Cycling for beginners: balance is key

Before you can glide freely on your bicycle, you need to learn to balance properly. According to Chan, this is one of the “core principles of cycling”, and it’s the first thing he teaches students in his introductory course at Invis.

For beginners, Chan doesn’t recommend training wheels because they don’t help you get used to your body’s centre of gravity. Additionally, it’s important to get used to the feeling of going fast: you can maintain your balance much easier once you cycle at least to the speed of running, yet novices tend to pedal gingerly, worrying about their instability. That means overcoming the fear of speed is equally important.

It’s normal to feel nervous or panic at first; but to combat this fear, Chan often recounts the similar feeling of “forgetting to breathe” from his experience of learning to swim as an adult, and teaches students to mindfully overcome this sense of panic with breath.