular bike a kid (without first using a balance bike) was tough!
I have a stepson. We had a balance bike for him; one of his weekends with his dad, his dad got him a bike and he pretty much just started cycling immediately. We bought a bike and he barely needed help. It was pretty remarkable.
Yeah, both my wife and myself learned with training wheels (I don't think balance bikes were a think) and it was a rather long process involving being scared, not wanting to remove the training wheels, and having an adult hold us and basically deceive us by releasing when we weren't suspecting.
My son had a balance bike when he was around 2 or 3. It then became too small for him. We bought him a normal bike when he was 5. We thought that maybe he would still need training wheels because it had been a few years since he last used the balance bike, but said "let's try without them just in case". He learned to ride in literally less than an hour, without any fears or surprises, and has never fallen so far unless when he gets cocky and thinks he can ride behind very slow pedestrians at like 1 km/h.
Wait what? “Kids bikes in the US have to be sold with coaster brakes”. Is that true?
Yeah, Seth from Berm Peak did a great youtube video about it.
Oh good god can we not reference random videos by name? If there’s a point to be made then make it and reference the video as a source. I will not do your work for you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRBiFAbuajU "The dumbest bike law you've never heard of"
Bro, you asked him to do work for you...
Indeed! This is an age-old method, this is what a dandy horse is for! In France, and surely many other places, you see the kids of young age on dandy horses ("draisiennes") coming to and from the school supervised by their parents. As a rite of passage towards the bicycle :)
Ditto for Germany as well. Most kids get a Puky fahrrad and they are ready to ride a cycle when the time comes.
https://mytoys.scene7.com/is/image/myToys/ext/13468895-01.jp...
In France and Belgium, Decathlon makes neat bikes with pedals that can be taken off easily and properly (including the cranks) turning them into a "normal" draisienne.
This means the kids can easily try it with pedals on, take them off again if it doesn't work, etc, and it looks less like a "baby bike" (which matters for some kids). I think they're really nice.
These were around in the US back in the day, but known by the name "hobby horse." Relatively few of them survived, but I've seen them in a few collections in my travels, chiefly the Bicycle Museum of America in New Bremen, OH...which I highly recommend visiting if you happen to be passing by. Pretty neat bit of history and I'd love to try and make one with wooden wheels one day.
Both my kids learned on a "draisienne" and they hoped on a regular bike like it was nothing the first day they got it. Kids in the neighborhood who didn't learn on a draisienne, but instead got small wheels, really struggled with balance, and some are still scared to ride their bikes to this day (I'm talking 5-9 years old kids), while my kids are riding with no hands. I don't know if it's enough to see a pattern, but I'm convinced :)
I taught my son to ride using training wheels. He rode around for a few days and asked me to take them off. So, I took them off. And when I came back outside from putting the tools and training wheels away, he was riding his bike as if he'd never not ridden it. I do like the author's idea however.
By the way, did you know that the the right pedal is right hand thread, but the left pedal is left handed thread? If it wasn't, the left pedal, being right hand threaded, would come loose easily. And that was a Wright Brothers innovation.
I suspect a lot depends on the age and motor development level that people here are not talking about, and that there should a certain age where a kid has not developed the muscles as much as to bike fast enough to pedal comfortably and fast enough to be able to balance, and an age after where, once one has figured how to pedal comfortably, balancing would not be that hard. I would assume that it would be harder to balance in the first place if you have to struggle putting force to pedal, which also probably means you cannot develop a sufficient speed either.
Love this soundbite. I did not know this and will totally use it to sound smart at dinner parties.
On a somewhat related note, the reason why Peugeot cars have a "0" in their model numbers (e.g. 208, 308, 408, etc.) goes back to the days before electric ignition, and when you still needed a crank to start the engine. The model number was in the middle of the grill, and the crank would go into the "0".
Apparently the tradition continues. On our Peugeot 407, the button to open the boot (trunk) is in the "0" on the "407" badge.
The problem with training wheels is that they train how to ride a quad, not a bike. On a quad, when you turn the handlebar to the left, you go to the left. On a bike, you fall to the right.
I vaguely remember my training wheels were set a bit higher and not touching the ground unless I was leaning a lot. So this setup would aid training to ride properly.
It's actually to stop it being screwed in so tightly you can't remove it. The threads are such that in normal usage the pedals turn the same way you'd unscrew them.
The training wheels on the bike I learned on didn't have an additional brace to stop them from bending. (they were basically an L shape, only supported at the top)
I assume that was helpful for me, as they gave less and less support as they deformed over time and I had to properly balance to stay upright. I was still quite surprised with myself after they were taken off.
I'm having a really hard time verifying that it was a Wright Brothers innovation.
I can find claims that it was so, but nothing substantial. For example, this 1959 kids book - https://archive.org/details/wilburorvillewri0000augu/page/17... .
On the other hand, I can find cranks which had reversed threads, pre-dating 1900, like US643349A filed 1895 where "The screw-threads on the parts b b' of the shaft are oppositely directed, or, in other words, are right and left hand threads".
It's described as protecting the ball-bearings, not to prevent coming loose.
https://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Fa... says:
> In 1900, the Wrights announced a "bicycle pedal that can't come unscrewed." Pedals were mounted to the crank by threaded spindles. On early bicycles, both crank arms had standard right-hand threads. As the cyclist pedaled, the action tended to tighten one pedal and loosen the other, with the result that one pedal kept dropping off the bike. British inventor William Kemp Starley had solved a similar problem years before when the right-hand cups that housed the crank or "bottom" bearing on early bicycles kept coming loose. He simply reversed the thread direction on the right cup so the pedaling action kept it tight. It wasn't long before bicycle makers realized the same solution could keep the pedals in place. Wilbur and Orville were in the vanguard of those manufacturers that offered right-hand threads on one crank arm and left-hand threads on the other.
That is, the Wright Brothers were early promoters of the design, but not the innovators.
This is exactly how I teach people to drive stick, and they’ll learn within 30 minutes. Put them on an empty road with a downward slope. The car will roll on its own, without them having to use the gas pedal. Then they can just practice switching into first without the risk of stalling. After a few times integrate using the gas pedal.
> This is exactly how I teach people to drive stick, and they’ll learn within 30 minutes. Put them on an empty road with a downward slope. T
I do it exactly the other way: put them on an empty road with a slight uphill.
With the parking brake on, let them practice getting a feel for when the clutch "bites". When it does, put the parking brake down and the car remains stationary.
Do that a few times (10m, or less) and the learner develops an intuition all by themselves for how the clutch pedal works (there's some travel until it "bites", the expected type of progression of the pedal, etc).
Can't teach that when they learn to use it like a button (which is what happens when they learn to change with the car in motion).
I've had success with getting people to do a clutch-only start then stop several times over. Once they get a feel for the engagement zone and realize that they can speed up the process by applying gas somewhere around it then it's all (metaphorically) downhill from there.
This is how I taught myself how after having multiple people tell me things like "it's just a continuous motion you do with both legs", "you just let the other pedal out while you give it gas", etc. Driving a manual seems to be one of those things that few people seem to be good at teaching because they forget how frustrating it can be to learn.
Oh man yeah the advice about continuous motion is not right. A clutch is a torque control device, in the case of a car it’s more like a torque limiting device. The more you let the pedal out the more torque you allow the engine to apply to the wheels up until the point where the torque you allow exceeds the engine’s available torque at a given rpm and throttle position. So if you’re constantly letting the clutch out you’re ramping up the torque limit linearly but the engine speed and wheel speed don’t match and if the engine speed is low of course the engine can easily stall.
Instead what you want to do, what most people do subconsciously is let the clutch out partially until it is allowing the engine to apply some of its available torque but not all, and then pause there until the car’s speed roughly matches the engine speed, at which point the clutch will stop slipping even though you still have the pedal partially depressed, after which you should be able to rapidly raise your foot from the clutch and feel no acceleration or deceleration. For an experienced driver that pause is less than like half a second from standstill. Also technically the point at which you want to pause the clutch let out depends on a whole bunch of things like how quickly you want to pull off, how much torque the engine can provide and whether you’re on a hill etc, but we just do this intuitively with experience.
This is like a super over-complicated way to think about it and I would never try to teach a learner driver by first explaining this lol but the point is, you find the engagement point and hold there for a while and then release when the car is moving. This is what we all do but it helps to understand why we do it so we don’t explain things wrong.
I feel like people also don’t get what applying more throttle does while the clutch is slipping. All it does is raise the engine rpm, it will apply absolutely no more torque (and therefore acceleration) no matter how much you press down the throttle. While the clutch is slipping the clutch pedal controls your torque and therefore acceleration. You need some throttle though to give you some room for error and some minimum torque to work with.
The funny thing is when I first started learning to drive, it seemed impossible to get right without stalling or bunny-hopping or something else going wrong. Yet now after years of driving it feels like there's a huge window of acceptable throttle and clutch. Apply tons or throttle or hardly any. Release the clutch carefully or quickly. Car always starts great. There must be so much muscle memory magic to it. I don't think I could bunny-hop the car anymore if I tried.
Release the clutches linearly in half a second with the engine at 1k rpm and bunny hop away lol
But you’re totally right. You can pull away quickly by letting your rpm build up and choosing an aggressive clutch position while applying enough throttle to keep the rpm constant, alternatively in most cars you can pull away on a fairly steep hill with no throttle if you just barely let the clutch engage and hold it at that point until the car is moving steadily
Let's not forget modern cars have "throttle adaptations" and will automatically compensate for the driver's lack of throttle input. If you just release the clutch pedal slowly, the engine will rev itself enough not to stall and the car will start moving.
I've also noticed you can release all pedals while driving these days and instead of eventually slowing to a stall, the car will only slow until it's happily rolling along in gear at some sort of very slow minimum speed. I presume that's the same feature?
Pretty much any non-carbureted car should do that. All fuel injected cars have some mechanism for controlling idle, which involves some kind of valve bypassing the throttle (for mechanical throttle linkages) or just directly actuating the throttle blades (for drive-by-wire systems). There should be enough travel in the idle circuit to allow a tiny opening to keep idle low enough once the engine is warm, and a large enough opening to keep idle high enough to prevent stalling when the transmission is engaged.
Weird. It didn't click for me until I had to stop on a hill and then go up it. And that is how I taught a few friends (after a few flat street trials)
When I taught my sister how to drive a standard, the one sentence description that I gave her (that she still remembers today) was "before you do anything, push in the clutch".
This is exactly what it reminded me of. My dad taught me by setting me up on a flat surface (parking lot) and getting me to try and find the sweet spot where I could press on the gas a little. As in "let off the clutch a bit and press on the gas" with a bunch of ambiguity in the middle; how much should I do of either, why? When I was teaching my gf, I quickly realized this made no sense at all, and did exactly as you described. It didn't completely alleviate the stress, and I feel a bit bad that I put her through it, but just feathering the clutch is a massively better way to get a feel for it.
Wonder if you could do it with the front of the car jacked up.
I couldn't figure it out even with this. Then my friend explained how a clutch worked and I started it on the first try. And I had been driving a tractor for years. But a tractor is a different torquey beast.
Someone recently told me that petrol and diesel engines with manual transmission feel very different. He told me that driving his dad's manual transmission diesel engine was easier because the clutch was "more forgiving". I cannot driving manual, so I have no idea about it. My guess: That tractor is diesel.
Thanks, gonna try this with my neighbors car!
Interesting… I learned exactly the opposite way and I’d argue it was easier. Feet on clutch and brake. Start the engine. Get used to the feeling. Gear stick into first. Back to neutral. Give it a wiggle, that’s how you know you’re in neutral. Practice changing from neutral to first and back. Foot off the brake, practice holding the engine at 1k, 1.5k, 2k rpm.
Talk through the next bit first: Hold engine at 1.5k rpm. Ease off clutch just enough to start engaging and rolling forwards. Back on the clutch then gently break to a stop. Repeat until confident.
Etc. etc. The whole time the learner is in control of the car and they learn the basics without having to worry about steering.
I think this is basically the same thing, just with the other steps included. On the right surface in first gear you don't need the brake, so just controlling the clutch is enough to move the car
It's like the author has never heard of balance bikes, but they're very common, and have been for over a decade. FWIW, I taught my kid to ride when he was 3 by putting him at the top of a wheelchair ramp and letting him go. Took him 5 seconds, and he was riding around the park by himself by the second attempt. He'd never been on a bike before.
>It's like the author has never heard of balance bikes, but they're very common, and have been for over a decade.
Every time a post like this comes up a bunch people haven't heard of them. I'm sure it helps, especially with really little kids, but honestly kids learn to ride bikes pretty easy once they decide they want to really learn regardless of pedals or not.
This. Here (NL) where pretty much everyone can bike and a substantial portion of the population goes to work/groceries/etc. by bike, most kinds start with what we call a 'walking bike' (pretty much the same as a balance bike). Most kids are already pretty fast on them before switching to a bike with pedals.
It's also often recommended not to use training wheels. Just go balance bike -> pedal pike.
Balancing is the easy part. Progressing from stand still, to pedalling, while maintaining balance proved much harder (for my child). However, once mastered, the transition to confident rider was fast, I'm sure mostly thanks to having started on a balance bike early, and never having an interest in those scooters that every other kid seems to love (seemingly at the expense of learning to ride a proper bike)
Strider bikes. And yes, they are amazing. Ours was 2.5 and she insisted she was ready for a big kid bike. Was peddling that afternoon although couldn’t start alone yet.
Training wheels should be mocked off the market.
My daughter started using a balance bike around 18 months. By the time she was 2.5, she zoomed around on it and had started asking about pedals. We got her a pedal bike two months before she turned 3, with the expectation that we might have to take the pedals off for a few more months. Instead, within a few days (maybe 2 total hours of practice?) she was riding confidently and totally by herself--at not quite 3 years old.
It's so different than the challenging, scary attempts to remove training wheels when my siblings and I were 5 or 6 years old. One of those things where I didn't realize the science and tradition on teaching kids to ride bikes could change so dramatically within two decades!
Wow, what a story. You daughter was riding a regular bike before three. Is she physically talented in other ways? That seems exceptional!
All three of my kids were riding full bikes around 3 years old, having used a balance bike for 12-18 months previous. I don’t think my kids are exceptional - balance bikes work wonders!
Same story here. My kiddo rode her bike at 3 easily, and used a balance bike before that.
Me on the other hand, I had a tough time back when I was a kid on training wheels, only really grokking it at 6 or so.
Yeah, ironically training wheels was a bad idea. It learns you the motions of pedaling, but not the core skill: balancing.
Training wheels are terrible. Both of my kids learned how to ride on balance bikes, basically in under a day. When switching to pedal power, there IS a transition period where learning how to pedal AND balance at the same time is challenge. But it's a lot shorter and less frustrating than trying to learn how to pedal AND balance at the same time.
I hear this sentiment all the time. But as a kid, I first rode a bike with training wheels. The day my dad removed them, I went outside before him, hopped on the bike, and just started riding. There was no "learning to balance" or drama. I remember my parents were surprised but... maybe training wheels aren't so bad for everyone?
One thing I think gets lost in the discussion of training wheels: people act like you have four wheels flat on the ground, with no opportunity to balance. But proper training wheels should have two or three wheels on the ground, depending on if the rider is balancing or not. In other words, the training wheels should be lifted slightly up: https://www.twowheelingtots.com/training-wheels-faq/
I have seen kids learn to ride with training wheels. Basically the training wheels are raised relative to the rear wheel and the child learns to balance the bike on the tires, with the training wheels only touching when the bike leans over. But that only teaches them how to balance the bike when riding in a straight line. Not start, turn, or stop.
You might have been older, though. So with a balance bike you could've learned to bike years earlier. If you already had mastered balance, learning to bike isn't a big leap.
Agreed. We didn't get onto the balance bike tip until my older kid was a little older, but my younger one started on their older sibling's balance bike as more-or-less a toddler and was riding a bike with pedals by age 4. With basically zero frustration.
Watching peers of theirs who used training wheels, I've realized they're a trap. The mechanics of how a bike actually steers are completely different when you put training wheels on it. Whenever a third wheel is touching the ground (something that seems to be hard to avoid while turning, from what I've seen) it starts to steer like a trike instead of a bicycle. So transitioning from that to riding without training wheels is doubly difficult, because you also have to un-learn the instincts and muscle memory you developed with training wheels.
Transitioning from a balance bike to one with pedals is much easier because the main instinct they'll be taking from it - putting a foot on the ground when you get into trouble - remains useful. It naturally helps prevent skinned knees during the transition period.
Exactly this. The article has the right conclusion but invents a nonsense explanation. The truth is that bicycles counter-steer at any reasonable rolling speed - to go right, you nudge the steering to the left, which causes the bike to start falling to the right and then steer into that fall. People often find this hard to believe, even experienced riders, but it is easily tested. The problem is that training wheels turn a bicycle into a tricycle, which steers in the opposite way - to go right you steer to the right. So kids learn that and then you take the training wheels off and the first attempt to steer immediately causes a nasty fall because of steering the wrong way. I made this mistake teaching my first to ride, and she hurt herself and never really liked bikes after that. Seeing it happen, I had an epiphany (eventually) and just took the pedals off that bike for my second, who had the experience described elsewhere in this thread and loved bikes thereafter.
If the child had practiced on a balance bike for balance and a tricycle for pedalling it all comes together quite easily.
Training wheels and pull-up diapers are both things that make the problem worse.
I think the reason you easily learn on this type is that you have much more practice in the same piece of time. On normal bike an error leads to falling, having to restart, which takes half a minute at best. On running bike, you don't fall and continue. Each iteration takes 1-2 seconds.
My 3yo rides this 'running bike' as it's called here, no prob. My training in childhood, on normal one with pedals, was a nightmare.
Earlier I thought of the way to transition from 'running bike' to normal pedal bike, and thought of teaching first to ride while standing on pedals, and only then to sit down. Another comment here, about 'women bikes', confirms this idea.
The transition doesn't take long at all, it's just them learning to not get their legs hit by the pedals, it's really just a couple of sessions.
Getting them to use the brakes consistently is another thing.
That article is weird, for me at least. I very clearly remember when a bunch of kids around the age of six and seven learned to bike, all at the same time. All it took was a woman's bicycle, the old type (I should say "very old" type at this point. Big wheels too), easy for kids. The kids had to stand up, not sit (too big bicycle), and all it took was a single run with someone holding the seat, and letting go after a short while. That was it. No further training required. And that was indeed how I myself learned to bike as well, when I was a kid. Training wheels didn't exist, and are in my opinion pointless unless you want your three year old "bike". For older children it actively does harm.
> all it took was a single run with someone holding the seat
I think this is the key - holding the seat. The author of the article says "I did so in the usual manner - have her sit on the seat while I grab the handlebars and run along side her" - this surprised me, it would never occur to me to grab handlebars. I am not sure why exactly, it's an intuitive thing. As a lifelong road cyclist and an ex-racer, I have a pretty good feel for a bike... and you don't actually steer with handlebars, you "steer" (as in 'control where the bike is going') with your ass (which is why every experienced cyclist can easily turn with both hands off the handlebar). Someone grabbing your handlebars would misalign where your body is going vs where your front wheel is going and this makes you fall.
EDIT: I just realized that "steer with your ass" is something our coach used to say when we were kids. I think "your ass" is a kid-friendly proxy for "your center of mass".
Grabbing the handlebars is the absolute worst way to try to teach someone, no wonder the author had problems. I can't believe that this is "the usual manner" either, or at least I hope so (for the sake of the children)
Both my kids were able to use the bike at 3 years old. The training wheels should not be used even this young. They first learned using a balance bike, and then learning to pedal went very smoothly using the same technique you mentioned.
The pedal-free-bike (velociped), though, works for three-year-olds and maybe even younger who are too young to learn to ride.
That's true - we didn't have them when I was young and the first time I saw one was in Germany, and indeed very young kids can use them. The one I saw that first time had some kind of spring/suspension system so that the little tyke could build up a frighteningly high speed by "pumping" the bike!
The fact that it worked for you doesn't mean it works for most people
Also the people that are 'good with bikes' are the absolute dog shit at teaching other people how to do it. In fact I consider every advice from them with the maximum caution possible, because it is, a lot of times, actually harmful
Note that I did say "a bunch of kids". That was essentially all the kids in the neighbourhood. I only mentioned myself's experience elsewhere in my post.
As for the "teacher".. I forgot to mention that: The kids did it all by themselves. One of the older kids, i.e. 7 or 8, would hold the seat and run behind/besides the kid learning to bike. The trick was clearly to stay far enough behind so that the kid learning didn't notice when the "teacher" let go of the seat.
I've taught 5 kids to ride bikes this year. The method is quite simple and takes only a few minutes and some light jogging behind them. Take a scarf or a rope (or anything really) around a child's chest and behind the armpits pulling both ends behind the bike. Have the kid pedal the bike while providing balance for the bike to stay upright, this is the jogging part. The kid will inadvertently attempt to fall on a side so hold tight to provide balance and tell them to pedal faster. As soon as they realize that while pedaling and turning does not cause them to fall it clicks for them. Provide a little balance for the first turns. I usually do this for a few minutes and then let go of the scarf/straps/rope without telling the kid as they'll continue riding with no help. Before long they're riding around happily. And then a bit later there's a milestone, the first fall.
The pedalless bikes aren't as effective. One of the kids I sued this technique with used to have a pedalless bike and was fine with it for a year but could not handle a bicycle at all. This is how I remember learning to bike from my own dad when I was probably around 5-6.
> The pedalless bikes aren't as effective.
I taught my two kids to ride a pedal bike when they were three, after enjoying their balance bike for like six months before that. The switch from balance bike to pedaling was very simple, and because they had enjoyed their balance bike for so long, they were very skilled at staying upright.
I'm not saying your method was bad. I'm saying that there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Our kid started riding a pedal bike on their own at 3 years, 3 months thanks to the sheet method.
We started on an indoor bike-like ride along, thing.
Then a balance bike outside, then a small kids bike with no pedals, then pedals with freewheel, (no coaster brake) but two hand brakes and the sheet.
I used a muslin baby blanket for the sheet.
We did not take the support away suddenly at any time though.
We jogged with them a lot, constantly ready to catch her. I did, a handful of times save her from wrecks. This took a fair amount of athleticism, attention and reflexes.
But it also allowed us to talk about core bike safety and new nuances like “watching your white circles” (the handle bar ends were white) and make sure not to let them touch anything while riding.
Our kid got really comfortable pedaling and toward the end of the sheet use, I mostly just let it hang jogging along. It was the sense of security that allowed plenty of practice in advance of going without.
One day they just picked up their bike and started riding across the playground. Plenty of miles since then no wrecks yet.
We were not going for precociousness, but it was really great to get it down so young. I can ride my old coaster bike alongside when it’s dry, and we’ve done night rides.
We did not push any step of it, but did have the next bike available to them to see and look at and talk about. It was very smooth, I wish something like this process was available when I was a kid.
One big benefit of coaster bikes is that they’re entirely under the kid’s control. Your method works, but only with you attached. I’d rather empower kids to learn on their own.
Coaster bikes also teach kids to dab instinctively, which is a great skill.
> Coaster bikes also teach kids to dab instinctively, which is a great skill.
what does dab mean to you? my meanings don't fit in this sentence.
> I've taught 5 kids to ride bikes this year. The method is quite simple and takes only a few minutes and some light jogging behind them.
You need to compare this against the base method as a control (see above for my anecdote using my own kid).
The control method (i.e. do nothing other than scoot around) is about 5m. Maybe 10m at most. I don't know what I'd be saving if I got that number lower using props like a rope (or the sheet mentioned by a sibling).
My daughter—who is not at all coordinated-learned how to ride a bike with this technique.
Holy smokes it works. She learned how to ride in maybe 10 minutes. Tops.
Incredible.
What was the youngest age you taught with this style?
Taught my daughter using this method (towel) at 3.5. Took a week or so before she was comfortable starting and stopping but part of that was also learning road awareness.
She used a balance bike for about 12 months before that.
5
> Bicycles achieve balance through the gyroscopic effect, something with angular momentum and physics or whatever
Bicycles achieve balance because the rider counter-steers to prevent the bike from falling aside.
Destin from SmarterEveryDay had a friend build a special bike where the actions of the handlebar are inverted: when you turn it to one direction, the front wheel turns in the other direction.
It's impossible to ride such a bike.
Well, not exactly impossible: you have to completely re-learn riding, like you never knew before. Which shows that steering is the core (only?) skill to riding.
It's a great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
>Bicycles achieve balance because the rider counter-steers to prevent the bike from falling aside.
This is only partially correct. A rider can compensate for road irregularities to keep the bike upright, where an uncontrolled bike would topple over, however an uncontrolled bike is stable when rolling on flat terrain. That there exist bikes that, by making countersteering impossible are unridable, doesn't support the proposition that countersteering is the primary mechanism by which a bike stays upright, it just shows that countersteering can have a much more powerful effect that the dynamics of angular momentum.
More on the physics of how bikes work, Derek Muller from Veritasium demonstrated what happens if you lock the steering of a bike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cNmUNHSBac
At some point I saw someone put a counter spinning wheel on a bike to negate the gyroscopic effect and they were still able to ride fine. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but there is something about the geometry of a bike that is sort of self correcting. You can ride a bike without touching the handlebars at all, and you can even steer some amount.
Here's what I originally typed out before googling:
The "something about the geometry" is called caster, and is the same effect that makes the front casters on a shopping cart go straight: the point where the steering axis intersects the ground is ahead of the contact patch of the tire. On a bike, this is mostly determined by the angle of your head tube when looking at the bike from the side (if the fork is "bent" from the side view, this would also contribute to the caster effect).
But I've now googled, and found a paper that says that a bike can be stable without gyroscopic or caster effects [1]. It seems like the specific mass distribution of the steerable mass (front wheel, fork, handlebars, etc) vs the rest of the frame matters, and of course all of these variables interact in complex ways. They do agree that caster plays an important role though.
Vehicle dynamics is notoriously tricky stuff. I can say with experience that it doesn't get easier when you go to four wheels.
[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51051995_A_Bicycle_...
> but there is something about the geometry of a bike that is sort of self correcting.
Yup. Plenty of videos on youtube where they send a bike down a hill with no rider and as long as there is forward motion it will self-correct and stay upright.
Bikes in motion are self-balancing, and with no rider on, will continue indefinitely until the forward momentum has been exhausted.
> Dustin from SmarterEveryDay
I think his name is Destin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destin_Sandlin
Thanks! Corrected!
As a motorcyclist, counter-steering is a very pronounced and useful feature. I've tried employing the same technique on my bicycle and it had no effect. I'd be keen to understand others experiences of countersteering on a bicycle.
Can you clarify what is it exactly that you consider counter-steering?
My understanding is that it means "briefly turning the handle-bars to point the front wheel in the opposite direction of the intended turn, causing the vehicle to start tipping over in the direction of intended turn", which is exactly how you steer both motorcycle and bicycle.
I too am a motorcyclist (and now, mostly, a cyclist) and think I may have misspoke (steering vs counter-steering).
When I learned to ride a motorcycle I was taught to push the handle bars with the hand on the side I wanted to turn (so, if trying to turn right, push with the right hand); this causes the bike to "fall" on the side of the turn, and follow the turn.
This is what I meant by "counter-steering" but 1/ it only works at relatively high speeds (above, say, 20 mph, which isn't high on a motorcycle, but pretty high on a bike) and 2/ it doesn't "prevent" the bike from falling, it makes it fall, which is what we want.
Following the same principle, staying upright on a bicycle involves steering, not counter-steering: when a bike starts falling to one side, turning the wheel to that side makes it want to fall to the other side; and if done fast enough and often enough (as all riders to), maintain the bike upright.
I saw that SmarterEveryDay video and it's a crazy thing to do but fun to watch.
Terminology: balance is from steering (not counter-steering aka push-steering) which is to get the bike (usually motorcycle) to lean faster which allows taking a corner sharper. To balance upright, one steers the bike in the same direction the bike would naturally steer (as it's falling to one side) by the way the forks are raked/offset.
Maybe the description the author found was describing a tendency of a riderless bike to stay upright? Counter-steering is involved there but I’m not sure it’s the most significant bit. That is a good video though!
What's fascinating to me about that video is that when he learned to ride inverted, he LOST the ability to ride directly. There's some switch in our brains that can get flipped
There is a whole type of kids bike that is just a bike with no pedals and the kids run around on them.
I didn’t realize this was why those bikes existed but that makes sense.
I thought from the title this was going to be about admitting that electric bikes have become light motorcycles.
This is a 1926 Harley-Davidson motorcycle.[1]
This is a fat-tire "ebike".[2] Take the pedals off, and it's a motorcycle.
[1] https://kbcmotorcycles.com/1926-aa-harley-davidson-ohv-024/
[2] https://bestelectricbikesmade.com/product/addmotor-motan-m-6...
My local trails all allow ebikes. Which could be bad with kids destroying the trails (I remember riding dirt bikes as a kid). But... kids don't go out or do anything. Turns out all the ebike riders are old people.
I have an older uncle (early 70s). He told me that he switched in an ebike for trail riding when his strength began to fade with age. He said now he can use 25% power to get over the hardest parts of his favourite trails. He also told me that he scoffed at ebikes for years as "cheating", but then tried one after struggling on his favourite trails.
kids certainly are riding them like motorcycles. there are a few young whippersnappers that ride around doing crazy wheelies at high speed in my neighborhood
shakes fist
(good for them, kids need more ways to rebel nowadays)
"Take the pedals off, and it's a motorcycle."
Someone's never ridden an e-bike before. 500 watts on an 80 pound fat-tire bike is gonna get you like 10-15 mph cruising speed max.
That statement is just wrong. 500 watts is enough to get a road bike to 50mph on a flat road. Most of the energy goes to wind resistance at that speed. The weight of the bike and rider is only relevant when going uphill, not “cruising”
Yah, it is wrong. But most e-bike controllers have been engineered to have a top speed to comply with legal restrictions (or because of cost).
Just because something provides 500W at low speed intermittnet cycle, doesn't mean that it does so indefinitely with lots of back-EMF.
That top speed is usually 26kph in Europe and Australia.
In the U.S. It's typically 20mph (32kph), although class 3 can be up to 28mph (45kph).
> > > gonna get you like 10-15 mph cruising speed max
> That top speed is usually 26kph in Europe and Australia.
So like 16MPH?
Sure, 10mph is 16kph. 15mph is 24kph. The “10-15mph” assertion top of thread is just incorrect
They're saying from a legal standpoint. As far as CPSC is concerned, they're not bicycles if they don't have pedals, and under many states' laws, pedals are a requirement to not be a motorcycle or moped.
The gyroscopic effect contributes little to maintaining a balanced bike ride, contrary to the article claim. An idealized massless wheel/tire wouldn't diminish ridability.
Steering dynamics (steering to counteract bike lean) and trail effect (bike are built to automatically counteract lean), along with rider input (steering, leaning body), are more important components.
Once you see how a trackstand is done it breaks the gyroscopic myth immediately.
The easiest bike to trackstand is a fixed gear, you turn the front wheel about 45 degrees to one direction or the other, then find the balance point, with the cranks leveled out. Pedaling forward leans you one way, pedaling backwards leans you the other way.
The next difficulty step is a conventional bike, if you have a slope to point your wheel up, that replaces the ability to pedal backwards.
The final difficulty level is replacing the slope with just brake modulation and body weight.
Can you ELI5 why I can balance ride with no hands on a moving bike but not balance on a stationary bike? It feels like there's something pushing toward a stable state, and I always thought that was gyroscopic.
It is primarily the forward sweep/caster of the front wheel forks which makes the wheel turn into any lean and the forward motion of the bike with the turned wheel tries to bring the bike back under the overall balance point. With the steering axis/forks in a perfectly vertical position where the wheel's contact point and steering axis are perfectly aligned, the wheel will not really respond to leans and you would have to actively turn it to balance. And with a negative caster the wheel would want to actively turn away from any leans making the bike fight against balancing.
It's the combination of steering and forward momentum the gives the negative feedback. Bike tips left -> steering turns left -> circular path -> (from moving frame of reference) centrifugal force tips the bike back upright.
Without forward movement you miss the centrifugal force that tips the bike back up.
Yeah, if you think about it. If you are moving forward, and your steering tips left, the force being applied from the ground is now on the right side of the front wheel. This force is only being applied while you have forward momentum.
While the bike is stationary there's limited options for moving the bike relative to your body. While the bike is moving, you can make small steering adjustments which move the bike left or right relative to your body, which helps re-balance the body-bike stack. The faster forward you're moving, the faster these steering adjustments take effect.
Thank you. That makes sense. It does feel like an external force helping me to balance, but expectation is such a big part of perception.
If you practice you can do it no-hands on a stationary bike as well. Taken me a few weeks to learn, but cool to stop at a red light and do a no-hand trackstand ;)
I’ll try it! Maybe have another go with the unicycle whilst I’m at it.
And kids bikes can often have really screwed up geometry, just to make learning really fun.
If your kid is having troubles leaning to ride a bike, I would suggest trying one of the bikes from Woom (https://woom.com/). Especially in the smallest models for 4-5 year olds, these bikes much lighter - almost half weight - than a lot of the alternatives. They also cost a lot more, but the high resell value makes up for some of this.
They also have balance bikes.
I have a mechanical engineer friend who's deeply interested in bikes, he recently designed and welded his own DIY cargo bike, he gave me an hour long lecture on the evolution of frame geometry and alloys when I asked him to help me pick a second hand bike, etc—and he's very, very impressed by Woom bikes. I got one for my kid and the engineer will just look at it, admire the parts and go "oohh yeah now that's a bike."
Based on the experiences we had we our three kids, I would suggest a balance bike is by far the best way to start.
Gets the balancing/steering stuff out of the way and you have all the control of speed you need (as long as it's not too steep!) with the feet.
After many failed attempts to teach me to balance on a bike without training wheels, my parents borrowed a kick scooter from an older kid who outgrew hers. Small enough for me to use but with big enough wheels to be a real challenge balance-wise. It was a lot less scary for me, because I could always just step off of it if I lost balance. After I learned to ride that I just drove off the next time they let me try a regular bike. Took me about a month apparently.
Taking the pedals off is effectively almost the same thing, except that you sit instead of stand. Maybe a bit scarier at the start, but also close to the final goal.
Training wheels aim to maximise the utility of the bicycle (i.e. gears and pnumatic tyres) for a person of certain age, at the cost of learning how to actually ride a bike.
I feel there are lots of parallels in e.g. Maths education in the more generalised form:
In education, skills that allow you to utilise technology are prioritised and these are often directly opposed to skills needed for mastery.
> Training wheels aim to maximise the utility of the bicycle (i.e. gears and pnumatic tyres) for a person of certain age, at the cost of learning how to actually ride a bike.
I'm not sure this is actually true at all. Kids can go pretty fast on a balance bike. Probably as fast as on a bike with training wheels. And for kids that small, gears are mostly useless anyway.
I was subbing at my old high school for a few days in the fall and they assigned me to my old Spanish teacher’s class with the explicit instruction to make sure students could use their devices to refer to ChatGPT to fill in their worksheets.
I was flabbergasted.
THIS!
I'd even go further and say that training wheels optimizing for utility instead of mastery teaches the secondary skill first, so the child can pedal and add power without needing to learn to balance the bike. So, when the training wheels come off, they've got effectively nothing.
And this certainly applies to every other sort of teaching, where learning the mastery-related skills can seem so irrelevant at first.
I had heard about this some years ago, and I taught my youngest daughter (11yo now) to ride a bike this way.
Granted, it didn't happen in 1 day because she didn't have a bike when she started "riding" (We got her first a balance bike, which she out grew rather fast due to her size). But when we finally did get her a bike, it took an afternoon - really just a couple of hours - for her to start riding it.
My partner is still baffled by this, years after the fact (Science, girl!)
To put it funnily, the second she started riding the bike it felt very Forrest Gump.
This is the standard way that kids learn to ride bikes in Europe. Apparently the English word for them is "balance bikes". Both my kids could ride one of them when they were 2.
I would always know it as a kick-bike, but yes agreed.
Our child got a kickbike for his 2nd birthday an was proficient in using it within days. From there he moved to a pedal-bike when he was around four or so. No training wheels, and no real difficulty.
In the US too. Every family I know has a little balance bike for their toddlers
This has changed very recently. The US default was “training wheels” well into the 2000’s, and they are terrible.
Balance bikes are the way.
“Training Wheels” are generally called “Stabilizers” outside the US. They exist and people use them.
Balance bikes also exist in the US and have for just as long as they have existed in Europe.
But this is not about either. A real bike without pedals is needed, because the transition from gliding to riding can take as little as 30 minutes. I mean, for sure, get your small child a balance bike and let them use it for fun. In my opinion, a razor scooter-type thing is even better. The key is to get the child to not worry about being slightly off-balance and instead of panicking they steer and/or lean to correct.
Years ago, I paid REI $50 for a learn-to-ride class for my oldest son. They did this remove-the-pedals thing for 100 kids in a group and had every single one of them riding in an hour with just 5 or 10 instructors. I watched the whole thing in amazement and did it on my own with each of my younger kids. It turns out that it is really easy to teach, and my youngest was riding a real bike at age 4.
> In my opinion, a razor scooter-type thing is even better.
I'm 44 and still can't ride a two-wheeled scooter. I don't know if it's harder or different from bicycles (which I have ridden regularly and enthusiastically since I was about 7), but it just won't click for me.
Not sure what I wrote that upset people so much. Do whatever works for you and/or your kids. I apologize for suggesting that there are multiple approaches to solving this problem.
Looking back, perhaps I was offensive for suggesting that Europe and America were pretty much the same on the topic of learning to ride a bicycle. If that was the issue, I do not apologize.
FWIW, I wasn't upset; I apologize if my comment came off that way.
It isn't universal in the US. I had never heard of balance bikes until this thread. All my friends rode tricycles as toddlers then bikes with training wheels gradually adjusted higher until they were removed.
> Bicycles achieve balance through the gyroscopic effect
No they don't. If that were true you could cycle along at a 45 degree angle. They balance because you steer into a fall.
> They balance because you steer into a fall.
They naturally steer themselves into a fall really.
Wouldn't that imply that a bicycle wheel I roll down the street by itself should fall over immediately which clearly is not the case?
There's not zero gyroscopic force, just negligible compared to the moment of inertia (with the tyre/ground interface as the axis of rotation) of the bike/rider system.
Furthermore you will notice a bicycle wheel rolling down the street often won't roll in a straight line (as it starts to tilt sideways, it will turn to bring the contact patch back underneath it), so even with just the wheel, the gyroscopic stabilization is insufficient on its own to keep it upright.
No that's not true. A bike just naturally steers into its fall.
Veritasium made a video about it: https://youtu.be/9cNmUNHSBac?si=8cbWXgoqg-uuVidb
A bicycle is not the same as a bicycle wheel though. I can't just roll down a bike down the street (at least not as easily as a single wheel); it almost always immediately falls over.
Sure you can.
At very low speeds, yes, the bike will fall over. But a bike with some minimum amount of speed can roll upright on its own just fine. You can try it yourself with your least favorite bike and an empty parking lot. All it takes is a good solid push. It has to do with bicycle frame geometry and center of mass.
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains it in this video at 2:52: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIrgwWQqqts
That's not countering the argument that steering is what is preventing the bike from falling over rather than the gyroscopic effect of the wheels. You'd have to tie off the handlebars with a static line before rolling it in order to prove that it was the gyroscopic effect keeping the bike upright.
I can ride my bike easily without touching the handlebars at all once it's rolling.
Try that with the handlebars tied immovable. Or actually, please don't.
I actually tried a it a lot when I was young, and it never worked even on a downward slope. Maybe I was too weak back then, but again, the point is that a full bicycle doesn't have the same behavior as a standalone wheel, which is very easy to roll, and pretty much stands on its own until its speed is really really low.
It boggles the mind how much people believe gyroscopic forces are what keep bicycles and motorcycles upright. It's even taught in text books.
It only really enters the picture during wheelies, if you've got the front wheel spinning fast enough.
This may be the best path: balance bike -> two-wheeled scooter -> real bike. A scooter is too hard for age 3 because it has no seat; the balance bike lets either foot instantly contact the ground no matter which way the bike is falling. Once the kid starts to coast on the balance bike, introduce a balancing scooter. That's the ideal intermediary. It allows for longer coasting with the free squarely off the ground and on the vehicle: yet offers the psychological safety of always being able to jump off. Scooters also have brakes; the kid can learn the concept of braking. That allows them to coast the scooter down hills with confidence. The main remaining challenge on a bike is starting and to some extent stopping. The way you set a bicycle in motion is scooter-like. You don't sit on it and start pedaling, but rather stand on a pedal and push off with the opposite foot. The scooter teaches this, more or less.
Pedalling is the difficult part of learning to ride a bike. Balancing alone is not easy from scratch, balancing while pedalling is orders of magnitude trickier.
If you do not quite remember how it was when you were first learning to ride a bicycle, you may recall (or carefully experiment with) learning to ride hands-free, and note the increase in difficulty when you start to pedal as opposed to just coasting.
The advice to start teaching kids by taking off the pedals completely is perfectly reasonable as a way of making the initial learning curve less steep.
Just be sure to note that the left side pedal (as you sit on it) has a left-hand thread: https://www.parktool.com/en-us/blog/repair-help/pedal-instal...
Yep!
The threads are different in their direction per side so that the rotation during forward pedaling further tightens the pedal.
Another related interesting fact is that on a unicycle, especially one used by someone who can ride backwards, needs to be checked often to ensure the pedals don't back themselves out due to pedal rotation in the opposite (loosening) direction.
I recently bought a used bike for an abnormally low price. Why? Because the previous owner did not understand that one of the pedals unscrews in the opposite direction to the other (look it up). The previous owner was, however, strong enough to strip the threads of one crank arm trying to remove the pedal. In the end, I had to replace the crankset. Let this be a tale of caution to those who want to remove pedals.
We had those woom bikes without pedals and my children could immediately ride a "real" bike bevor they got 3 years old.
Training wheels always seemed to me like a wrong technique from a last century.
Yes, a balance bike or no pedals is a great way to start.
When they are ready the progress to a pedal bike, and they need some assistance, do not hold the bike (either by the handlebars or seat or anywhere else).
Instead, gently place your hands on their shoulders to stop them falling - this forces them to be in control of the bike’s balance without you interfering directly. They will learn to balance and pedal much faster this way.
I noticed that almost none of the kids around me, mine included, have training wheels. They all learn on push bikes with no pedals and then straight to bikes.
I had training wheels but I live in the Czech republic and grew up in England.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned, but I when I was a kid I had a bike with training wheels, and when I learned to pedal fast enough, my grandpa just started to bend the holders of the "training wheels" a little bit upwards, so that they wouldn't be even with the two main wheels, and the bike would slant a little bit either right or left.
Riding a skewed bike was very annoying for me, and I learnt to keep the balance in a couple of days.
I tried this with my step kid but they were too big for it.
Instead I just took them to a slight hill and we went down it with me holding or them skimming their feet for about 10 times. Then they were able to just pedal. She then was comfortable enough to go around the neighborhood. My neighborhood is really flat. She actually didn't want to stop for about 3 miles because she was doing well. We had to go to the hill for another start and then she was just good.
Same deal teaching my wife to drive a stick. Got her to go in a large gravel parking lot along a rural highway. She got going a few times and I had picked a lot with enough of a ramp out you could get to the highway without stopping. She went for about 60 miles without stopping. It took her 20 seconds to shift initially, so long she was slower than the gear needed. But it was a mini-s which had plenty of torque. She was then able to drive in stop and go traffic for another 50 miles.
I used a balance/running bike for my kids. They became very good at it and could kick it up to incredible speeds, and they preferred it over pedals. The problem however is that as soon as they feel uncomfortable with the pedal bike they put their feets down in order to break (like they did on the running/balance bike) instead of using the pedals and handle break.
Another tip: take a stool with you to the first pedaling lessons.
It's easier for kids to start pedaling when the other foot is on the stool, so they're balanced while starting.
Once they got it they will find natural stools in the park and use them, until they don't need them at all.
There is some difficulty in starting pedaling: you need to simultaneously give a boost to the bicycle, balance yourself on a non-balanced bicycle, and leaving the breaks. The stool remove one hard task - the balance.
BTW till this day I still search for natural stools when I stop at lights, it's just more comfortable to stay this way, more balanced.
I did this with three of my four kids. It worked like a charm.
More anecdata. All of the coaster learned kids went on to join the mountain bike team.
Since this is hacker news and AI is all the rage right now I'd like to make the connection between this and curriculum learning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_learning
You're not wrong! I'd refer you to the Hobby Horse cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse), or "dandy horse". No pedals there!
The way we did it with my son when he was like 4 was to do both ways and then merge them.
1. He learned to ride a balance bike.
2. He learned to ride a bike with training wheels.
3. I took off the training wheels, then had him practice, without actually pedalling around yet, catching himself with his feet. He would place his feet on the pedals while I held the bike upright, than I would let go of the bike and he'd move his feet to the ground to stop himself from toppling over.
4. Once he was comfortable catching himself, he was able to start pedalling around for real, easy peasy, because he was confident in his ability to stop himself from falling if necessary.
Yup! I’ve taught 4 kids with this method. A year or 2 on the balance bike, 2-ish weeks with training wheels and then take the training wheels off and they get it within 5-10 minutes. Took a bunch of frustration with the first kid to arrive at this method but I’ve done it with the next 3 and it works flawlessly.
For older kids and adults, put the seat down to the point where they can push it on the ground, and preferably have them ride it on grass. They can push the bike for a while, then start pedaling once they get the hang of balancing.
It doesn't work well for young kids because their legs aren't strong enough - it takes a lot of leg strength to pedal a bike effectively when the seat is that low. (the classic "adult on a BMX" posture, with your top knee level with your ears)
I taught a 10-year-old to ride in about an hour or two that way, using my 6yo son's bike, and the next day the 10yo and her mom were off riding all afternoon on rented bikes.
If your kid is using a balance bike, be sure to take them somewhere flat like a playground. If the ground is even slightly inclined, the kid cannot coast, and they spend their energy inefficiently pushing themselves and their bike forward.
Playgrounds are boring... ;-)
You may have never encountered a small kid who rides a balance bike at speed, with enormous little kid enthusiasm, up and down hills. :)
Going slightly downhill can make it even easier to focus on balancing instead of propulsion.
here's an alternative way to teach somebody to ride a bike, particularly an adult who is nervous about it. I invented it because I'm empathetic so I like to minimize anxiety and a superior thinker to most (proof: you haven't read this advice anywhere else except where I've posted it). if I've missed something, no problem, add it in, but every step of this is here for a reason. No pedal removal. Instead:
skill one: getting off the bike
you/teacher straddle the front wheel, hold the bike stable and still, and they climb on, hands on the handle bars, sitting on the seat, feet on the pedals, then have them put their weight on the pedals instead of the seat, pedal backward (coaster brake or not). with them standing on the pedals, show them how to brake, and with the brakes on, teach them to jump off the pedals, feet onto the ground. Get them to climb on and off with brakes on but without you holding the bike. repeat till they are comfortable.
skill 2: braking, and getting off the bike
on a very shallow incline, near the bottom of a hill, i.e. bunny slope that turns flat. hold the bike from behind the seat so it doesn't roll down the hill, have them get on (and get off to test that skill again) and explain you are going to let the bike roll down the hill (you can run along and keep your hand on the seat), and their job is to experience that for a second, but brake and get off the bike. repeat as many times as necessary for them to feel comfortable and capable.
next steps are flexible/obvious. now that they can stop and get off of a moving bicycle, start higher on the slight hill so they can pick up more speed, before braking and getting off. segue into pedaling, but always with a goal/option of "stop and get off the bike". When they are comfortable, they will stop stopping and ride.
(you don't need to teach "balance" because the physics of bicycles is self-balancing. It's hard/impossible to knock over a bicycle with its wheels spinning, there is nothing to teach. what you need to overcome is the beginning cyclist's fear and tendency to do things that don't make sense)
Really small kids get balance bikes these days, that come without pedals then at about age 3 or 4 you can go to a bike with pedals and no stabilisers are needed.
At least that's how it is in London for the last few years, while my kid was learning.
I ride and work on motorcycles a lot.
tl;dr: Front wheel fork angle causes uprightness, the overall cause of turning is due to tire shape and contact patch at lean. Countersteering is the input to start and maintain leaning.
Bicycle and motorcycle physics have a lot of different forces at play, but the main one for keeping the bike upright is the front wheel, causing corrective steering at lean.
When a bike starts to fall, the rake angle causes the wheel to "self correct" and steer the bike towards uprightness. With speed, the bike wants to stay upright and will self correct.
To steer at low speeds (most bicycle speeds), you actually turn the wheel in the direction you want to go very briefly, "fall" into a lean and switch quickly to counter steer in the other direction, keeping the bike upright.
At high speed it's a bit different. You don't need to initiate the turn. You can just skip straight to counter steering, which forces a lean and causes a turn. At speed you are constantly upright, so you need some input to tilt the bike.
The effect of leaning to the right with the wheel self-correcting left, is an overall arc to the right (vise versa).
As for gyroscopic forces, these are at play but the force is negligible for keeping the bike upright. Heavier wheels have higher angular momentum, making the bike a bit harder to force a counter steer. They also affect how quickly a bike can accelerate given a certain force.
Recommended reading: https://www.amazon.com/Motorcycle-Dynamics-Second-Vittore-Co...
Cool video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSZiKrtJ7Y0&t=3s
> To steer at low speeds (most bicycle speeds), you actually turn the wheel in the direction you want to go very briefly
Was this a typo? You initiate a turn by briefly pointing the front wheel in the opposite direction of the intended turn, and that part is what is called counter-steering.
Watching your kid learn to ride a bike is one of life's greatest joys
I was taught using the 'handlebars' method and I hated it. I taught my lil bro by having them cruise without support. He learned in hours
There are a number of niche videos on the topic of learn-to-bike that emphasizes the pedal-less balance method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zMOvVXGmH0 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7GKK3liv8M , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELW3CgR-DW4 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqmzwVrkTU4 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOg1hHmGIQQ , etc.
> have her sit on the seat while I grab the handlebars and run along side her
Do not grab the handlebars. Grab under the back of the seat. This lets you tip the frame of the bike without touching the rider or the steering mechanism, and also modify speed by pushing or pulling.
This is exactly how I’ve taught all three of my kids to ride their bikes. :)
Funny enough, this is probably how the very first bicyclists learned how to ride - since they would've ridden velocipedes and other pedal-less proto-bicycles before even pennyfarthings (let alone modern "safety" bicycles) existed.
This or get a balance bike (in Germany, Laufrad) for your kids and let them learn to balance.
The switch to a full bike is then flawless.
If you are an adult who rides a bike even semi-regularly, I highly recommend taking a few short practice sessions and practice low speed skills on your bike. Learning to trackstand and ride very slowly will improve your bike handling skills a lot.
I like this step by step approach to things. When my dad first taught me to ride a bike it was a disaster as he tried teaching me to run with the bike then jump up on the pedals and onto the seat in one swift action, like some sort of professional cyclist. I couldn't get the hang of this silly method and he gave up, leaving me to figure out how to do it from stationary.
My kid used a push bike. When it came time to start pedalling, it took 5 minutes with zero falls. He already knew how to balance and turn (most of the biking skills), it was just a new way to move the bike forward.
Not sure if it helped, but we had a Strider-brand push bike which you can and add pedals to when ready. He was already familiar with that exact bike.
Mine too. But it only happened when he decided it was time to do it. Once he decided, we went out and he was cycling independently by the time we reached the end of the street.
Do kids learning on coaster bikes still wipe out?
Oh yeah. My son started on one and used to make a game out of barreling down the driveway into the mailbox post across the street.
Re: the article: he picked up riding a bike with pedals in <5 minutes after a summer of his balance bike.
This is reassuring. Thank you. The first cherry crimson-made blemish on a skint knee is a crucial element to the experience.
I haven’t read the article yet. The question of the wipe out had to be resolved first.
It sounds like balance bikes make children more confident. I’m all for them if that’s so. They seem true to their name.
All my kids learned to bike on pedal-less balance bikes (or kickbikes or whatever you want to call them). We had "Puky LR" models, but there are others.
By the time they were ready to switch to a real children's bike, didn't even need to temporarily take the pedals off, they just picked it up more or less instantly.
I taught all my kids this way. Generally it really only takes a couple of hours.
This is what I did with my son. Take the pedals off, teach him balance, then put them back on.
There's a hospital here that does a clinic on teaching kids to ride a bike and this is what they do as well.
You don't just take the pedals off. You slide down the slope. This is the best and the fastest way to learn to bike.
There's a better way but it requires a very large space like a big empty parking lot.
...and that's it! Turns out the hard part is not riding a bike but riding a bike in a straight line. Once you've got the hang of riding wherever the bike seems to want to go, you can gradually learn to get it under control. Surprisingly easy!
1st kid, training wheels. 2nd kid, took off pedals, learned balance in 2 days.
Apparently this guys is unaware that pedalless balance bikes for kids already exist, and are quite popular. The idea is to get kids used to doing the hard part--staying balanced--first, then when they get a 'real' bike, they don't need training wheels, or at least, not so much.
You see them everywhere in Holland, e.g. this one
https://www.veloretti.com/products/mini-kids
Of course, putting the pedals back on can be difficult with these...
> Apparently this guys is unaware that pedal-less balance bikes for kids already exist, and are quite popular.
Author here. This was the point of the post -- but fwiw I did in fact learn about pedal-less bikes shortly after I learned about the "take the pedals off" method. I figured if I went forty years without learning about this, how many of my other peers did too? [1] These bikes were not available when I was a kid, and never came on my radar for any of my three young children until now.
The other point of the post is to make the connection that if this obvious-in-retrospect method makes teaching something difficult easier in this domain, how many other domains am I missing applying a similar method to, no matter how "obvious" ?
[1] I guess I was just one of today's lucky 10,000 https://xkcd.com/1053/
You might be interested to learn that bicycles initially didn't have pedals or a drivetrain[1].
They were ridden exactly the way you're teaching your kid. Adding pedals later is just following the history of bicycle tech development.
Velocipede, the French word for that vehicle, remained being the word for "bicycle" in several languages.
I guess if there's any moral to this, it's that learning history makes a lot of things far less surprising — and makes a lot of what we have today far more meaningful.
Or: one doesn't really understand something without knowing its history (and the best way to find gaps in your own understanding is to teach or explain the concept to someone else).
Using the metaphor of your post: to find out what are the "pedals" to take off, learn about how the "bicycle" came to be before explaining it to others.
I'd say through about 90% of the post I was wondering if you'd really not heard about balance bikes. It was only at the end that I realized the point of the story was the power of looking for more options.
One wonders how many HN commenters stepped out before that conclusion was given. Adopting BLUF[1] may help in that regard!
I think it was more like this:
Interesting and rather obvious with just a little thought. Wish I knew ages ago.
> EDIT 1/14/2025: this article went viral on hacker news and now I have a bunch of comments telling me the above is wrong; mea culpa, I was never great at physics and apparently copy-pasting the explanation from the first google hit for "how do bikes stay upright" is not trustworthy in 2025. All I really care to say is that there's something mysterious and ineffable about balancing on a bike when you're a little kid that's hard to master when you're also trying to get a grip on pedaling, and your every instinct is to brake whenever you get scared, which will immediately tip you over.
Dear OP: don't worry about HN. They are insufferable cunts and have been for as long as I've been here (well over a decade).
I just googled the same thing. Quite frankly I don't blame OP for getting it wrong, because the top result is from Cornell University.
> The accepted view: Bicycles are stable because of the gyroscopic effect of the spinning front wheel or because the front wheel "trails" behind the steering axis, or both.
https://ezramagazine.cornell.edu/summer11/researchspotlight....
If you're not already read into bicycle or motorcycle dynamics, the top google result sounds reasonable. Which makes it all the more ironic because they're talking about research which demonstrates, among other things, that it's a misconception to believe that gyroscopic forces are necessary.
There are wooden kids coasting bikes without pedals for like 3 year olds.
We call them steps or sitting steps, thats how we learned how to ride a bike.
Sheldon Brown wrote about this years ago: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/teachride.html
> The ideal bike for learning to ride, whether for a child or a deprived adult, is a bike that is "too small" for efficient riding. For learning purposes, the rider should be able to sit on the saddle with both feet flat on the ground and the knees slightly bent. The bike can then be used as a hobby horse or scooter, with the feet always ready to stop a fall. It may even be useful to remove the pedals at first, so that the feet can swing freely. (In case you are new to all this and haven't read the pages about pedals on this site: the left pedal unscrews clockwise!) Ideally, a bike for this approach should have at least one handbrake, so that the child can stop while using both feet for balance. A good place to practice is on a grassy field, perhaps with a slight downgrade.
> Unfortunately, it is often difficult for parents to justify the expense of a smaller bike that will be outgrown shortly, so there is a constant temptation to buy a bike that is a bit too large on the theory that the child will "grow into" it.
Balance bike
Now we need a tutorial how to take the pedals off the bike. So you do not damage the crank because of the opposite threading left vs right.
My mom bent a lug wrench trying to change a flat on my grandmother's car; apparently the nuts were reverse threaded on one side of the car.
That is definitely something to watch out for with cars from the 50s to early 70s. Often the studs will just snap and not bend the wrench though, which is fine since it is better to just replace them with right hand threaded studs.
I believe the idea back in the day was so lug nuts would want to screw themselves tighter if they were loose whenever you braked as a safety feature so the wheels don't fall off. In practice it isn't really effective at unless you are doing some crazy hard braking like in a race but they should never be anywhere near loose enough to start with for such a minor force to screw or unscrew them. Your wheels aren't really suppose to be holding you up through the shear force across the studs, but held by the clamping force friction between the wheel and the wheel hub.
Back off
Tutorial complete. You just have to keep those two words in mind.
That terminology might not be clear to a non-expert.
If your wrench/spanner is pointed straight up to the sky like a clock hand at 12, rotate towards the back wheel to loosen, and towards the front wheel to tighten. Important! When you put the pedals back on and rotating toward the front wheel isn't working, you've grabbed the wrong pedal. Use the other one.
Yeah and you can do this with very young children. My child just turned 2 and has very good balance on the bike when he goes downhill. He still has not enough strength to pedal though.
My older kid started a little later (like 3) but after going pedal less for a year or so, adding the pedal was totally natural. He just took the bike and went off.
No -- don't take off pedals -- and definitely don't grab the bike. Run after the kid, and nudge their shoulders one way or the other, first for balance, then for turning. They just need to not fall over for half an hour or so.
The trouble with training wheels is that they are exactly backwards to really riding a bike. You turn the handlebars like you'd be driving a car, not like you do to affect balance. You can lean to the outside of the curve to go around, rather than leaning in.
This technique didnt work at all for my kids. Having any sort of "safety net" at all seemed to prevent any teachable moments. The most important factor in teaching my kids to ride a bike was how long they spent on the bike trying to ride it. I have three kids, and my youngest is too young to learn, so I have one more chance to test my theories.
i got my youngest a balance bike and by age 3 he was zipping around with ease and blowing everyone's mind.
I've been a balance bike evangelist ever since.
get a used balance bike off craigslist, use it for a while, send it back to craigslist. Super duper. Do recommend.
Worked for me, for three kids. The essential bit is getting them to not fear the lean, and not steer like they're driving a little car.
How long though? I learned the hard way too. It’s worked for lots of people the hard way. But I think there’s lots of evidence now that balance bikes are faster to learn on average. Taking the pedals off is what removes the fear. Steering just happens naturally. Lots of adults who know how to ride bikes don’t even know or believe they’re steering differently than a car, I’ve even had debates with some of them.
I have two kids, taught one with pedals and one without. The pedal-less was immediate in a single day, and the training-wheels pedal bike kid struggled for days until we took the pedals off. Pretty sure my training wheels experience took multiple days, though I can’t remember it clearly.
We _had_ a balance bike, didn't get used much.
It only took about half an hour or so of effort to get over the "I'm going to fall" fear and get the feel for how a bike actually works.
You mean like those pedal-free started bicycles marketed at daycare/kindergarten age kids?
The ones none of my kids could ever figure out how to ride? Nor would I expect to, because they ask you to learn too many things at the same time? The ones that have no stable position other than lying on their side?
I'll consider trying this for the "training wheels off" period, so thanks for the tip. At the same time, I don't know who figured it's a good idea to push these contraptions as starter bikes.
EDIT: balance bikes, they're called. Maybe the ability to use them is determined by a gene that isn't present in my lineage, or something.
Balance bikes work great for many kids. The seat needs to be low enough that the child can put both feet on the ground at the same time with the legs slightly bent.
