Take the pedals off the bike | Hacker News Reader

Take the pedals off the bike

fortressofdoors.com

497 pointsbemmu450 comments

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.

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.

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.

I belive this is simply called 'critical thinking.'[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

Careful, you're going to trigger the conservative anti-thinking brigade's thoughtless criticism by undermining their authority!

https://www.pressherald.com/2024/01/27/opinion-critical-thin...

>Opinion: Critical thinking is authoritarians’ kryptonite; let’s use it.

>The culture of MAGA Republicans is antithetical to critical thinking. Which is exactly why the rest of us need to insist on it.

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/texas-gop-no-more-c...

>Texas GOP: No More Critical Thinking in Schools

>Teachers, you may want to be sitting down for this one.

>The 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform, adopted June 9 at the state convention in Forth Worth, seems to take a stand against, well, the teaching of critical thinking skills. Read it for yourself:

>"We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

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.

I think this is exactly what the article is getting at. Maybe you’re right but maybe it’s at least a step in the right direction just like learning to ride without pedals didn’t ingrain bad habits.

Checkout Learncraft Spanish. The step they take to simplify that others do not is that they focus knly on grammer for a very lokg time, and just use english verbs and nouns.

For example, at a certain point the only words you will have learned are que and lo, so the quiz sentances will be like :

I want you to eat it -> I want que lo you eat

This prpgram has been extremely useful to me and helped me learn spanosh far quicker than other methods. They also use memory palace techniques and have an unusually effective way of organizing vocab learning

That sounds rather like the way the Pimsleur approach teaches. It drills fundamentals of grammar through fairly basic "travel vocabulary," but once you have that foundation you can go pretty far.

If you read reviews for kids foreign-language language books on Amazon, you'll see a fair amount of adults reading it for themselves mixed in. That's a little more self-directed but the vocab and sentence structure is organically restrained and the books are fun! caveat: I've only read two books in this manner incidentally, but I knew some people who did this kind of thing on the side during our college language classes.

If you haven’t checked out the Pimsleur[0] app, you might find it useful for learning a language.

It’s the only language learning system that has ever worked for me. It focuses on speaking and every day language rather than reading, writing, and memorizing vocabulary, conjugations, etc.

It isn’t cheap, but it’s designed for you to learn enough to not need it anymore.

It probably doesn’t work for everyone, but it did feel like a different approach than many of the other language apps I tried in the past.

[0]: https://www.pimsleur.com/

> Learn to speak German like a 5 year old

This is pretty much the methodology behind "comprehensible input", where you consume lots of content that you can just about understand and "let your brain figure it out".

There's quite a lot along these lines. LingQ helps you learn as you read books, and I built https://nuenki.app, which gives you constant comprehensible input as you browse the web.

I also really like Language Transfer, which isn't really a comprehensible input course, but tries to draw parallels to English and talks through the etymology a little. The approach appeals to me.

Thanks - I'll give your plugin a try.

Along similar lines, I subscribed to r/nederlands, so that random reddit scrolling features intermittent Dutch practice. I figure that this sort of everyday exposure will help me build a subconscious, pattern-driven sense of grammar and word usage.

Yeah, it's been kinda interesting to see the effect of Nuenki actually.

I haven't been doing much proper German studying for a while - partially because I've been focused on Nuenki. However, I've been getting into it again recently, and I'm going to go to a language exchange.

There are a lot of sentences I can intuitively just sorta understand, even if I might not be able to tell you what a certain word or grammatical feature is. I think it's quite useful for getting you over the mental block of "ah I don't follow it" to getting the gist. I wanted to find something on the German Wikipedia a week ago, and I was able to navigate it as if it were all in English - even though, if you asked me what a specific word meant, I probably wouldn't know.

You definitely need to pair it with something with more active recall, though. My passive vocabulary is much larger than my active one after this break.

I think this is a brilliant idea, congrats on building it! Will try it out as well. I think some passive exposure to dutch is exactly what I need.

Awesome! Let me know if you have any feedback.

I have a theory about language acquisition that I've never had the time to fully explore, that developing an ear for a language is the critical first step.

To that end, my theory would be that a program of imitation & mimicry would be the most effective way to learn. That you would hear a native speaker say a phrase and attempt to fluently imitate it. Specifically, record your voice as you speak and listen to what you say and try to as perfectly as possible imitate the prototype phrase.

Learn vocabulary and grammar later; focus, like children do, on hearing the language and imitating its use. Learn reading and writing last of all; formal grammar and especially spelling are the pedals on the bike.

That's the Pimsleur method. They have you listen and repeat sentences. You listen to a conversation between native speakers and repeat after them to practice the sounds and get a "feel" for it. Speaking is a physical thing with muscle memory.

Maybe this has evolved, but the version of this I was exposed to was in the context of French, where you would play these "ecoutez et repetez" things and the class would say things out loud. Pimsleur has a most likely well-deserved reputation for language fluency training, but I would go a step further.

For me the critical thing is hearing the playback of your own voice and being able to learn to hear the difference. I've encountered this with professional mimics / celebrity impersonators -- the most important thing to do is to hear what your voice sounds like.

I think there's something to the hearing. Some of my friends speak other languages and I'll try to repeat something but apparently I'm speaking gibberish because my pronunciation is so bad, but I simply cannot hear the difference. I've heard comedians make this joke about English speakers trying to speak Chinese too.

I think there's a similar thing with faces. I knew some identical twins in school and at first I couldn't tell them apart, but after seeing them a bunch it became instant. I think it's similar with facial recognition of races we don't see often.

So yeah, something about repetition until you can spot the difference seems to be beneficial.

It's called "shadowing". Search for [shadowing language learning] to get to discussions of this method, variants, pros and cons etc.

this is the base of Fluent Forever: https://fluent-forever.com/index.html

the book is very good for who likes to think about learning.

There are resources available for children, eg Muzzy is an animated immersion program for 5 year olds that (if you can bear the cheesy animation) might work. (In the US, available on Kanopy with a public library card.) And if you are good at searching you might also find resources that educators use for teaching recently immigrated children, although that implicitly requires a teacher/partner to be working with you.

Everyone learns languages in a different way. There are some people who like to be told what the basic rules of the language are and can use that to structure new sentences. Like giving someone K&R I suppose. Other people need to hear it. Personally, because I am only learning a language for practical purposes like travel, I'd love a course that dispensed with the grammar and taught contemporary phrases used in everyday life. For example, I am never going to ask and be told where the library is. But I'm very likely to hear, "cash or card?" or to ask "does this train go to Bologna?". So practicality for me wins early on, and then later I'd like to learn the top 500 words, and then the grammar structures.

Author of the piece here, I speak three languages (Norwegian, English, and Spanish) and am currently working on a fourth (Japanese).

"Taking the pedals off the bike" advice for language learning:

- Learn pronunciation first

A lot of people never master a native (or semi-native) accent, but if you sit down and figure it out, it's easier than it seems at first. Getting the native pronunciation down matters because otherwise you literally can't distinguish between certain words, and it will be a habit you'll never unlearn. It makes everything else easier. It also gives you massive cred with native speakers who will overlook your atrocious grammar and paltry vocab because "wow, you sound good! I'm impressed." It's taken both as a sign of respect and that you're putting in the effort, and makes you punch above your actual weight. This does wonders for confidence and makes you less shy about trying to learn by speaking & listening, which is crucial.

Gabriel Wyner does a good job explaining it in his book "Fluent Forever" (his method is pretty cool too but I have some critiques of it overall, "learn pronunciation first" is the best single lesson to transfer to other language learning methodologies).

I learned Spanish at a two year old level by focusing only on the top 24 verbs, in all (major) tenses first. So, ir, ser, estar, tener, haber, hacer, poner, poder, venir, ver, decir, dar, etc., in present, preterite, imperfect, future, conditional, subjunctive, progressives, and perfects.

Then I learned about 2000 nouns from several lists. Then I learned some common "weird" constructions like darse cuenta, and hace falta.

Now I can read paperbacks on the plane without a dictionary, and follow the plot. I can communicate simply, and send pretty good texts. I have a lot of trouble with TV and radio, but it's progress. This took 2 years with mainly self study and Duolingo for accountability. I don't think an app alone would do the trick.

I’d like to say, “Is this not obvious?” but I’m not sure I fully appreciated what follows until I had a sufficient level of exposure to abstract mathematics. A core element of problem solving is reduction, be it to logically equivalent formulations or to more atomic components that can be reasoned about together.

Another take I've had is that we were wrong in the past. Pedaling isn't the tricky part of riding a bike. Balancing is. Training wheels let you learn to pedal.

Maybe that's part of the reason why "strider" bikes are becoming a lot more common for toddlers to learn how to ride a bike. They're effectively what the OP describes, a bike with no pedals that you run and then balance on.

Those were already somewhat common around here, back when I taught my kid to ride some... 17-18-19 years ago. But it felt rather superfluous to buy a separate gadget that he'd use for at most a few months, when the same effect could be achieved by just taking the pedals off a "real" bike.

(Unfortunately, we'd already started him on the old-fashioned route with pedals and training wheels. Fortunately, he wasn't all that heartbroken when we "discovered that a thief must have stolen" the pedals and training wheels. And he was quite ecstatic when later "the thief must have returned the pedals".)

So I really recommend the ordinary-bike-with-removed-pedals method to start with. The trick is just to get the saddle low enough. Old-fashioned[1] saddle mounts with a multi-piece clamp on the saddle post usually have that below the longitudinal rails on the saddle. You can flip the bits around so the rails go below the bolt of the clamp, and thereby lower the saddle by a couple centimeters / about an inch. This is a rather fiddly job within the narrow confines under the saddle / above the rails / inside the side flaps of the saddle, but it's possible. Three guesses as to how I know this.

___

[1]: And most stuff on not-exorbitantly-expensive kids' bikes is quite old-fashioned; kids' bikes are much cheaper than "serious" adult ones, so manufacturers have to scrimp wherever they can.

I've been told that it's easier to learn to ski without poles by an experienced instructor. Apparently his pupils would all spend their time trying to figure out these new "pole" things and very little time actually learning how to balance if he started there. I also think it's probably better to hike without trekking poles even on difficult terrain until you master balance. They're more for supporting your upper body if you have a 75+ liter pack full of gear than for keeping you from eating shit if you step on an unsupported rock.

that might be a good analogy because, generally speaking, skiing is much, much harder without poles (hence an expert would never do it (unless they are hitting an olympic vert ramp or something)), but it is exactly for this reason that the poles distract you from learning the "right" lesson-- people use their poles pretty much randomly at the start, and the poles help them... to do the wrong thing. but once you have the real crux of skiing down-- body position and balance + using your edges and weight shifts to turn-- poles are completely trivial to add.

great analogy!

I took skiing lessons a couple years ago. This is how it was done. I can't say it was any easier as I had never skied before and I never will again.

I've taught several snowboarders how to ride and the teaching process is about putting them in a position where they forget about the distracting things.

Always start them on a blue (or blue-black) slope, because it forces them to learn to use the edge of the board. Lot of easy drills like side slipping and simply turning your head to control direction.

If you start a snow boarder on a green run, it always results in them catching an edge and eventually face planting. Not a fun experience.

A bit like skateboarding - on typical pavement, it's easier to fall just going straight if you go ~3 mph than if you go ~6 mph.

> Always start them on a blue (or blue-black) slope

Surely you can't be serious?

You can doubt me all you want, but it works. (I've been boarding for more than 30 years, you'll usually find me on the double-blacks)

Obviously can't start them on a slope with moguls, but it needs to be a steeper slope that forces learning how to use the edges.

The slope rating is different between resorts. A blue at Arapahoe Basin is likely a blue-black at most others which is why I made that distinction.

Once they learn to properly use their edge, and commit to using it, they will progress quite rapidly.

After that, it's just about fitness and the risks that you're willing to take.

When my kids learned to ski, it was without poles. The poles are an encumbrance, not only on the slope, but getting onto the tow rope.

Likewise, music. The most popular method -- Suzuki -- starts kids out without sheet music. Reading comes later.

In both cases, it's also just less gear to manage. The benefit becomes obvious in group lessons and recitals.

I love riding bikes with no pedals. You do feel like a dandy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse

Also, is it shocking to anyone that pedal+chain bicycles were invented in 1885, less than 20 years before powered flight?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle

Sort of a sit-down, off-road push scooter!

They used to be called ‘velocipedes’.

There's a great (underrated) video on YouTube about training a neural network to manage a double pendulum

It changes gravity! This is sort of like managing a double pendulum under water^ and then trying it in the air

The video: https://youtu.be/9gQQAO4I1Ck?si=Hs_3GxrZgmhr2xSn

^ haha not sure this would be easier

That is an interesting video! Your writing made me expect the neural network had changed gravity as hacky part of its solution, but it's the creator trying to train a neural network to balance a simulated double pendulum and failed, and then wondered if he could train a simpler version in a simulation with no gravity and high friction to make it easy, then see if the solution can gradually be retrained to cope as he adjusts those to full gravity and normal friction. The visualisations in it are very good.

Gah I can see why you would be confused

Yes yes, I was trying to show "here's a simplification one made to train a simple network how to do a hard thing" and much like removing pedals, I think it's effective

Unrelated, in dog agility they sometimes train weave poles using the channel method. So they set the weave poles to form a channel that the dog runs through. And then they gradually narrow the channel. Finally they have narrowed the channel until the poles are in a straight line

Balance bikes. The dude discovered balanced bikes.

Which were also the historical precursor of bicycles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_bicycle#19th_ce...

Made perfect sense when I read it, because this is also how to teach snowboarding. A reasonably proficient snowboarder will think 'it all about going back and forth from the front edge to the back edge smoothly' but a beginner needs to learn how to first stand in balance over the board without falling on the face or their back.

I agree, but to be fair I think that point could have been made clearer in the post.

A similar but related lesson: the best way to teach something is to design a task that is just difficult enough that the learner can figure it out on their own.

When I was reading parenting books in preparation for my own kids, this is one consistent theme that kept coming up, sometimes called "scaffolding." The idea is that you provide a safe environment, design a task that is just the right level of difficulty, then let the child figure it out themselves. (For example, rather than directly holding a kid climbing up a ladder, let them climb it by themselves while you stand by to catch them just in case.) As a result, they develop more independence, self-confidence, and the lessons stick.

"Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly for the rest of his life." -- Jean Piaget

Piaget is well known in teaching circles as a philosophical father of pedagogy. A (slightly) less know pedagogist is Vygotsky, who invented the term “Zone of Proximal Development”. The idea is that kids can learn from others and from experimentation if you can design activities where you take the skills they currently have, consider the skill you want them to acquire, and build steps between them that a child can succeed in. To develop this example: once a child can walk, they can learn to balance by being given a task which allows them to safely experiment with falling over and staying upright. Once they can balance, you can experiment with moving while balancing. Once they can move forward with balancing, they can learn stopping safely. Finally, they should be ready to learn how to pedal.

If you don’t allow them to complete all the previous steps, they may just keep failing at the next task, because they’re not yet in the “zone” to be able to acquire the next skill.

If a child can’t balance annd move forwards unaided, they won’t be able do the next thing (pedalling) even with help.

Children have different skills and capabilities and Vygotsky is not prescriptive about who needs to help, and the ZPD theory often encourages learning from peers rather than adults (parents/teachers).

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.

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.

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.

You could technically footjam, just need to show the kids enough BMX or fixed gear videos first...

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 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.

Yep, it's a great physics lesson for learning why cars have anti-lock brakes.

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 started out so well, but then it all broke.

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.

Isla has folded, sadly (though they're still selling replacement parts for now). A shame: their machines really were magnificent. We have also been running through them (mostly second-hand) and selling them on, and it's been a cheap and excellent means of primary transport.

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.

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...

You typed a comment far longer than the search that would've surfaced the video. Smh

But that's the effort that has to be duplicated by all readers of that comment, and reader/commenter ratio is ~10, so.. might as well include the link in everyone's interests..

Saw this after a week... The Jules saved by sending the link could be measured in hamster farts

Yep, silly old law written by people who don't cycle. It might have had a place 40 years ago, but modern bike brakes are so easy to use (and keep adjusted) that it's at best an anachronism and at worst now a safety hazard in it's own right.

not all kids bikes: only bikes with a maximum seat height between 22 and 25 inches (under 22 inches don't require brakes at all).

in practice, this winds up applying to 14" wheel bikes and maybe some 16" wheel bikes.

definitely a silly rule though.

> 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.

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).

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?

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.

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.

My son used his so much that I had to replace the tires. The guy at the bike shop said they had never ordered that size.

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.

> IME balance bikes is the greatest thing for bicycles since the safety bicycle.

Since before the safety bicycle: Balance bikes came first. Then the pedals were added -- driving the front wheel, like kids' bikes still did when I was a kid -- then the front wheel grew into the "penny-farthing", then came the safety bicycle. But the balance bike -- for adults! -- came first. Invented by a baron (Carl?) von Drais; that's why they're called "draisins" in some languages. (Which is also the name for muscle-powered rail vehicles in some languages; presumably via pedal-powered bicycles --> pedal-powered rail carts.)

> 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.

Well yes there is a point. At the age of 2 or 3 bikes are so small and their cranks so short that the gearing is very low. Which means kids are usually faster on a balance bike at that age so it is much more rewarding.

At age of 4 or 5 kids can realise they might be faster and get tired less by riding a real bike so they have a motivation for it.

> 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.

> toy

A toy? The balance bike was our kid's secondary mode of transportation for 2.5 years, after our bike trailer.

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.

This. And I don't think I've ever see a 2-3 year old pedal a bike well. But holy-moly can they rock out on a balance bike.

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.

Balance bikes are super cheap, very light, and the kid uses it for like a year or more until you are ready to buy the proper bike

We got our kid her balance bike when she was around 1.5, so she used it for almost 2 years. They are not even expensive.

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.

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!

Half the children seem to have one in France. My neighbourhood is full of them. Draisiennes/laufräder/balancebikes are a real transportation means as children go every single day to the crèche on them. Some Kids that do this know how to ride and can learn to ride a real bike before 3. You then have to find one small enough

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.

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...

My neighbor who already knew how to ride a balance bike thought herself how to ride a bike all on her own at 4-5 years old. I was in the hammock watching her roll down a small incline where getting to pedaling is even easier than on a flat. That was an amazing moment watching another human being having an absolutely awesome day. She might be exceptionally good at this though she is now 12 and rides unicycles

The incline makes it so much easier for sure! I got my kids going on a slight hill that was covered in grass so they weren't so fearful to fall off.

Snap - my son loved his balance bike and would even ride it around the house. We got him a 'good' bicycle (about £140) and he learnt to ride it in about 10 minutes, and same as your child - he rode home and from that moment on he loved his bike.

My daughter never enjoyed or wanted a balance bike, and only gave up her three wheeled scooter about age 7. We tried getting her to cycle a few times, but she couldn't get her head around it. Then last summer she grabbed a 2 wheeled scooter and picked them up quite fast, and the evolution from that to the bicycle seemed pretty easy. We just had to wait until she was ready and interested - I'd tried to encourage her before, but my style for everything now it just to riff off their interests and let them find their place.

Same for swimming, I went swimming with a friend who tried to teach their child 'drills' - which obviously bored them (both). I just let my kids jump in and dive for sinkies - in time (swimming twice a week) they have developed further and further - but they are always up for the pool as they know I'll let them do what they want and focus on having fun.

We went from floaties to a kickboard one summer and then last summer just took away the kickboard and practiced without it, quickly after that we had a swimmer at age of 4. Note that before that moment paid swimming lessons didn't help, somehow it just needs to happen in the right moment and each kids has their own pace.

Yeah, I used to take our daughter to nursery on her balance bike. I could tell when she started doing little bursts of speed so that she could put her feet up and coast for a while that she had picked up the essentials of balancing.

She did have a bike with stabilisers but she didn't use it much like that as she didn't enjoy it. Between getting "high sided" on bumps and the feeling of falling over before the wheels took the weight.

When her first friend started riding properly she asked me to teach her to ride without stabilisers. I bought one of the push bars from Amazon which was a confidence booster for both of us as I could run behind her and make sure she was safe. It only took 5 minutes before she was riding off on her own. Sadly she got a bit over confident and had a bit of a spill which gave her a bleeding lip which set her back a couple of weeks but the next time she was off without assistance almost immediately.

A few months later she was cycling 10km around the Ile d'oleron in France!

Training wheels are horrible thing. When i was a little kid i didn't want to let go of them. One day my mother removed them, hold me by my shirt collar and told me to pedal. At the end of the day I was riding like a boss.

As the author said, training wheels are learning backwards. You learn to pedal, but not to ride. You need to ride, then learn to pedal. And the motivation is also positive: removing training wheels is bad, cause you will fall. Adding pedals is good, because it allows you to go faster.

My parents taught me to ride by pushing the bike down a small hill with me on it! Lol

Same thing though. I was ruding the bike like a boss pretty quickly.

Actually that is what we use to teach adults how to ride bikes. They get it much better if they get used to push the bicycle for a couple of hours, plus mounting dismounting it in a standstill. It teaches them they can control it and it doesn't appear like some external contraption whose sole purpose is to make them crash.

I'm an adult with cerebral palsy and it's been a lifelong dream of mine to learn how to ride a bike as an adult. I feel like I may have just enough balance to make it work.

My biggest problem with learning to ride a bike is they seem to assume the user has a certain amount of flexibility and range of motion. Also in order for me to have 'feet on the ground' I have to be off the seat. If I'm off the seat all of a sudden I'm straddling a massive metal crossbrace that's uncomfortably close to 'the boys'.

This post has me wanting to find a women's cruiser and remove the pedals. I'm ~ 5'10" I should be able to find a bike where I can easily touch the ground from the saddle

> women's cruiser

Also known as a bicycle with a step-through frame.

There are obviously tradeoffs involved (weight/size & high speed stability), but a trike/e-trike might work out well too if you're looking for other options.

Especially as a cargo carrying bike they're pretty cool.

I used to have a trike in college till it got stolen. I was always skittish of taking it on the road given most 'bike lanes' are painted gutters about as wide as that trike was.

In the MTB world they invented dropper seatpost which allows the seat to slide up or down depending of the riders need. Usually they want it out of the way in the downhills.

Turns out it is also really useful when you are using your bike in a urban area and want the seat down at the traffic lights and I can see those becoming popular on city bikes in the next few years.

Right now there is one particular city/step-thru kind of bike that sports one because it is built to also handle dirt paths:

The Marin Larkspur 2 https://www.marinbikes.com/ww/bikes/2021-larkspur-2

So you could totally buy a bike this bike in your size, sliding down the saddle and removing the pedals to use it as a balance bike for a little before you get confident enough to use it with pedals.

Additionally I think it looks super cool. I don't need it, yet I want one for myself. I think they just released an e-bike version that I may gift to my partner.

How about a mountain bike with a sloped top tube.

Bikes (at least used to) come in different frame sizes. If ordinary commuter bikes don't any more, at least mountain bikes still tend to, as I understand it. And those have the top tube of the frame lower anyway, and with that usually also the top end of the saddle tube (that the saddle post slides in).

At 5'10" -- which is about my height (am I 5'9½"?) -- I'm fairly sure there exist bicycles that let you put the saddle low enough that you can reach the ground with your feet. [1] Sure, pedalling isn't super-comfortable at that height; it's a bit more effort than if you have your legs almost straight at the lower end of the stroke (but then you can't reach the ground while on the saddle). But it's not all that bad, and it certainly doesn't wholly prohibit the use of the bike.

Once you've used it for a while and got your sense of balance, you may not need the option of foot-on-the-ground-from-the-saddle any more, so you'll be able to raise the saddle to the "correct" (=more comfortable for pedalling) height. Or if not, the little bit of inefficiency will mean a more efficient workout! :-)

And hey, if you're really nervous about finding your balance, do what everyone recommends for little kids and remove the pedals, and use it as a "balance bike" to begin with. Anyway, I'm convinced you should be able to find a used mountain or "ladies" (=step-through) bike to try this stuff out on. Talk to the folks at a bike shop, they're often (not always, of course) knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and therefore helpful. Good luck!

___

[1]: Dunno how tall the guy in the video is, but this sure looks like it should fit you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV88C5ZK0x0 . Not that I think you need that super-heavy brute, specifically, but the frame looks like quite a lot of mountain bikes you see around. So here's a cheaper alternative that also looks OK(ish, for its price). : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLPpTFLgEb4 .

If you have any adaptable sports groups around you, they might be able to offer some advice.

While this whole thread is heavily dominated by bashing on training wheels (deservedly so, I can say having tried to teach a full blown 29 year old to ride bikes), this incentive/motivation inversion you mention is interesting.

"Protections/guards" of some kind are so common (not just in software/tech, but all life) that "training wheels" has become a huge metaphor/analogy. I wonder how many other examples there are of the motivation inversion?

It is the same with education. Kids don't get anything if you are using the negative form "don't do this bla bla stop doing that bla bla" and even worse when parents add the confidence sapping "you will fall"/"you will hurt yourself".

It is better to use the positive form: "take your time and make sure you have both feets secured before moving your hand" (on a climbing wall) "stay this distance from the end of the edge of the sidewalk, the bus can pass really close"

> 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

There is actually a third way. Learn to ride a bike the correct way first time. It is not that hard, I got it in a few minutes when I was a kid.

The thing is it can't be easy if you have used trainer wheels before because trainer wheels teach you stuff you have to unlearn first.

Note: I am not arguing about the merit of the balance bike. A balance bike is indeed faster for a small 2-3y old kid than a bike is at that age anyway. But most of the benefits of a balance bike is less to teach balance than to put the idea of trainer wheels away from parents.

Yes, I see this all the time around my neighborhood, kids get so used to the training wheels, they can just hop off their bike and leave it there while they play some other games. And then they just jump back on the bike. Those bikes can also have all tons of silly accessories, like baskets, ribbons, huge bells, it's not like the kid has to hold the bike upright or learn how to lean it against a wall or on the ground. And then I heard a parent say his kid doesn't want to take off the training wheels, they tried it once for a day and she hated it. Gee, wonder why, now they are waiting for the 5-yearold to tell them when she's ready to take them off. Good luck with that.

I always wondered why almost all the kids bikes sold in Canada have coaster brakes. I actually thought all kids bikes had coaster brakes until I saw some at Decathlon with hand brakes (turns out it's a French company).

The ones in decathlon are great because they have levers designed for smaller hands. We went with rascal bikes, they are expensive but extremely light weight and no coaster brakes, they also have belts so no lubing and no clunky chain guards. I think the idea behind coaster brakes is that kids have weak hands and that it's easier for their brain to only think about what their legs are doing, pedal forwards to go, kick back to break. I know I had them as a kid back in the late 80s and it was fine, even cool. My recent experience with my own kid was opposite to that. We started on a second-hand Specialized Jett 16 with a rear coaster brake (before I realized it was a mistake and ordered the much more expensive Rascal). The coasting brake makes the bike heavy, it prevented her from pulling up the pedal at start and it also confused the hell out of her while pedaling, she would sometimes mistake the direction of pedaling and activate the break, causing her to stumble or fall. It would also be one more thing to unlearn later on.

The typical quality of kids bikes in the US is appalling. I wouldn't trust a bike made with hand brakes unless I could adjust and maintain them myself, which I can. But a lot of parents can't. And the weight is inexplicable, given how much smaller they are.

Oh yes it may very well over half your kid’s weight. These things are ABSURDLY heavy.

This makes starting hard (an already hard problem when learning), it makes falling off worse because there is so much weight pulling down, and then they get pinned under all that weight so it can be hard to get up again. It makes walking the bike uphill physically impossible so if it is hilly you can't actually go out for a ride.

There will be at least some people out there whose road bike weights less than their toddler’s bike.

My kid's first bike with pedals was the Specialized Jett 16" at 8-9kg, that's absurd. Her newer bike is a more reasonable 5.6kg.

Same here, balance bike straight to pedal bike at 3 years old. No training wheels, she managed to learn in a span of a day or two. It took some more time to learn to brake with front levers and that's it. And the back pedal coaster brakes were just confusing, she would unknowingly start pedaling backwards and it prevented her from pulling the pedal up to start propelling (later on she would learn to push off or just sit on the bicycle and get started). We started on a 12" kokua likeabike jumper before the age of 2 and later converted to a lightweight 16" rascal bike (great czech brand that delivers across europe). The coaster brakes where on a specialized jett 16 and we ditched this boat anchor quickly. Now she is 4.5 and she can do a 12km ride with me, we even do climbs with a shotgun tow rope because her bike is single speed.

> 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.

I remember coming across Isla while researching online for my kid's second bike, but sheee! were they expensive.

This is spot on. I live in the Netherlands, both my kids could ride a bike at 2. Shortly after learning how to walk, many kids here get a "loopfiets" (walking bike) which is exactly this, a bike with no pedals (nor a chain etc) [0]. I never saw a kid that can't ride this instantly.

Now, the funny thing is that most parents, when their kids are ready for a real bike, they put them on one with side-wheels (support wheels?) [1, 2]... My wife and I were looking at kids doing this and were thinking the same thing: "Wait, this is unlearning the whole thing they learned about balance and steering on 2 wheels! Let's go straight to no-support-wheels!" And voila, there they were, within a couple of attempts (we ran along) they were riding around! While many kids struggle when their support wheels come off.

Since then we joke that we are part of the anti-support-wheel-club when we see kids steering uncomfortably on such a bike. Which is really awkward since the bike has to stay upright, the kids have to hang to one side for balance when steering. And yet, it remains the most (or at least, a very) popular way.

[0] https://www.babyhomepage.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Loopf...

[1] https://media.s-bol.com/qQv4Y69p8j33/1155x1200.jpg

[2] https://bike.nl/loekie-booster-kinderfiets-12-inch-jongens-g...

>when their kids are ready for a real bike, they put them on one with side-wheels (support wheels?)

In the US they are called "training wheels."

"Das sind Stürzräder, nicht Stützräder." sigh

I would never go to support wheels after a walking bike (laufrad in german). They learn to use instantly, and pretty fast are stable and balancing. Next step is to add pedals, but NOT pedals+support wheels!

Yeah, this is the way. I don't know why the training wheels route is still so ingrained here. Probably also some kids start there, and not on a balance bike (wrong imo).

I've seen some kids struggle with the pedaling if they've only done balance bike. A week or so with support wheels doesn't rob them of the balancing skills they learned and allows them to put the two skills together (balancing and pedaling) instead of having to learn to pedal for the first time with balancing. I'm sure any of these methods work just fine though including what many of us older folks did of just tricycle to bicycle.

The difficult part is not balance but looking ahead. When you are first learning to use the pedals, you instinctively LOOK at them. That's what makes it difficult. I learned on a standard bike but did not pedal until somone encouraged me to try. I was going downhill fast and everything without using the pedals. :)

I disagree; you don't balance on a bike, you adjust the balance point under the bike as it tips to one side and the other with pressure. This is why beginners "S" their way at the start, then get finer grain control. This is similar to skiing, where you don't balance on top but keep pressure applied to an edge.

Your bike is upright and the handlebars straight. You add velocity to it. There's no tipping there. It will go straight forever. It's a self balancing system - unlike skiis. You only tip the bike over to turn and that (counter steering) only after a certain speed.

I maintain that it's looking at the pedals. Looking itself doesn't do anything but a newbie will move the handlebar or lean while looking and or won't generate enough speed. Couple of days on the saddle and they can look anywhere while riding.

I took the pedals off for one of my kids (the others did the training wheels), and it worked quite well.

The only downside was that he figured out that if he got wobbly, he could stick his legs down and a bit out and it would help him stabilize by lowering the center of gravity. That seemed great at the time, but when the pedals were put back on, he would still use this trick when he got wobbly, which isn't a great instinct. Took a bit of time to train that out of him.

But in the end, it was faster than the training wheels, and it's cheaper than buying a specialized balance bike.

When much older, after cycling thousands of km, I tried a bike with support wheels and it was absolutely terrifying! How is one suppose to take corners?

Inevitably the rear end slides out, the bike tips over or the support wheel/brace fails.

Slowly. They're meant for children.

My kid did a bicycle with the support wheels for a little while just to get the mechanics for pedaling, then did a balance bike for a month or so. After that I put the pedals on with no support wheels and she was riding in no time. I do think the balance bike helps a lot.

I learned riding the bike with support wheels. This was almost 50 years ago, but I remember that it sucked, because whenever a support wheel touched the ground it would pull you to that side. With my children we did the same as you, and they learned really fast. My younger son was a little bit of a hotshot on the walking bike, but that is an entirely different story.

I struggled learning how to ride a bike. Training wheels made it difficult for me so my dad took them off and I struggled more because I didn't understand speed = balance. I gave up and asked for a Razer scooter for Christmas instead. A few years later, I'm at a family event (without my scooter) and I'm watching my cousins ride around the culdesac on their bikes making it look super easy. I hopped on one of their bikes and just started pedalling, it was so easy. Ran back inside to show my parents and they were happy for me but incredibly confused how I just learned how to ride a bike without any real instruction. Maybe a Razer scooter helped me with balance and not being afraid to go fast, I can see how a scooter is similar to a walking bike.

training/support wheels address the wrong part of what's "hard" about riding a bike. They also encourage the kid to sit down and look at their feet, limit where you can ride, make pedaling harder, provide false security (if you've ever seen a kid tip), and steal all the fun from riding a bike. Bikes are awesome because your body inputs have such an impact on what happens; training wheels make a bike like driving a car.

The "walking bikes" you mention are extremely common in the US as well, and are referred to as "balance bikes" here.

> I never saw a kid that can't ride this instantly.

As a data point, we tried this with my son, who is physically very capable if not advanced, and despite many attempts over months, it never clicked for him. We eventually went the training wheels route, which he instantly adopted, and once he was comfortable on that for a while, he learned to ride without them in a single session.

We've since met other parents who had similar experiences, so I think it's definitely not a universal thing that balance bikes are better or even useful.

Same with my daughter. We tried with balance bike, but she didn't adopt it and didn't find it fun to try. We went to training wheels and she was immediately motivated. And at the same time, I've heard success stories with balance bikes from my friends.

Kids are different, try out different things.

This, in my opinion, proves that different people might need different things. And, in turn, many immensely able and skilled ones fail at standard route (e.g. successful writers fail at school).

It’s fairy obvious but I like to keep this poka-yoke’ish concept in mind: it’s not about the person, it’s about the process.

problem is peadling, we used some 4 wheel thing to get this going.

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.

    > only really grokking it at 6 or so

This reads like a carbon copy of my experience! When I learned to ride a bike at 6, it was so hard. I had to practice for a long time with my father. These balance bikes really are a game-changer.

She doesn't have very athletic parents, so she regularly exceeds my expectations for her, but she's not a particular standout otherwise!

Probably the more relevant factor: we replaced one of cars with a cargo bike when she was 15 months old, so she does 1500+ miles a year "on" a bike, and a tiny fraction of that in a car (we live in a totally car-centric US city, so this is pretty out of the norm). Bikes are the fabric of her daily life so she is really, really motivated to spend time on a bike.

Yeah, ironically training wheels was a bad idea. It learns you the motions of pedaling, but not the core skill: balancing.

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.

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

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.

Diesels have lot's of torque even at low RPM. My diesel can start moving from stopped at small inclines even at idle, no accelerator input. Not great to do, but it can.

Meanwhile some gas cars will stall without accelerator input at straight road.

Yep, I have a manual diesel 4WD and have taught several people to drive it in a pinch when needed. It's very forgiving as I can just tell them "Put your foot on the clutch, shift into first, and slowly take your foot off the clutch". At that point, they're slowly driving around in first gear and can practice shifting up and down a bit without worrying about the accelerator too much.

To explain different. Cars are geared like a bike in the fastest gears, starting takes a lot of torque. Tractors are like the slowest gear like a mountain bike climbing gear. In addition a tractor motor is like a champion squatter and a car's is like a the fastest kid at your school (Olympic sprinters are still strong).

Cars spend no time at .5 mph but plenty at 60. Tractors spend almost no time above 15 and tons of time at .25mph. tractors will pull your house over. Cars won't.

You can pop the clutch in idle in 6th in a tractor and it'll likely start

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".

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)

> 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 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.

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.

This is exactly the case.

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.

There you go! I wonder what the very first engineer or "product designer" at Peugeot who came up with the idea would think today.

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.

You may be right. I read this on the late Sheldon Brown's website, and it stuck. References:

    https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tancrank.html
    Left-threaded pedals and cranks are reputedly an invention of the Wright brothers, bicycle builders from Dayton, Ohio. (They also built airplanes). 

    https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/left.html
    The left-threaded left pedal was not the result of armchair theorizing, it was a solution to a real problem: people's left pedals kept unscrewing! We have read that the left threading was invented by the Wright brothers, but we are not sure of this.

So, I said it with more authority than was warranted. But it's good enough for normal dinner conversation references ;)

It looks like that method was known by 1880, if I read https://archive.org/details/indispensablebic00stur/page/14/m... correctly ('The "indispensable" bicyclist's handbook; a complete cyclopaedia on the subject') correctly:

> The Centaur Crank is first screwed up to a shoulder on the axle with right and left-handed threads, so that the pressure of the foot tends to make it all the more secure ; whilst, to prevent its loosening by “ back-pedalling,” a slightly tapered conical pin is driven through both crank and axle, and secured with a nut.

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.

Apparently it's actually an effect of the thread precessing into the hole. Interesting.

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.

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.

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.

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)

>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.

I think it must be regional. They're universal in the UK now so there's no way you could have a kid and not know about them. Nobody had them when I was young though. Presumably they just haven't quite infiltrated America yet.

The use case is very little kids. They can use a balance bike about the same time they can toddle about the house (but before they can walk longer distances without support or tumbles).

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.

> I did so in the usual manner - have her sit on the seat while I grab the handlebars and run along side her, then release the bike and watch her panic, freeze, topple over, and kick the bike in frustration.

This part confuses me a lot. Where I'm from you teach kids to ride by attaching a broom (or similar) stick to the back of the bike. That way you can gently hold them when they mess up the balance, but they still get the appropriate feedback that they need to balance on their own. As a plus you feel when they are getting better at it, and the "release" is softer. It is not an all or nothing process, you just hold the stick less and less, and suddenly the kid is cycling on their own.

I couldn't imagine doing the same with holding the handlebar. It would be hard to do. Would mess their feedback loop up. And what is worse it would telegraph to them when you are releasing them thus making it more likely that they panic.

Does anyone really do the "grabbing the handlebars" method to teach kids to ride a bike? Is it a regional difference?

You can also use a scarf that goes under their arms and run along with them ready to catch them with the scarf when they are going to fall. This way you apply 0 force and they get all the feedback. It did help that they stared on a balance bike with no pedals before making the transition to the bike with pedals.

Yes, a horrible idea. It's like throwing a kid in deep water and expecting them to swim. Border line child abuse.

I didn't even bother with a broomstick for my kids. I just ran along, holding the cargo rack. It didn't take them long to learn. A few hours spread out?

> I didn't even bother with a broomstick for my kids. I just ran along, holding the cargo rack.

Yeah. The story in my family is that my dad decided to teach me how to ride. We drove to a park to do it because our road was too busy. He got the bike out of the car first, and went back to get the broomstick. By the time he was back I was already cycling away from him. Undoubtedly due to all my experience with balance bikes. :)

But possibly to this day I couldn't ride if someone would grab my handlebars and push me for a bit then release them at some point. :D

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.

Training wheels and pull-up diapers are both things that make the problem worse.

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.

> 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

> Dustin from SmarterEveryDay

I think his name is Destin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destin_Sandlin

Thanks! Corrected!

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

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

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.

>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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcZCzr9ExKk

This is because gyroscopic forces are not significant except at high speed, and most of the forces relevant to cycling and which direction the bicycle goes are generated between the front tire and road surface. Turning the handlebars to change direction is also only relevant at low speed for the same reason.

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!

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.

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.

> 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)

No, it works at much lower speeds. This guy is not going 20 mph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Counters...

yes, this is what counter steering means to me too.

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.

Counter-steering is how bicycles steer, whether you're doing it consciously or not.

https://ciechanow.ski/bicycle/

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 :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse

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.

Yes, I’m surprised that this is apparently something new for Americans. I thought that was a basic kids toy that’s common everywhere, like skipping ropes or slides.

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 :)

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.

I'm only surprised that this is news to anybody in 2024/2025.

"Balance bikes" [1] have been the norm for 10-15 years now, at least within the cycling community. You can start kids on them pretty much as soon as they can toddle about.

1 - https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-0vqb0rkahl/images/stencil/19...

I would posit that the self-identified "cycling community" is about the same percentage of "people who ride bikes" as programmers are of "people who use computers".

We're a long way from everyone who buys their kid a first bike at Walmart knowing about balance bikes (or the cheaper option of taking the pedals off)

In the US perhaps, where I live the whole cyclists vs non-cyclist thing does not exist. Everybody is a cyclist (perhaps the US is a car community ;)), but generally in normal clothes, on a normal bike (not racing, but like this [0]), with no helmet and on bike lanes where you never meet a car. The smallest bikes (12 inch wheels) are rated 2-4 years old.

[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cortina+u1&t=ffab&iax=images&ia=im...

It is generally considered unwise, and depending on age or other circumstances, illegal to ride without a bike helmet, in large part because most places you will meet a car, and if you don’t, wiping out at 15mph is still going to be hard on your noggin.

Some people wear helmets, but generally it is considered to be such a nuisance (where to leave it, uncomfortable, unnecessary, messes with hear, can't wear a cap) that it may even impede bike usage and make bike less desirable over time. It's certainly not illegal here. There was some research [0], but it's becoming a thing more and more I have to admit [1]. But generally our infra is probably much safer than you can imagine if you've never been here [2]. Also we go quite slow on on our normal bikes (many don't even have gears), we de wear helmets on racing bikes and while mountain biking.

Also, ebikes are making it more unsafe by easily going twice the normal speed, and we need to have a public discussion about that. Many ebike riders do wear helmets, especially the elderly.

[0] https://swov.nl/en/fact/bicycle-helmets-4-why-do-cyclists-ch...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/bikecommuting/comments/dwca9c/why_d...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m1M33B353c

not even in the cycling community… At least 15 years ago getting your kid a balance bike in our circle of normal definitely-not-HN-reader friends was the done thing.

Graduation from a balance bike to a slightly larger bike-with-pedals-removed worked great for both my boys. They could pedal and ride a decent distance before they were out of nappies.

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.

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.

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 would assume 'to dab your feet' i.e. quickly tap the ground with your foot when you're falling over, to rebalance. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dab.

I've mostly heard it in the context of technical mountain biking (where it's fairly common, but usually a sign of not quite getting through a section cleanly - you didn't actually fall off, but you couldn't keep your balance with your feet on the pedals).

> 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.

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.

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.

> save her from wrecks > “watching your white circles”

There's an alternative philosophy that kids will learn safety by experiencing accidents. This only works for types of accident that the kid can reasonably predict. Crashing a bike seems like a perfectly good type of accident to learn from. This is my approach with my kid. Helmet and not going where cars are to prevent serious injuries but otherwise, crash away and I'm not going to save them even if I'm within arm's reach.

> There's an alternative philosophy that kids will learn safety by experiencing accidents.

Do not worry, they will experience falls. It's just good that they don't experience them first thing when they're learning a new thing as they may be put off by the bad experience.

> 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).

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.

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 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 trick is also the way to teach adults, if you're teaching or learning to ride!

For children, there are companies that sell progressive balance bikes[1][2], that start off as balance bikes but can be converted to pedal bikes later. In the US, I've seen tons of cheap Strider bikes on Craigslist, and then you can get the pedal conversion kit separately (you have to get the 14", not the 12").

[1] https://striderbikes.co.uk/collections/14x-balance-pedal-bik...

[2] https://www.littlebigbikes.com/shop/convertible-balance-bike...

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.

And kids bikes can often have really screwed up geometry, just to make learning really fun.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's easier if you can find a sliiiight incline to do it against. So for instance if the road slopes a bit to the right (more elevated on the left side), I turn my front wheel to the left, "up" the small incline. Then I can push the pedal to go a cm forward, or release it a bit to roll a cm backwards. So it kinda simulates a unicycle, except you use the slight incline to do the backpedaling you would do on a unicycle. The better you get at it, the flatter you can go, and when you find the balance you can lift your hands. Good luck!

Here's me doing it: https://gopro.com/v/QoMmEVLp7pJyX

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.

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...

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.

> > > 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

In the U.S. It's typically 20mph (32kph), although class 3 can be up to 28mph (45kph).

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.

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.

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/

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!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)

I think it was more like this:

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse

I've been advocating for this for 12 years, now. I figured it out by accident after watching my 2-year-old niece on a "balance bike" and was like "duh, no pedals!"

My 3-year-old and 5-year-old learned in one day and the "pedals off" part took 30-minutes to an hour (more for my youngest). For the first few years, every time someone would pass my 3-4 year old riding a two-wheeler without training wheels they'd stare in amazement and ask me how I taught her to do that. I'd explain "training wheels until they can pedal/steer, then pedals off for an hour until they're balancing, back on with a 'hold the seat and let go' and that's it". A couple of weeks later, I'd see that same child rolling down the sidewalk without training wheels. I taught every one of my nieces/nephews using the same technique. I've yet to find someone it doesn't work on.

Neither of my kids fell the first time. Both of them understood I'd be letting go on that "saddle holding/running part" at some point without telling them when. I just warned them "if you see I'm not there, DON'T PANIC(tm), because you've already been riding on your own for a while by then!" Every single kid had the same thing happen ... they'd see I'm a house behind them catching my breath, they'd get a look of terror in their eyes, the bike would "dip" a little and they'd catch it, then the look would change to a ridiculous grin as they realized "I did it!"

It was one of the best experiences as a Dad and I'll admit I choked up with each of my children when they nailed it, especially my autistic son who has a really hard time with anxiety/fear related to learning skills that might involve getting injured in the process.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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!

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 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.

> 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)

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.

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.

Or use a kick scooter. Not the tiny wheel Razor types, one with air filled rubber tires. All my three family members (wife, two kids) learned it that way, with an adult size scooter (the kids preferred this to a child size one). Initially you just kinda skitter along, then you realize, hmmm, I can let this roll for a bit, and within 1-2 weeks the balancing thing "clicks". Both kids transitioned directly from the roll >5m stage to riding a bike on the first try.

We had a balance bike but they rejected it.

Similar experience here.

The kids used the kick scooters to get school (faster than walking, so they were motivated, and not yet allowed to ride a bike, "insurance reasons", whatever), so they used them a lot. After that, switching to a real bicycle wasn't hard.

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.

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.

A couple of years ago, I read this cool article about how humans tend to solve problems by adding things. Training wheels are a perfect example - we add these extra wheels to help kids learn how to ride bikes. But there's actually a less obvious approach that involves taking things away, and the article explored this concept across different areas.

I'm from Uruguay, and here we have something really cool called a "Chivita" - it's basically a wooden bike without pedals that toddlers use. Kids learn to balance on two wheels before they ever touch a regular bicycle. When my 5-year-old moved from the Chivita to a real bike, it only took just a couple of tries. Its amazing! If you're curious, just Google "Chivitas bikes Uruguay" to see what they look like! (Chivito is our traditional sandwich so you might get false hits ;))

This is a good way to do it, but can backfire. When my kids were very small they had "coaster" bikes, which are just bikes without pedals. They enjoyed these immensely, but they quickly outgrew the coaster and it was time to move on to a pedal bike and they hated the pedals. To be fair this was partially my fault since we bought regular fixed gear with coaster brakes style kids bikes, which feature annoyingly short crank arms and low gearing which makes it very difficult to get the bike up to high speed. The new "big kid" bikes they got were slower than the old leg powered coaster bikes and harder to use on hills. They resented pedal bikes for a long time.

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.

Going slightly downhill can make it even easier to focus on balancing instead of propulsion.

Playgrounds are boring... ;-)

https://youtu.be/OJ-1I8RsqXg

You may have never encountered a small kid who rides a balance bike at speed, with enormous little kid enthusiasm, up and down hills. :)

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.

Watching your kid learn to ride a bike is one of life's greatest joys

Good to know. I may never use the information.

I did, however, nose around the site a bit more, and found this[0].

I have known a number of folks that have lost kids, for various reasons. It's not something any parent should suffer, but I do see them (usually) move past it, and get to a state of (probably grudging) acceptance.

[0] https://www.fortressofdoors.com/memory-eternal-nikolas-douce...

His other post about that was also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39036842 .

Lots of comments stating as fact without explanation that angular momentum has no impact on rideability, so here is more information. I had no idea that this had been worked out (more or less conclusively):

"While gyroscopic and caster effects may contribute to balancing the bicycle, they are not the root cause. J. D. G. Kooijman and his collaborators confirmed that the root cause is a front-loaded steering geometry. A front-loaded steering geometry means that the steering shape of the front wheel and frame on a bicycle is constructed such that the front of the bike falls faster than the back. If the bike starts to tilt to the left after hitting a bump and succumbing to gravity, the front wheel falls to the left faster than the rest of the bike. As a result, the bike turns left. The amazing part is that turning the front wheel to the left causes the momentum of the bike to snap to the right because of centrifugal force (just like you are thrown to the right side of your car when making a quick left turn). The right lurch of the bike compensates for the initial fall to the left and the bike ends up straight again. "

This is from https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/04/18/what-keeps-a-bic..., which has a link to the relatively recent paper (2011) providing the most evidence:

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1201959

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 think that's how you're supposed to use stabilizers, so they don't touch the ground but still protect from leaning too much.

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.

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.

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."

This is one of the biggest hurdles to getting kids to enjoy riding bikes too. If you think about the weight of many cheaper kids department store bikes they are a significant weight compared to the child. Having a lighter bike makes it much more enjoyable for the kids.

Also recommend Islabikes and Frog bikes for two companies that offer lighter offerings. Again you have to pay for it, but they can often be resold and a decent value later. Especially if you keep the bike clean and loved.

Reading generously gets you further...

1. He discovered balance bikes!

2. Removing a degree of freedom simplifies things

3. Removing extrinsic hard-to-control forces makes force balancing easier

4. What does it really mean to take off the pedals?

5. Solve for static stability, then dynamic stability, then controllability, then orientation/objectives, then energy management.

6. Humbly simplify

7. Share

It's similar for managing development and evolution of any real system - bikes, airplanes, software, business...

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.

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.

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.

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

Here's the way I learened to ride a bike when I got to Amsterdam:

Someone gave me their old second-hand bike as a gift. But - I needed to get that bike back to where I was staying; and you can't bring bikes up onto the tram. So I could either walk for maybe an hour, or ride the bike home. One might still be tempted to walk, but here, another feature of Amsterdam came into play: It was raining, and looking like the rain would get heavier.

I fell off of that bike a dozen times if I did once. But - I just got up and tried again, right away, since there was really no other option, not even getting tired and taking a break. But once I got the hang of falling off of the bike a little more gracefully, I could actually apply trial-and-error to the riding part without worrying about the fall. Within... 15 minutes I was riding the thing.

This is not dissimilar to how I was able to successfully learn to play guitar: learn ukulele first. I spent 20 years off and on attempting to learn guitar (mostly on steel string acoustics), and then I broke my left wrist quite badly in 2016, which really put a damper on things. (I've been playing piano and wind instruments since grade school, so it's wasn't a lack of musical ability or dexterity.)

I picked up my kid's ukulele in 2022, and it was so much easier and more approachable. Only 4 strings (one per finger), lower string tension, less finger pain. Ukulele was able to get me over the initial difficulty hump and now I know how to play ukulele, guitar, bass, mandolin, and even a little banjo.

> 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.

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)

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.

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.

Balance bikes, ie kids bikes with no pedals have been a thing for the last 15 years at least. My kids started on scooters, then balance bikes (similar principle to the scooter, i.e push and go) then graduated to actual bikes.

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.

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.

The best swing dance lesson I ever attended taught the feet work last. The worked first on the feel of leading and following. Leaders took their partner by the hand and just lead them around the room. Then tried to make the follower spin. Couples talked about what felt comfortable and easy.

I forget what came next, but the feet work was considered unimportant. The lesson was in Minnesota in a hanger with WWII airplanes, a big brass band, and happy old vets dancing with young women dressed up in USO outfits.

fyi, to remove the pedal on the left side (non-drive side), you turn wrench to the right (clockwise) to loosen (that's opposite to what you would normally do).

Note: the point though the author is (or should be) making is to take "baby steps". Break down learning into smaller problems. Taking on whole new things at the same time is difficult and overloading causing frustration (esp for kids).

anyway, don't remove the pedals. find a road that slopes down slightly and have the kid just sit and coast to the bottom. add in turning and eventually pedaling.

I work in a bike shop and still fuck this up periodically. It's especially confusing because some pedals only remove from the "back side" with an 8mm Allen wrench.

The easiest way to get it right is if you have a ratchet and a 15mm crow's foot socket. Set it for lefty-loosey before you attack the left side of the bike and you probably can't go too far wrong. Of course, if you have a breaker bar out, this doesn't work.

The other left-threaded bit on a bike is the drive-side of the bottom bracket. Spoke nipples appear to be left threaded, but that's because in the usual case, you're looking at them from the wrong side in a truing stand.

We did it with our kids 7-8 years ago and it worked perfectly. They were riding bikes with pedals within a week or so.

The article does not mention the important difference in the steering wheel behavior: when you ride with trainer wheels (or a tricycle) you learn to steer by turning the front wheel; but when you balance on a bicycle you steer by rotating your body and turn the wheel only afterwards to "catch" the bike. These two modes of riding are almost opposite and if you learn the first one, you'd have to unlearn it the hard way.

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.

I don't recall the author mentioning it but they already have what he describes. It's called a kick bike. My two oldest grandchildren learned to pedal after fighting to not have training wheels taken off at like 5 and 7yos. The next two started on a kick bike at 3 and were flying around the neighborhood like it was nothing. In time they got right on a pedal bike and off they went. Highly recommended. I hope the original inventor got rich off the idea because it is a really great idea.

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.

Cool video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSZiKrtJ7Y0&t=3s

This is how I learn on my own without anyone helping me. I coasted down a gentle slope, ignoring the pedals, legs out to catch myself. Eventually I realized I had learned to balance myself.

Another underappreciated feature of training/balance bikes are having a hand brake lever on the side where the front brake conventionally is on real bicycles.

My oldest (age four) is able to modulate his front brake usage immaculately, both when slowing down and stopping quickly. I didn't learn that skill until well into my 20's, and my wife still avoids the front brake to the point where I'm worried it might become a safety issue at some point.

I have met a few parents that don't know how to ride a bike but wanted to teach their children. I don't want to take away anything from 'this one weird trick' however it doesn't drive into the very bottom of the problem which is getting your environment ready for kids to actually start. Basically, you also need a 'bunny hill' and car-free streets before you take the pedals away. The kids will very quickly do the rest.

This only works when the bike is matching or only little bit higher than the rider. If you are a kid learning to ride on an adult bike (like I did because that was the only one available), don't take the pedals off. They are essential to provide a platform to put your foot on, and more importantly, achieve speed as soon as possible - because a certain amount of speed is essential to keep the bike going which makes the balancing easier.

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.

Just a “your mileage may vary” caveat: this doesn’t work for all kids - didn’t work for my eldest and isn’t working for my younger. They’re really stubborn kids - no idea where they get it - and they see the pedals on their bike and put them in their mental model for how it all works. Taking them off, they refuse to try the “scoot & glide” and only actually try to learn once I put the pedals back on.

If you have any more, don't show them the bike until you've taken the pedals off.

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.

We got my little son a balance bike without pedals. His buddy had a regular bike with training wheels. They traded back and forth naturally all day and learned both components in near-isolation. Putting them together came very quickly.

(We still used the balance bike long after he could ride a regular bike because it was so much lighter to carry and had no greasy chain to get on clothes and car seats.)

I’m constantly “taking the pedals off” in debugging or even just leaving them off in development. I’m a big believer of getting core functionality tested and working before stapling on more layers. But you have to be careful. Identifying the actual core functionality is often counterintuitive… sometimes the API is the core functionality, and the data processing pipeline is the add on.

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.

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.

Balancing is hard and requires practice, steering under the bike as it continually falls to one side or another. Pedaling can be taught in an hour, once the kid understandings you go around (vs pump back and forth).

Run bike for the win.

Also decent kids bikes are expensive, but you can run multiple kids through them and sell for close to what you paid. Don't bother with junk department store bikes.

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.

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.

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 do the same for swimming.

Teach them to put their head in water, then to do the "dead man's float" for as long as they could. Without realizing, they often start pedaling - which is basically the stroke.

I have used this to great effect with dozens of kids, all who are swimming within a session or two.

I thought all parents knew this nowadays. I got my children kick bikes at the age of two and so did many other parents I know. My older started riding a regular bike at the age of three and was able to do so for short distances with only a handful of attempts after learning the kick bike first.

In Poland we have pedal-less bikes for tiny tots. It's amazing how well they work. First they walk with the bike, Then they take longer and longer strides. Once it's clear that they can balance, you get them a proper bike with pedals. It's painless learning.

Make the smoothest learning gradient possible. It helps a lot with kids to increase the complexity over time. Riding a full bike has a steep learning curve. Riding a bike with training wheels then taking them off is a steep transition. Avoid large discontinuities.

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!

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.

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.

At least here in Denmark it is very common to start with a bike that is build without pedals (and chain etc). It works really well, one of my kids could ride her pedal bike before 4 years old thanks to starting on a “løbecykel”.

I got my kid when he got big enough to handle it, a bike that has removable pedals and chain, i.e. the https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/photo/detail/P90224119...

He switched seamlessly from løbecykel to this one with the pedals removed, it was just the same thing, only a bit larger !

Then when he got comfortable with it, I added back the pedals. He got the hang of pedaling in ~10 minutes and a couple of runs down the street. Ever since he has been bike-mobile ! Never even thought about helper wheels.

An example of this is using AI to learn programming. It handles the syntax and you have the opportunity to focus on the fundamentals of what the program should do and what is the best way to accomplish this.

Strider balance bikes! If you're in north America you should be able to find them! Had my kid on the balance stand at 8 months old. He was riding before walking. Now he's almost 5 and I can hardly keep up.

I taught all my kids this way. Generally it really only takes a couple of hours.

Here's a video of an adult learning to ride this way (no petals) - https://youtube.com/watch?v=ELW3CgR-DW4

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.

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.

I learned to ride a bike at 4 years old. I just went straight to a fixed gear bike, and taught myself in a single afternoon (most small kids bikes back then could not even coast).

We have Woom bikes. This is exactly what they recommend. Each of my three kids learned at different speeds, though. It basically turns your pedal bike into a strider bike.

This is great insofar it gives the child a proper safeguard (just planting their feet on the ground) to stop being scared of toppling over and keep practicing. Nice.

I think I did something similar. I found a grassy gradual slope and had them go down it. They didn't have to think about peddling until they lost some speed.

I bought my 20 month old son a balance bike for Christmas and he's already able to balance on it a month later while going down the sidewalk. Great method!

I taught most of my kids this way once I heard about. There are even bikes marketed as such now called balance bikes. Pretty mind blowing how fast it works.

Most kids will have a balance bike before upgrading to pedal bike. Asking modern parents to remove pedals is equivalent of asking to fix washing machine…

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

Bikes with no pedals for toddlers are super common, especially in Europe. Everyone we know with a toddler has one. They seem to work.

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.

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.

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.

I thought this would be about ditching the vestigial pedals on electric bikes, especially "fat bikes."

Lowering the seat also helps a bit because the lower your center of gravity is the easier it is to balance.

ah! the walking bike aka "toddler balance bike" is making the jump over the pond!

over here (Europe) we give one of those to our 2-3y olds. when they get their first real bike about 1-2 y later, they just get on the bike and start cycling.

then they need to learn how to brake :-D

Interesting and rather obvious with just a little thought. Wish I knew ages ago.

1st kid, training wheels. 2nd kid, took off pedals, learned balance in 2 days.

We call them steps or sitting steps, thats how we learned how to ride a bike.

This is exactly how I’ve taught all three of my kids to ride their bikes. :)

I learned using a balance bike, which is essentially the same exact idea.

There are wooden kids coasting bikes without pedals for like 3 year olds.

I've seen lots of kids coasting on bikes, but never any wooden kids. :-D (Except maybe if you count Pinocchio.)

That's what balance bikes are all about - no pedals.

I learned with a single training wheel on my bike. If I recall my sister had broken the other, and my dad was like "eh, good enough".

Obviously I was very young at the time, but I basically remember I'd initially be balanced on the training wheel which was maybe "too short" so I'd be leaned over to my left as a tricycle, but as I would get up to speed I'd be on just the bicycles wheels.

It didn't take me long to learn. It did take my dad a long while to take it off the bike however.

I'm not an expert but it seems like a decent enough way to learn that doesn't result in too many wipe outs.

I mean this is why the smallest bikes for kids are literally without pedals and that's been the case for many years now. I mean training wheels was an 80s-90's thing. It disappeared when this knowledge became mainstream in the 00's and the "Balance bikes" became norm instead of training wheels. At least that's my experience with it but I bet this revolution travels slowly, judging by some comments, and the article itself.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

I mean, this technique is so well-established that there is a thriving market of balance bikes which are purpose-made for it. What is with tech people and the need to talk about every new thing they learn about like it's an original discovery?

(unfortunately this method only really works on paved surfaces, so the scary way was probably the best option available for me growing up in the sticks.)

> What is with tech people and the need to talk about every new thing they learn about like it's an original discovery?

I literally admit that this is something that must have been obvious that I never knew before, lighten up, it's my personal blog.

Some of us learn things for the new time, and then tell our friends, and they all heard about it for the first time too, so decide to share it with others. This will inevitably reach some portion of people who have never heard of it before, as well as people like you who know about it already. Information is not uniformly distributed and some of us like to get excited about new things we just found out.

I'm sorry for being ignorant about something you already knew. I'm just one of today's lucky 10,000, and evidently there are many others on this very board. Not everybody knows everything already. https://xkcd.com/1053/

Balance bike

> 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcZCzr9ExKk

It is quite confusing because there are strong points in favour of either POV.

Point: you can ride a bicycle without hands. That would be completely impossible without gyroscopic effect. Or you can push a bicycle forward without a rider.

Counter-point: kickscooters exist, with tiny little 6″ tyres which have almost no gyroscopic effect, and yet you can balance those in the same way as a bicycle.

I disagree. If the explanation is wrong it is good that someone points it out. You might not like the way they express this.

> insufferable cunts

You mean pedants.

Better to just teach them to drive cars, bikes give people many bad driving habits that have to unlearned to drive a car effectively and safely.

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.

I'll recheck how low did I set up the seat on the bike my kids tried; IIRC it was close to lowest position, but maybe the minimum was itself too high? Anyway, for my kids, that bike was just a pure exercise in frustration that didn't lead anywhere.

The reverse three-wheel Mini Micro scooter fared much better, though. Not the same as balancing a bike, but the kids were able to gradually pick up on how to push off the ground with their legs - something that, more than balance, turned out to be the hurdle with the balance bikes.

Thinking about it much more now, and going off memory, they had no problems with those silly ride-on cars that are like balance bikes, except with no balance and more plastic. Now I'm not sure what's going on, why none of them could figure out they have to actually sit and push off when on the balance bike.

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