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Forgive the long post. I need to vent.
My girlfriend will be 20 at the end of next month, and she never learned how to ride a bicycle as a child. I've recently gotten back into biking, and I thought riding a bike would be another fun thing we could share together. She's always complaining about how fat she is (she's not fat at all), and neither one of us get much exercise, so I thought it would be a great idea. She agreed. Of course, she had to learn how to ride a bike first. I myself learned how to ride when I was a kid, and I underestimated how much of a problem this would be for her. We went to an empty nearby schoolyard, and I let her try to learn how to get her balance on my bike. I'm not much taller than she is, so the bike frame wasn't really a problem. I did make sure to lower the seat for her. Flat out pedaling at first seemed like a bit much, so I told her to try and skip along on the ground with her feet to get going and just try to keep her balance. After about 20 minutes we weren't having much success.
We went home after that so I could do a google search to make sure we were using a good method of teaching someone how to ride a bike. I found a site for parents that gave instructions on how to teach children, but it seemed to apply. It advised using the same thing I had thought of with skipping along on the ground until you can keep your balance, and said that learning how to pedal after that should be easy. It estimated the average time to learn how to ride a bike to be about an hour and a half. We went back to the schoolyard and she kept trying for about another half hour, but couldn't get it. No biggie, she could finish learning another day...
Now, I'm a very patient person. Very patient. It's one of my best qualities, and sometimes one of my faults as I can be TOO patient. But after spending three or four days with her trying to learn how to ride a bike, at nearly two hours a day, I was ready to pull my hair out. She learned how to keep her balance when skipping along with her feet after a day or so, which I thought would be the hard part. When she tried pedaling however, she got absolutely no where. Time after time she would start to pedal, and lose her balance after moving all of 1 foot. After days of this she finally learned how to keep her balance.
The next step of course was to buy a bike of her own. I told her she'd be spending a few hundred dollars on it since department store bikes weren't worth it, and she was fine with that. I wasn't going to help her pay for it, because I had tried this same thing with roller blading last year and it didn't go over too well. I bought her roller blades she swore she would use and I never got her to use them once. Spending a few hundred dollars of her own money would be a powerful motivator to getting some use out of her bike, or so I thought. I told her before we went out to buy it, "If you don't want to buy a bike just tell me now. I'll understand. If you're scared of riding it, or don't think you'll ride it enough to justify buying it, or just don't want to buy it for any reason, tell me now. It's ok." I didn't want her to feel like she had to buy the bike. She of course said that she wanted to buy the bike, and spent $500 + on a new bike and helmet.
We went back to the movie parking lot so she could get the feel of it, and learn how to shift and brake. Shifting, braking, and even turning were mole hills she prompty made mountains out of. What I thought would take a few minutes instead turned into days. She refused to leave the parking lot, and instead wanted to ride around in it more until she felt more comfortable. I totally understood this, but it turned into the same kind of fiasco that learning how to ride in the first place had been. We'd go to the parking lot, ride around for a little while, and then she would want to go home (we'd walk the bikes home, of course). All the while she continues to insist she is interested in riding, as she does to this day.
After days of this she finally feels up to riding to a nearby park. We'd be riding along a wide low traffic street straight from the parking lot. A few minutes into this, she has her first crash. She was riding along and started to lose her balance. We weren't going fast. She wobbled and seemed to recover. Rather than continue on, or come to a full stop to be safe, she panics. She did the equivilant of curling up into a fetal position - she removed her feet from the pedals, and kept going straight from the angle she recovered - which put her on a collision course with the curb. Does she hit the brakes? No. She hits the curb and falls off instead. Nothing more than a minor scratch thankfully. I tell her she should have hit the brakes, and we continue on without incident.
To make a long story short, she has continued to panic at the slightest bit of trouble when she is riding in extremely tame conditions. Each time she is curling up into a fetal position, taking her feet off the pedals and never hitting the brakes. As a matter of fact, I don't think she's EVER hit the brakes when it really matters - to prevent herself from crashing. Her luck of course eventually ran out, and the last time this happened she took a nasty spill and hurt her right wrist. X Rays indicated it wasn't broken, but it was pretty sore for a few days, and continues to be sore two weeks after the incident. She hasn't rode the bike once since. In the month or so she's owned the bike, I think she's done less than 4 hours total riding time on it.
I'm VERY frustrated with her. At this point I just want to grab her by the shoulders, shake her violently, and scream "WHAT THE &%$# IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!?!?" I've been extremely patient (as I usually am), and encouraging. I try to tell her she is doing alright, but to no avail. And no matter how many times I tell her she never ever hits the brakes, she always panics instead. I'm afraid the next time she crashes she's going to really hurt herself.
Are some people not made for cycling? Is this normal for someone who learns how to ride a bike as an adult? Should I just tell her she wasted her money? To give up and put her bike on eBay before she really hurts herself? If not, what can I say to her to make her stop panicking when she's riding?
My girlfriend will be 20 at the end of next month, and she never learned how to ride a bicycle as a child. I've recently gotten back into biking, and I thought riding a bike would be another fun thing we could share together. She's always complaining about how fat she is (she's not fat at all), and neither one of us get much exercise, so I thought it would be a great idea. She agreed. Of course, she had to learn how to ride a bike first. I myself learned how to ride when I was a kid, and I underestimated how much of a problem this would be for her. We went to an empty nearby schoolyard, and I let her try to learn how to get her balance on my bike. I'm not much taller than she is, so the bike frame wasn't really a problem. I did make sure to lower the seat for her. Flat out pedaling at first seemed like a bit much, so I told her to try and skip along on the ground with her feet to get going and just try to keep her balance. After about 20 minutes we weren't having much success.
We went home after that so I could do a google search to make sure we were using a good method of teaching someone how to ride a bike. I found a site for parents that gave instructions on how to teach children, but it seemed to apply. It advised using the same thing I had thought of with skipping along on the ground until you can keep your balance, and said that learning how to pedal after that should be easy. It estimated the average time to learn how to ride a bike to be about an hour and a half. We went back to the schoolyard and she kept trying for about another half hour, but couldn't get it. No biggie, she could finish learning another day...
Now, I'm a very patient person. Very patient. It's one of my best qualities, and sometimes one of my faults as I can be TOO patient. But after spending three or four days with her trying to learn how to ride a bike, at nearly two hours a day, I was ready to pull my hair out. She learned how to keep her balance when skipping along with her feet after a day or so, which I thought would be the hard part. When she tried pedaling however, she got absolutely no where. Time after time she would start to pedal, and lose her balance after moving all of 1 foot. After days of this she finally learned how to keep her balance.
The next step of course was to buy a bike of her own. I told her she'd be spending a few hundred dollars on it since department store bikes weren't worth it, and she was fine with that. I wasn't going to help her pay for it, because I had tried this same thing with roller blading last year and it didn't go over too well. I bought her roller blades she swore she would use and I never got her to use them once. Spending a few hundred dollars of her own money would be a powerful motivator to getting some use out of her bike, or so I thought. I told her before we went out to buy it, "If you don't want to buy a bike just tell me now. I'll understand. If you're scared of riding it, or don't think you'll ride it enough to justify buying it, or just don't want to buy it for any reason, tell me now. It's ok." I didn't want her to feel like she had to buy the bike. She of course said that she wanted to buy the bike, and spent $500 + on a new bike and helmet.
We went back to the movie parking lot so she could get the feel of it, and learn how to shift and brake. Shifting, braking, and even turning were mole hills she prompty made mountains out of. What I thought would take a few minutes instead turned into days. She refused to leave the parking lot, and instead wanted to ride around in it more until she felt more comfortable. I totally understood this, but it turned into the same kind of fiasco that learning how to ride in the first place had been. We'd go to the parking lot, ride around for a little while, and then she would want to go home (we'd walk the bikes home, of course). All the while she continues to insist she is interested in riding, as she does to this day.
After days of this she finally feels up to riding to a nearby park. We'd be riding along a wide low traffic street straight from the parking lot. A few minutes into this, she has her first crash. She was riding along and started to lose her balance. We weren't going fast. She wobbled and seemed to recover. Rather than continue on, or come to a full stop to be safe, she panics. She did the equivilant of curling up into a fetal position - she removed her feet from the pedals, and kept going straight from the angle she recovered - which put her on a collision course with the curb. Does she hit the brakes? No. She hits the curb and falls off instead. Nothing more than a minor scratch thankfully. I tell her she should have hit the brakes, and we continue on without incident.
To make a long story short, she has continued to panic at the slightest bit of trouble when she is riding in extremely tame conditions. Each time she is curling up into a fetal position, taking her feet off the pedals and never hitting the brakes. As a matter of fact, I don't think she's EVER hit the brakes when it really matters - to prevent herself from crashing. Her luck of course eventually ran out, and the last time this happened she took a nasty spill and hurt her right wrist. X Rays indicated it wasn't broken, but it was pretty sore for a few days, and continues to be sore two weeks after the incident. She hasn't rode the bike once since. In the month or so she's owned the bike, I think she's done less than 4 hours total riding time on it.
I'm VERY frustrated with her. At this point I just want to grab her by the shoulders, shake her violently, and scream "WHAT THE &%$# IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!?!?" I've been extremely patient (as I usually am), and encouraging. I try to tell her she is doing alright, but to no avail. And no matter how many times I tell her she never ever hits the brakes, she always panics instead. I'm afraid the next time she crashes she's going to really hurt herself.
Are some people not made for cycling? Is this normal for someone who learns how to ride a bike as an adult? Should I just tell her she wasted her money? To give up and put her bike on eBay before she really hurts herself? If not, what can I say to her to make her stop panicking when she's riding?
