Wow. Can't leverage gear ratios either with a unicycle, so that's all leg power.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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Unicyclist here. It is all leg power, but this guy is exerting himself far less than you think. There are no gears at all, geared unicycles are extremely rare and almost impossible to ride. Makes riding uphill feel barely any harder than flat land unless you're doing a slope much steeper than what's pictured.
Whenever I was using a wheel 28 inches or bigger, I beat my friends on bikes going uphill and had way more energy than them at the top. But they always beat me on the other side because I had to pedal the whole way down.
The depth of expertise that is available on the internet is... astounding.
Gonna nitpick here and be pedantic. Regardless of gear ratio, it’s all leg power. Gearing simply allows the rider to go slower, which does allows for a lower required power, but for a longer duration of time. The amount of total energy output is effectively the same.
Source: cycling nerd who is obsessed with power.
That's a bit of an empty comparison, isn't it?
You could keep converting the chemical energy in a potato into power, and after 2000 potatoes you'd have produced the same power as a Ferrari V8 engine does in an hour, but it doesn't really have the same roar, does it? Even if you account for flatulence.
Ed Pratt on YouTube rode a similar unicycle across the world, pretty interesting video series. It's pretty long and addicting though!
I will unabashedly get off a standard bike and walk it on any significant incline now.
Yeah, I remember when I got old too.
Damn. And no helmet.
No helmet no kneepads but serious gloveage! I wonder, is that a unicycle thing or a him thing?
Can someone who rides unicycles say how hard this would be? As a road cyclist I'm thinking 1:1 gear ratio is an easy climbing gear, but I'm guessing it's not that simple.
1:1 is too hard for my old knees.I guess there's no unicycle in my future
Walking but complicated
This would be a great post for a bicyclingcirclejerk community