How Preparation Can Determine Whether You Learn to Ride or Not

Imagine this: You're pushing off on a bike at your local park one more time, heart pounding, hands holding a death grip on the handlebars. You've watched others ride and even a video online. Your friend swears their technique works and even demonstrated it. But when you try it, you tense up, wobble, and barely catch yourself before falling. You're doing everything they said, but nothing is clicking. What if the problem isn't you, it's how your practice session was prepared?

Over the course of 8+ years teaching learn-to-ride classes and private lessons, I found many cases where preparation makes the difference whether someone learns to ride a bicycle or not. The preparation areas fall into six categories.

1. Beliefs

False limiting beliefs can keep you from actually riding. These can include or be like:

• “I’m too old.” I have taught a 60+ year old to learn to ride. And an instructor colleague taught a 80+ year old to ride.
• “I missed my chance to learn before, so I can’t learn now.”
• “I failed to learn before and fell, so I cannot learn to ride.”
• “I am too slow at learning.”

Sound familiar? These thoughts feel protective—they shield you from the sting of another fall or the embarrassment of struggling in front of others. But here's the truth: these beliefs are lies that past experiences or others’ rash judgments convinced you to believe.

If you have all the physical abilities that any bike rider does, in having functional limbs and your senses of touch, hearing, and sight, you can learn to ride a bike. You're not broken. You're not too old. You're just missing specific, learnable skills. 

You just need to adopt the belief that you can learn to ride a bike and make progress toward learning. As you make progress, you will destroy your previous limiting beliefs by acknowledging every small improvement and silencing the ridicule from your inner critic. And the fear of being on a bike will dissipate.

2. Location

Without enough space to practice moving on a bike, you will worry about crashing into something or someone. A large space free of other people and animals allows you to practice and make mistakes without feeling shame or embarrassment.

Practicing on rough or uneven surfaces makes learning to balance difficult and increases risk of falling. A smooth hard surface accelerates learning balancing by allowing you gain speed without needing to exert as much effort.

3. Social Environment

Your well-meaning loved ones may be excellent riders but terrible teachers. If someone makes you feel rushed, embarrassed, or judged while practicing, politely ask them to leave. Or better yet, plan your practice without them present. Your emotional safety matters as much as your physical safety. 

Only have people who will support you present - a patient instructor or coach, your significant other, a friend, etc.

4. Bicycle Fit

Long after I learned to ride, I biked with a saddle that did not fit me.  After 30 minutes of riding, my sitting bones needed at least a 2-day break before going on the next ride. That is not conducive to learning as only 30 minutes of practice every 2+ days does not give you much momentum. And the pain will be more intense before pedaling as you cannot put weight on the pedals yet.

In another instance, I was helping a newer instructor teach a student to learn to ride. She was struggling with balancing while gliding  despite grasping previous skills taught quickly. Even though we coached her to try to turn more to glide for longer, she did not turn much over 8+ minutes of practice and did not make any significant progress. It turned out that her arms were straight. Once she got on a bike where she could reach the handlebars with her elbows bent, she started turning and more than tripled her glide time within a few minutes.

5. Bicycle Adjustments

Another student continually got wobbly when trying to squeeze a brake lever to slow down. After adjusting the brake levers to be easy to reach, that student mastered the use of the right brake lever to slow down to a stop within the next 10 attempts.

At a different class, two students were struggling to learn to balance and felt stuck for several minutes. One felt discomfort and worry in not being able to put their feet down. The other student bounced left and right frequently when trying to accelerate with their feet to learn balancing. After getting their seat adjusted to be at the right height for learning, both students mastered balancing while gliding within a few minutes.

6. Clothing

Loose pant legs and shoe laces can get caught in a bicycle chain and gears, leading to nasty falls. It sounds trivial until it happens to you.

This happened to me soon after I learned to balance and pedal. Fortunately, I already experienced some of the joys of riding. If this happened during the learning process, I most likely would have quit before experiencing the magical and fre

Don't let poor preparation steal your chance to learn to ride. My free preparation workbook walks you through each of these 6 categories so you can eliminate the hidden obstacles - wrong bike size, poor location choice, unsafe clothing - that sabotage practice sessions before they start.