Take the pedals off the bike

This guy was not really trying to explain to hacker parents how they should teach their kids to ride a bike. As has has been adequately demonstrated in the comments they already know aaaaaaaall about that. His actual point, which seems to have whooshed past most people’s heads, is much more interesting: can you learn a thing more effectively by first simplifying that thing so radically that a seasoned user would find it useless? Also not exactly a totally new idea but, depending on context, just counterintuitive enough that you may miss it.

This is spot on. I live in the Netherlands, both my kids could ride a bike at 2. Shortly after learning how to walk, many kids here get a "loopfiets" (walking bike) which is exactly this, a bike with no pedals (nor a chain etc) [0]. I never saw a kid that can't ride this instantly.

Now, the funny thing is that most parents, when their kids are ready for a real bike, they put them on one with side-wheels (support wheels?) [1, 2]... My wife and I were looking at kids doing this and were thinking the same thing: "Wait, this is unlearning the whole thing they learned about balance and steering on 2 wheels! Let's go straight to no-support-wheels!" And voila, there they were, within a couple of attempts (we ran along) they were riding around! While many kids struggle when their support wheels come off.

Since then we joke that we are part of the anti-support-wheel-club when we see kids steering uncomfortably on such a bike. Which is really awkward since the bike has to stay upright, the kids have to hang to one side for balance when steering. And yet, it remains the most (or at least, a very) popular way.

[0] https://www.babyhomepage.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Loopf...

[1] https://media.s-bol.com/qQv4Y69p8j33/1155x1200.jpg

[2] https://bike.nl/loekie-booster-kinderfiets-12-inch-jongens-g...

Agree with the point of this post. I'd never heard of balance bikes, and then my wife did some research when we had our first kid and found out about this.

We've now taught both of our kids to bike by starting with a balance bike, and the comparison with their friends who learned with training wheels was amazing - the balance bike kids were zooming around earlier, confidently, and with many fewer spills than the training wheel cohort.

Also, you can get a balance bike with a handbrake, which sets them up well for getting a bike with handbrakes instead of coaster brakes. Kids bikes in the US have to be sold with coasters but there are several manufacturers (like woom) who make it really easy to remove the coaster and have front and rear hand brakes.

Also also, most kids bikes in the US are too heavy: they're tough and cheap but it makes it hard to control them. Woom and Isla and probably a few others now make aluminum frame bikes for kids that are much more appropriate weight for their sizes, though at a bit of a cost.

> I did so in the usual manner - have her sit on the seat while I grab the handlebars and run along side her, then release the bike and watch her panic, freeze, topple over, and kick the bike in frustration.

This part confuses me a lot. Where I'm from you teach kids to ride by attaching a broom (or similar) stick to the back of the bike. That way you can gently hold them when they mess up the balance, but they still get the appropriate feedback that they need to balance on their own. As a plus you feel when they are getting better at it, and the "release" is softer. It is not an all or nothing process, you just hold the stick less and less, and suddenly the kid is cycling on their own.

I couldn't imagine doing the same with holding the handlebar. It would be hard to do. Would mess their feedback loop up. And what is worse it would telegraph to them when you are releasing them thus making it more likely that they panic.

Does anyone really do the "grabbing the handlebars" method to teach kids to ride a bike? Is it a regional difference?

I taught my son to ride using training wheels. He rode around for a few days and asked me to take them off. So, I took them off. And when I came back outside from putting the tools and training wheels away, he was riding his bike as if he'd never not ridden it. I do like the author's idea however.

By the way, did you know that the the right pedal is right hand thread, but the left pedal is left handed thread? If it wasn't, the left pedal, being right hand threaded, would come loose easily. And that was a Wright Brothers innovation.

I'm only surprised that this is news to anybody in 2024/2025.

"Balance bikes" [1] have been the norm for 10-15 years now, at least within the cycling community. You can start kids on them pretty much as soon as they can toddle about.

1 - https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-0vqb0rkahl/images/stencil/19...

This is exactly how I teach people to drive stick, and they’ll learn within 30 minutes. Put them on an empty road with a downward slope. The car will roll on its own, without them having to use the gas pedal. Then they can just practice switching into first without the risk of stalling. After a few times integrate using the gas pedal.

My daughter started using a balance bike around 18 months. By the time she was 2.5, she zoomed around on it and had started asking about pedals. We got her a pedal bike two months before she turned 3, with the expectation that we might have to take the pedals off for a few more months. Instead, within a few days (maybe 2 total hours of practice?) she was riding confidently and totally by herself--at not quite 3 years old.

It's so different than the challenging, scary attempts to remove training wheels when my siblings and I were 5 or 6 years old. One of those things where I didn't realize the science and tradition on teaching kids to ride bikes could change so dramatically within two decades!

This trick is also the way to teach adults, if you're teaching or learning to ride!

For children, there are companies that sell progressive balance bikes[1][2], that start off as balance bikes but can be converted to pedal bikes later. In the US, I've seen tons of cheap Strider bikes on Craigslist, and then you can get the pedal conversion kit separately (you have to get the 14", not the 12").

[1] https://striderbikes.co.uk/collections/14x-balance-pedal-bik...

[2] https://www.littlebigbikes.com/shop/convertible-balance-bike...

This is a good way to do it, but can backfire. When my kids were very small they had "coaster" bikes, which are just bikes without pedals. They enjoyed these immensely, but they quickly outgrew the coaster and it was time to move on to a pedal bike and they hated the pedals. To be fair this was partially my fault since we bought regular fixed gear with coaster brakes style kids bikes, which feature annoyingly short crank arms and low gearing which makes it very difficult to get the bike up to high speed. The new "big kid" bikes they got were slower than the old leg powered coaster bikes and harder to use on hills. They resented pedal bikes for a long time.

It's like the author has never heard of balance bikes, but they're very common, and have been for over a decade. FWIW, I taught my kid to ride when he was 3 by putting him at the top of a wheelchair ramp and letting him go. Took him 5 seconds, and he was riding around the park by himself by the second attempt. He'd never been on a bike before.

I've been advocating for this for 12 years, now. I figured it out by accident after watching my 2-year-old niece on a "balance bike" and was like "duh, no pedals!"

My 3-year-old and 5-year-old learned in one day and the "pedals off" part took 30-minutes to an hour (more for my youngest). For the first few years, every time someone would pass my 3-4 year old riding a two-wheeler without training wheels they'd stare in amazement and ask me how I taught her to do that. I'd explain "training wheels until they can pedal/steer, then pedals off for an hour until they're balancing, back on with a 'hold the seat and let go' and that's it". A couple of weeks later, I'd see that same child rolling down the sidewalk without training wheels. I taught every one of my nieces/nephews using the same technique. I've yet to find someone it doesn't work on.

Neither of my kids fell the first time. Both of them understood I'd be letting go on that "saddle holding/running part" at some point without telling them when. I just warned them "if you see I'm not there, DON'T PANIC(tm), because you've already been riding on your own for a while by then!" Every single kid had the same thing happen ... they'd see I'm a house behind them catching my breath, they'd get a look of terror in their eyes, the bike would "dip" a little and they'd catch it, then the look would change to a ridiculous grin as they realized "I did it!"

It was one of the best experiences as a Dad and I'll admit I choked up with each of my children when they nailed it, especially my autistic son who has a really hard time with anxiety/fear related to learning skills that might involve getting injured in the process.

Indeed! This is an age-old method, this is what a dandy horse is for! In France, and surely many other places, you see the kids of young age on dandy horses ("draisiennes") coming to and from the school supervised by their parents. As a rite of passage towards the bicycle :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse

Training wheels are terrible. Both of my kids learned how to ride on balance bikes, basically in under a day. When switching to pedal power, there IS a transition period where learning how to pedal AND balance at the same time is challenge. But it's a lot shorter and less frustrating than trying to learn how to pedal AND balance at the same time.

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!

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...

I've taught 5 kids to ride bikes this year. The method is quite simple and takes only a few minutes and some light jogging behind them. Take a scarf or a rope (or anything really) around a child's chest and behind the armpits pulling both ends behind the bike. Have the kid pedal the bike while providing balance for the bike to stay upright, this is the jogging part. The kid will inadvertently attempt to fall on a side so hold tight to provide balance and tell them to pedal faster. As soon as they realize that while pedaling and turning does not cause them to fall it clicks for them. Provide a little balance for the first turns. I usually do this for a few minutes and then let go of the scarf/straps/rope without telling the kid as they'll continue riding with no help. Before long they're riding around happily. And then a bit later there's a milestone, the first fall.

The pedalless bikes aren't as effective. One of the kids I sued this technique with used to have a pedalless bike and was fine with it for a year but could not handle a bicycle at all. This is how I remember learning to bike from my own dad when I was probably around 5-6.

A couple of years ago, I read this cool article about how humans tend to solve problems by adding things. Training wheels are a perfect example - we add these extra wheels to help kids learn how to ride bikes. But there's actually a less obvious approach that involves taking things away, and the article explored this concept across different areas.

I'm from Uruguay, and here we have something really cool called a "Chivita" - it's basically a wooden bike without pedals that toddlers use. Kids learn to balance on two wheels before they ever touch a regular bicycle. When my 5-year-old moved from the Chivita to a real bike, it only took just a couple of tries. Its amazing! If you're curious, just Google "Chivitas bikes Uruguay" to see what they look like! (Chivito is our traditional sandwich so you might get false hits ;))

Or use a kick scooter. Not the tiny wheel Razor types, one with air filled rubber tires. All my three family members (wife, two kids) learned it that way, with an adult size scooter (the kids preferred this to a child size one). Initially you just kinda skitter along, then you realize, hmmm, I can let this roll for a bit, and within 1-2 weeks the balancing thing "clicks". Both kids transitioned directly from the roll >5m stage to riding a bike on the first try.

We had a balance bike but they rejected it.

> Bicycles achieve balance through the gyroscopic effect, something with angular momentum and physics or whatever

Bicycles achieve balance because the rider counter-steers to prevent the bike from falling aside.

Destin from SmarterEveryDay had a friend build a special bike where the actions of the handlebar are inverted: when you turn it to one direction, the front wheel turns in the other direction.

It's impossible to ride such a bike.

Well, not exactly impossible: you have to completely re-learn riding, like you never knew before. Which shows that steering is the core (only?) skill to riding.

It's a great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

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.

I thought from the title this was going to be about admitting that electric bikes have become light motorcycles.

This is a 1926 Harley-Davidson motorcycle.[1]

This is a fat-tire "ebike".[2] Take the pedals off, and it's a motorcycle.

[1] https://kbcmotorcycles.com/1926-aa-harley-davidson-ohv-024/

[2] https://bestelectricbikesmade.com/product/addmotor-motan-m-6...

That article is weird, for me at least. I very clearly remember when a bunch of kids around the age of six and seven learned to bike, all at the same time. All it took was a woman's bicycle, the old type (I should say "very old" type at this point. Big wheels too), easy for kids. The kids had to stand up, not sit (too big bicycle), and all it took was a single run with someone holding the seat, and letting go after a short while. That was it. No further training required. And that was indeed how I myself learned to bike as well, when I was a kid. Training wheels didn't exist, and are in my opinion pointless unless you want your three year old "bike". For older children it actively does harm.

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.

I think the reason you easily learn on this type is that you have much more practice in the same piece of time. On normal bike an error leads to falling, having to restart, which takes half a minute at best. On running bike, you don't fall and continue. Each iteration takes 1-2 seconds.

My 3yo rides this 'running bike' as it's called here, no prob. My training in childhood, on normal one with pedals, was a nightmare.

Earlier I thought of the way to transition from 'running bike' to normal pedal bike, and thought of teaching first to ride while standing on pedals, and only then to sit down. Another comment here, about 'women bikes', confirms this idea.

The gyroscopic effect contributes little to maintaining a balanced bike ride, contrary to the article claim. An idealized massless wheel/tire wouldn't diminish ridability.

Steering dynamics (steering to counteract bike lean) and trail effect (bike are built to automatically counteract lean), along with rider input (steering, leaning body), are more important components.

Training wheels aim to maximise the utility of the bicycle (i.e. gears and pnumatic tyres) for a person of certain age, at the cost of learning how to actually ride a bike.

I feel there are lots of parallels in e.g. Maths education in the more generalised form:

In education, skills that allow you to utilise technology are prioritised and these are often directly opposed to skills needed for mastery.

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.

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.

I had heard about this some years ago, and I taught my youngest daughter (11yo now) to ride a bike this way.

Granted, it didn't happen in 1 day because she didn't have a bike when she started "riding" (We got her first a balance bike, which she out grew rather fast due to her size). But when we finally did get her a bike, it took an afternoon - really just a couple of hours - for her to start riding it.

My partner is still baffled by this, years after the fact (Science, girl!)

To put it funnily, the second she started riding the bike it felt very Forrest Gump.

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 the standard way that kids learn to ride bikes in Europe. Apparently the English word for them is "balance bikes". Both my kids could ride one of them when they were 2.

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.

> Bicycles achieve balance through the gyroscopic effect

No they don't. If that were true you could cycle along at a 45 degree angle. They balance because you steer into a fall.

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 thought this would be about ditching the vestigial pedals on electric bikes, especially "fat bikes."

Just be sure to note that the left side pedal (as you sit on it) has a left-hand thread: https://www.parktool.com/en-us/blog/repair-help/pedal-instal...

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 recently bought a used bike for an abnormally low price. Why? Because the previous owner did not understand that one of the pedals unscrews in the opposite direction to the other (look it up). The previous owner was, however, strong enough to strip the threads of one crank arm trying to remove the pedal. In the end, I had to replace the crankset. Let this be a tale of caution to those who want to remove pedals.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

Lowering the seat also helps a bit because the lower your center of gravity is the easier it is to balance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Another tip: take a stool with you to the first pedaling lessons.

It's easier for kids to start pedaling when the other foot is on the stool, so they're balanced while starting.

Once they got it they will find natural stools in the park and use them, until they don't need them at all.

There is some difficulty in starting pedaling: you need to simultaneously give a boost to the bicycle, balance yourself on a non-balanced bicycle, and leaving the breaks. The stool remove one hard task - the balance.

BTW till this day I still search for natural stools when I stop at lights, it's just more comfortable to stay this way, more balanced.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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 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

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.

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.

> 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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

Do kids learning on coaster bikes still wipe out?

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

This is exactly how I’ve taught all three of my kids to ride their bikes. :)

> 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).

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.

Apparently this guys is unaware that pedalless balance bikes for kids already exist, and are quite popular. The idea is to get kids used to doing the hard part--staying balanced--first, then when they get a 'real' bike, they don't need training wheels, or at least, not so much.

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.

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.

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.)

1st kid, training wheels. 2nd kid, took off pedals, learned balance in 2 days.

Interesting and rather obvious with just a little thought. Wish I knew ages ago.

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.

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

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.

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!

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

Sheldon Brown wrote about this years ago: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/teachride.html

> The ideal bike for learning to ride, whether for a child or a deprived adult, is a bike that is "too small" for efficient riding. For learning purposes, the rider should be able to sit on the saddle with both feet flat on the ground and the knees slightly bent. The bike can then be used as a hobby horse or scooter, with the feet always ready to stop a fall. It may even be useful to remove the pedals at first, so that the feet can swing freely. (In case you are new to all this and haven't read the pages about pedals on this site: the left pedal unscrews clockwise!) Ideally, a bike for this approach should have at least one handbrake, so that the child can stop while using both feet for balance. A good place to practice is on a grassy field, perhaps with a slight downgrade.

> Unfortunately, it is often difficult for parents to justify the expense of a smaller bike that will be outgrown shortly, so there is a constant temptation to buy a bike that is a bit too large on the theory that the child will "grow into" it.

We call them steps or sitting steps, thats how we learned how to ride a bike.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.