00:07Teaching your child to ride their first bike is a big milestone, but it can be daunting for
00:12parents. Children's bike expert and founder of Isla Bikes, Isla Roundtree, says it's actually
00:17possible to teach them everything they need to know in just 45 minutes. So is it really
00:22possible? I'm here to meet the lady herself. So I'm joined here at Herne Hill Velodrome
00:30by Isla now. Is it really true that 45 minutes is all it can take to get a child started?
00:35Yeah, obviously every child varies and there's a really wide spectrum of how quickly children
00:41want to get to grips with something like cycling, but that's typically a fairly generous amount
00:47of time just to get them balancing unaided. Starting and stopping can take longer. That
00:51is provided that they're ready to ride and that coordination development that has to
00:57come first, it is quite important that you wait for that and don't try and force it on
01:00a child that's not ready and make it stressful. I certainly think there's a window when they
01:06find it easier to learn to ride and I would say that's typically between four and six years.
01:11If you don't get them cycling pre-six then they seem to become more cautious about it and perhaps
01:17find it psychologically more challenging to learn. There's perhaps two reasons for that,
01:23a heightened sense of fear as they get older, but also they're further from the ground. If they're
01:28taller it's further to fall.
01:34So we're joined now by little Anna who's going to help us out today. What's the first step in getting
01:39started? The first thing is to choose a suitable place for your first lesson. Somewhere nice and flat
01:45flat and a big open space is ideal. We don't want any nasty hills where our beginner's going
01:51to whiz off out of control. It's really tempting to choose grass because it feels like it's going
01:56to be a soft landing but that actually makes learning quite difficult because you have to push quite
02:00hard on a small bike on the pedals. Now before we actually start riding we need to check that the
02:05saddle height's right for the child. We're looking to set the saddle height so they can just get the balls
02:10of their feet on the ground. That's the front bit of the footwear you run on. It's tempting to put
02:15the
02:16saddle lower so the feet go down flat but that actually makes pedalling more difficult. You want
02:20the bike to be able to wander at will so that the child can feel how it responds to leaning
02:25so it's
02:26important not to hold the handlebars. You will see some parents trying to support them and make their
02:30child feel more secure like this but you actually end up fighting with them with the handlebars and it
02:36makes it more difficult. We find it easiest to support the bike while they get on between your
02:41legs and then support the child under their armpits and you can actually steer them by leaning their
02:49body then and they can feel how the bike responds to that. Okay so you're actually holding on to the
02:54child as opposed to fixing onto the bike. Exactly. You ready? Pop your feet on the pedals and you're going
03:01to look up. Off we go. Okay and you can see that we can steer the bike by leaning her
03:09body so we lean
03:10it to the right and she steers to the left and she's learning how the bike responds to the leaning
03:17and
03:18she's starting to go on her own. There we go. Look at that. Now Anna's balancing really well already
03:27but it's important that I stay with her because she hasn't learned how to stop yet. We don't want
03:33to abandon her and she's riding on her own. Look at that. Did you know you were riding on your
03:40own?
03:41Yes you were. I wasn't holding you. Congratulations. Give me a high five.
03:49Anna was very very confident getting going there. Is that usually the case or are there sometimes more
03:54challenges with children when they're getting on for the first time? It varies a lot from child to
03:59child but also at what age you make the first attempt with them to ride. A child very often
04:05will pedal backwards or pedal backwards for half a stroke and forward for one and a half and then
04:10flail and their feet coming off. If you try for ten minutes or so and they're really not able to
04:16turn
04:17their feet in circles they're probably just not ready and they're better off continuing on their
04:20balanced bike for a few more weeks and then have another go a bit later. When they're ready they
04:25will typically get that forward pedalling motion within 10 or 15 minutes. You can actually help with
04:32that when they pedal forward if you push them and when they're pedalling the wrong way actually stop
04:37pushing them so they feel the bike slowing down then they associate forward motion with pedalling in the
04:43right direction. Most children have got the coordination potential to learn. They develop that at some point
04:49between three and a half and four and a half. Once they've got that potential a session like this will
04:55get them going. Some children develop that really early as young as two and a half we've known and
05:01sudden not until they're five or five and a half it doesn't matter it's important not to push them
05:06before they're ready.
05:11We don't recommend covering starting and stopping before they've actually learned to balance because
05:16it's overloading them with information and once they've got to Anna's stage where they're balancing
05:21really quite confidently you're going to need to teach them to set off and to stop safely.
05:28So for setting off Anna we need to get the pedal in the position for you to ride that's right
05:34now put
05:34your foot on top okay now look where you're going and I'm going to support you again and give a
05:40really good
05:41push and see if you can set off by yourself you're ready go that's it now we stop the bike
05:47by using
05:48the brakes so we've got a brake lever here watch what happens to the wheel when we pull that on
05:53see
05:54it stops all right so you're showing the child how the brakes work and it helps them understand what
05:59they're trying to do right we're going to just do a little walking exercise put your hands on the
06:03handlebars and see if you can reach the brakes now when they first learn to ride they'll probably just
06:09pull the brakes on very hard to stop and we want them to get a feel for stopping progressively before
06:14they're actually cycling so Annie can you walk with the bike for me pushing it along just walk with
06:20it and then pull the brakes on that's it stopped very suddenly then didn't it now do it again and
06:27pull
06:27them on a bit more gently this time okay a little bit more gently and both hands together
06:36gently that's better yeah and again gently gently that's better so as we've seen Anna's been so
06:48confident she just can't wait to pedal away and get going is that because she's progressed perhaps
06:53from a balance bike and not stabilizers if a child's progressing from stabilizers we'd expect that initial
07:00balancing phase to take quite a bit longer you still use exactly the same technique as we have
07:06today but when you're pushing the child along holding under the armpits they will tend to ride
07:12the bike like a tricycle so they'll be trying to push their body away and hold the bike up and
07:17when you're
07:17leaning to steer they will they will try and fight that carry on in exactly the same way as we
07:22did today
07:23but expect it to take quite a bit longer and encourage them to keep their body in line with the
07:27bike
07:27and they will get the feel for it but you might have to have perhaps a little bit longer or
07:32maybe
07:33two or three sessions at it before they're actually riding unaided and in terms of giving advice to
07:38parents that might be really nervous about this process how can you make sure it's safe and you
07:43know take that stress and worry out of the equation i think the things that we mentioned at the start
07:47about finding a safe place big open space you'll notice that Anna's wearing some little gloves if they
07:53do have a spill they're going to put their hands out and they'll stop them grazing their hands but the
07:58main thing is is not to abandon the child when they're actually riding is stay with them it's really
08:03important to avoid a tumble at this stage because it can really knock the confidence and that can put a
08:09child off even having another go potentially for months we want to avoid that so stay with them lots of
08:14encouragement and if you're there until you're really sure that they can manage on their own and start
08:19and stop safely you can catch them if they if they get a wobble or lose concentration there's not
08:24much that can go wrong there no that's right you can you can just literally grab them under the armpits
08:27and hoist them out the way and let the bike fall away you can pick a little one up so
08:31brilliant thank
08:32you so much for joining us today isla and Anna thank you well done
08:49you
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