How To Teach Someone To Ride A Bike
Our survey study revealed that 30% of people admit they wouldn’t feel confident about teaching someone else to ride a bike, and so the coaches at Bikeability have shared their excellent expert tips and tricks for helping you help a new rider:
Bikeability’s tips for teaching young children to ride and be more cycle confident
1. Forget stabilizers: Stabilizing wheels used to be the go-to for teaching children how to ride, and it’s easy to see why – they effectively turn a two wheeled bicycle into a trike – so there’s no chance of falling off. This can take the anxiety out of it – especially for parents! However, stabilizers don’t actually help children, or anyone for that matter, learn how to ride a bicycle.
2. Try a balance bike instead: Rather than getting a child used to cycling with stabilizers and then taking them away, start them off with a balance bike instead. These are bikes without pedals, so the rider uses their legs to push forward – scooting themselves along. As the name suggests, balance bikes help children learn how to balance, and will allow them to transition to a cycle with pedals much more easily. Two or three years old is the usual age for introducing a balance bike, although some children may start younger or older, depending on their ability and of course desire to ride!
3. Progressing to pedals: Once they have mastered a balance bike, the transition to pedal will be a lot easier than you might think. You will know they’re ready to move on when they start asking for a pedal bike and they can do things like moving around obstacles, balancing on their bike for a long way without putting their feet down, travelling distances of a mile or so on their balance bike, making a sharp turn, and steering to stop themselves falling off. Basically if they’re doing well on a balance bike and they ask for a pedal bike, it’s a good time to make the switch.