I have been trying to ride the other way on my fixie[0] lately. I think this is kinda the same. I know what I have to do, but instinctively it all gets wrong. I can kinda override it, but then my reactions are way too delayed. So here's hoping for it will click some day..
[0]: A fixie is a bike with no freewheel. So the pedals follow the back wheel, and the other way. So if I pedal backwards, the bike goes the other way.
I used to do that as a kid (stopped before I could do all the tricks in the video). You want to have a suitable underground(1) and a friend to catch you the first few tries until you know where the bike goes when you fall. The main path to injury is falling onto the bike. If you avoid that it's way safer than football/soccer. Note that the bikes in the video have a different center of mass from normal bikes so it's easier to get the front up. Have fun!
(1) In Germany we do this in clubs and proper sports halls as seen in the video with elastic flooring. Don't attempt tarmac until you definitely know what you're doing.
I also recommend learning to ride a unicycle for people who want to get better bike skills. It's like riding a bike except with a brand new plane of movement.
It's also very safe to try out and do, which is counterintuitive to most people who haven't tried. Overwhelmingly the most common failure mode on a unicycle is that you just stop riding it, and then it either gets ahead of you or behind you, and you hop onto the ground.
Your body's also always approximately vertical no matter what they incline you're riding up/down is. So e.g. riding down stairs on a unicycle is much safer than on a bike, if you screw it up you just let it roll ahead of you and you're standing on the steps.
I'll do that without hesitation on a unicycle, but on a bicycle there's no way I'm doing that on on anything except a mountain bike I trust.
>It's also very safe to try out and do, which is counterintuitive to most people who haven't tried. Overwhelmingly the most common failure mode on a unicycle is that you just stop riding it, and then it either gets ahead of you or behind you, and you hop onto the ground.
Ha. My experience with a unicycle was the exact same as my experience with Segway and Hoverboard: flat on my back, knocked-out cold, with back-sprain that lasted months.
But then there are 36 inch unicycles, which can go quite fast. I started with a 24' (< 10 km/h), then I bought a 29' (< 18 km/h). The 29' does feel fast. One day, I'd like to buy a 36', which would be a bit slower than a bicycle, but still quite fast. Some people ride them around the world [42].
Worth pointing out that while learning, failed mounts can result in the unicycle departing the vicinity at some speed (especially with smaller ones, e.g. 20").
Driving backwards is much more difficult than driving forward because the bike doesn't self correct that way and the steering is quite unstable.
I tried to learn riding backwards last summer, too. Eventually I stopped because I needed the bike for actual riding and my knees preferred having a freewheel. A ridiculously low gear seemed to help, I tried 40x20 (on a 622 with 165mm cranks) for a while.
huh.. I grew up on a fixie.. I wonder if 20 years later I would just pick it up again.. or 30 years later..
note to self knock up wife.. get child fixie bike.. take bike for self when kid is at school xD I'm sure the experiment will be worth the college debt.
I believe you can buy hubs that are single speed and then if you flip them are fixie, might be cheaper to put that on a cheap bike than having a kid...
Yup, they are called flip-flop hubs, quite common and a bunch of bikes come with them installed so you can always choose between singlespeed or fixed gear.
[0]: A fixie is a bike with no freewheel. So the pedals follow the back wheel, and the other way. So if I pedal backwards, the bike goes the other way.