Cycling, along with swimming, are the two activities I give that exemplifies how poor people are at explaining what they are doing. For cycling, most people will adamantly claim that to turn left, you first turn the handle bars to the left. When they show me on a bike, they are surprised that they never noticed that they turn the handlebars right first. The funny part is, even people who know this and know it is called "countersteering" proceed to explain it in such a way that is actually less insightful than just telling someone to turn left. Almost no one mentions that the goal of a turn is to get the correct lean to a bike.<p>With swimming, I did 7 years of lessons and never enjoyed swimming. My legs always got fatigued in a couple of minutes and could not go as fast as others. It did not matter how many good swimmers or instructors I told this to. It was not until a fellow engineer at university told me that your arms are what propel you forward and your legs simply keep you afloat. Such a simple statement did more than all those years of lessons.<p>It is amusing to think about that, even with the best intentions, sometimes being taught something is the worst thing that can happen for you to actually learn it.
Having had the pleasure in training three kids on how to ride a bike, forget training wheels, or taking the pedals off!<p>find a reasonable long grass hill - not to too steep, but steep enough to allow a kid to go down the hill riding the bike with out pedalling.<p>and then goto the top of the hill and let them go down the hill on the bike. Once they master the balancing part of going down, they seem to pick up the art of turning the pedals at the end of the hill to keep going (if not, explain what to do)<p>advantages: doesn't hurt when they fall off, gets them used to rough terrain. it becomes fun once they start to master the balancing bit
I taught a woman to ride a bike once. I was an adult, she was an adult. She mentioned she wanted to learn so I took her to a park and taught her. It didn't take very long. When she finally was able to start peddling around in a circle without help she was laughing so much she looked hysterical. People in the park were staring. I'll remember that fondly for a long time.
But was the old way really that ineffective? I remember driving to a big empty parking space on a Sunday with my father, he removed the training wheels, and after around 30 minutes, I got it. Learning to ride a bike isn't complicated, what makes it <i>look</i> so hard is that it is a sort-of binary skill. You can either hold your balance, our you can't, and so it will look completely impossible until you suddenly can do it.<p>Tom Scott learned to ride a bike in this 30ies, it didn't take long [0].<p>Interestingly, "training wheels" aren't called "training" wheels in Germany, but "supporting wheels" (Stützräder), and when I was a kid, nobody used them to "train" their children to ride a bike. They were used to transform the bike into another kind of vehicle the kid could use until it was old enough to learn to ride a bike.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7GKK3liv8M" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7GKK3liv8M</a>
This is how writing should be done.<p>First - you throw out your main idea.<p>Then - you stop, put a period, and hit publish.<p>If only all web content was like this post!
Started all 3 of my kids on a balance bike at age 2. All my kids could ride a regular bike by the time they were 3. It occurred to me that they will never remember not knowing how to ride a bike. Also it’s amazing to me how quickly they all learned. Conversely, I couldn’t ride a bike without training wheels until I was maybe 7 or 8.<p>OT, the longer I work in technology the more amazed I am at the capability of biological systems.
I don't think anyone read this but anyway: After reading this, I resumed my
4yo daughter's stalled bike practice. This time we focused on pedaling, as advised in a thread. And she got able to ride after less than an hour!<p>So thanks HN. You changed my daughter's like ... maybe in a small way? but still.
I learned how to ride a bike when a young kid sticking one leg inside the triangle frame of the large adult bike. Kind of dangerous now looking back but I still remember the liberating feeling of more mobility.
There's a general principle that's at work here for certain concepts: it's often a good idea to teach children technology skills in terms of the technology's historical development.<p>Riding a bicycle is certainly one; the earliest velocipedes had no pedals at all, and are essentially the "balance bikes" mentioned here.<p>Mathematics and computer science is another one -- no matter how elegant it can feel to construct a world from teaching in first principles first, the historical pedagogy is much more intuitive and effective, IMO.
Training wheels were known to be garbage in the 80s, likely earlier. Nothing beats learning on a bike with pedals, once you learn to balance you can then start propelling yourself.
I wrote an article about how I approached it for my 5 years old. <a href="https://kunalspathak.github.io/2020-07-18-Teaching-biking-lessons/" rel="nofollow">https://kunalspathak.github.io/2020-07-18-Teaching-biking-le...</a>
Alan Kay on learning: <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos</a>
I taught my kid how to ride using training wheels 4 years ago. She rode 4 times in 4 weeks using 2 training wheels. 1 hour on 1 wheel the next week. The next weekend within 20 minutes of no wheel she was fine and cycled perfectly since. Truth be told I didn’t teach her any more than encourage her.<p>I was sceptical of the balance bike method. She didn’t need it. I remain highly skeptical that it offers any advantage whatsoever.<p>Away from kids, when I watch adult riders, a high proportion (30%+) have the seat far too low, maybe 3-5 inches too low. If you can flat foot sit, add 2 inches.
No doubt a balance bike is an effective way to teach someone how to ride, but it also sounds like a way for bike companies to make more money. I taught my kids on normal bikes but with the seat lowered so that it was easy for their feet to reach the ground.