My neighbor got a Onewheel Pint for Christmas.1 I’ve been looking at Onewheels for years, wishing I could try one out. Yesterday was my lucky day.
She’d set up some orange cones to create a practice slalom course. Back and forth I went, alternating between heel-side and toe-side U-turns at the ends. I zoomed down to the end of the street a couple of times to see what it felt like.
With a little experimentation, I found the tricks that work for longboarding also work for the Onewheel:
- Keep the board moving to maintain balance; a stationary board wants to squirt out from under you.
- Relax your entire body to “flow,” filtering out the high-frequency movements that make the board feel twitchy and tire the ankles.2
- Have fun!
What a blast!
I remember learning to longboard, not that long ago. Before I started, I wondered what provided fore-aft stability, as there’s little resistance in that axis. Keeping your center of gravity positioned between the front and rear axles is the secret as you can shift your weight between your feet.3 Also important is moving your arms for dynamic balance and to counter the effect of the weight transfer and rotational inertia from the leg that’s pushing.
With the Onewheel, fore-aft balance4 is a more interesting question: shifting your weight changes both your speed and direction, but the footpads don’t provide an independent, static opposing force.5
A Onewheel is “stable” only in motion. Pushing a footpad down tells the Onewheel to accelerate in that direction. Rolling the Onewheel left or right causes it turn in that direction.6 Somehow, the brain is able to intuitively balance, that is, keep the Onewheel “under” the rider’s body, through unconscious changes in weight distribution and ankle movements.7