I’ve always wanted to manual a mountain bike. When someone effortlessly rolls along on their back wheel, it looks so cool, almost like magic. But I always figured it was something you either “had” or you didn’t—you picked it up BMXing as a kid, or you spent the rest of your life unable to manual.
It turns out, though, that you can teach an old dog new tricks. After about 10 hours practicing on my own with nothing to go on except free YouTube videos, I couldn’t get past the 2-3 second mark. So I bought the Ryan Leech online manual course at https://learn.ryanleech.com/a/1684/rnr7z42a. With about 15 hours of additional practice, I met my goal. It turns out manuals are very learnable, you just have to master a few discreet movements, and then put in the practice hours learning to coordinate them all together.
Here’s a video about my learning process.
Nice video Kirk. Definitely a skill I would love to learn. If nothing else it increases your coolness Factor 1000%.