Take the pedals off the bike

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...

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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)

> 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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Recommended reading: https://www.amazon.com/Motorcycle-Dynamics-Second-Vittore-Co...

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

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.

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.

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.

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’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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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

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.

Do kids learning on coaster bikes still wipe out?

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.

> 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).

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.

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

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

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. :)

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.)

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.

Balance bike

[dead]

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.

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.