ochizon

I had never been able to do it, so recently, I dedicated a whole ride to this. Now I can ride hands free as long as I want.

HUGE bonus to learning it, is now I ride a MUCH straighter line when riding normally. It forces you to tighten up your spin. If your leg spinning around were a car wheel, this is the equivalent of getting it "balanced."

horatio 

Research, as promised.

According to Jobst Brandt, it is trail that affects hands-off stability the most. Here's a link with more details:

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/gyro.html

I obtained specs for the 54cm and 56cm frames mentioned earlier. The 54cm frame has 60 mm of trail and the 56cm frame has 56mm. The 54cm frame in it's 2011 iteration has 59mm trail. I will be riding one soon and am curious to see if a 1mm difference will make it easier to ride hands-free.

Now, I'm going home to practice on my wobbly bikes.

horatio 

O.K. So it's some combination of bike AND rider. Tonight I was able to pedal hands-free for about a quarter of a mile on my Trek. I did, however, notice an increase in heart rate. It does force one to focus on smooth pedaling technique.

adriano 

thats talking about keeping a bicycle upright in general with nothing specifically mentioned about riding no handed. two bikes with equal rake and a 73 and 78 degree seat tubes are going to have very different no handed stability. my about post is all the research required.

horatio 

Thanks for your insights and comments. Here's the relevant section from Brandt's observations:

Those who ride no-hands sense and make use of the small gyroscopic effect of the front wheel to steer. This, together with trail of the steering geometry stabilize steering. Without trail, the bicycle would have poor straight ahead preference and would riding no-hands difficult. Many bicyclists never master riding no-hands because the gyroscopic forces are too small for them to detect. Hands on the handlebars completely obscure these forces.

adriano 

a high trail front end with very forward seating position can be impossible to ride no handed. an identical front end or even a low trail front end with a normal seating postion will be much easier. trail can fine tune no handed ease, but seating position will dictate it much more. no one is selling frames with too little trail to ride no handed, but there are frames with too forward a seating position.

dbikingman

What a timely post earlier today I was practicing riding hands free. I found the front end to be very twitchy. It seemed better now that I have moved my saddle back a bit. But, after reading this thread I used some of the tps here and I seemed to do better. So regardless of bike techinique is important.

horatio 

I get the feeling (no pun intented) that there's a "sweet spot" position on the saddle where it is much easier to balance. It seemed that way to me tonight, and it was sitting farther back than I normally do for cruising.

pilechko

Just realize that steering is mostly about leaning your body, not about physically moving the bars with your hands. Once you sit up confidently you can easily steer your bike around a corner hands free.

ultraman6970

+1 pilenchko

I would say that 80% of the time is the bike is the one that does the trick, with some cheap a$$ bikes u can't or u barelly can ride w/no hands, the other 20% it is the rider, some guys can't do it no matter the bike they ride.

I remember some low class giants and some low class specialized when i tried them the same problem. Scotts np, ridleys np, kuotas np, bmc np, pinas np, colnagos np, Del Valle custom np.

Even in my scott sub 20 pulling a trailer charriot thing i can go no hands, was tricky at the beginning but i catched up

Yaniel

i think it might have more to do with the geometry of those bikes instead of the price. I've been riding hands off on 50 dollar department store bikes since I was a kid.

Paul Y.

Exactly. Sit up straight and pedal. Pedalling helps keep your balance.

adriano 

ive never heard of such a concept.

Yaniel

really? try riding no handed while sitting on the very nose of the saddle, or hanging off the back of it. you'll be too busy trying to balance on the saddle to comfortably ride no handed.

dahut

Yep, there is only a small zone on the saddle where you can get the right balance. And you have to "hunt" to find it. I was riding hands off today, in fact, mid-lane and stretching my back... just taking a little break when I heard a "TOOT!" behind me.
A small car had come along and was letting me know she was there. I thanked her.

dstrong 

Hmmm...I just checked the specs on my head tube angle on both my bikes and they're the same...74 degrees...and I know both forks are 43-degree rake...I haven't checked wheelbase...but I know my compact frame Carbon ParkPre is much more difficult to ride no-handed than my traditional frame steel Interloc. My ParkPre is very twitchy...I mean quick.

ultraman6970

43-degree rake <--- is 43 millimeters rake. Rake is in millimeters not in degrees.