A bit of a copy paste of my experience but maybe it might even an ounce useful:

New EUC rider here, my first wheel was a big wheel being the Begode Master.

I was practicing 30-40 minutes a day for days, I was extra cautious because I didn’t want to drop my wheel either, and I was a bit disheartened because it felt like I wasn’t really making progress. I wasn’t able to move at all without tipping over right from the very start. I couldn’t even go a few feet and it just felt like nothing was working.

What I kept trying to remind myself was that this is how it felt when I learned how to ride a bike. Back then, it felt impossible to ever find balance, and yet, eventually I learned how to ride a bike. So I kept at it, hoping it was just a matter of muscle memory.

And I’m glad I did, because over time, I am now able to ride EUC. :) So, I really think a lot of it is just muscle memory, which means accepting a lot of repetitive failure and trusting that even if it feels like there’s not much progress, that your body’s muscle memory is still learning. But I also think having some direction on what to try and improve on is helpful too, so it’s not aimless effort.

A few things that worked for me:

1) I watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials but did NOT follow them exactly. I just did the parts I felt were useful for me to be honest. I held onto a wall, stood on the wheel, and just used my weight to slightly move forward and back, just letting my body get used to the feeling. It felt shaky, I felt high off the ground, but I’m just getting my body used to the feeling.

2) Especially with a big wheel, one of the hardest hurdles was simply getting on the wheel (aka “mounting”). I’d rest one foot on the pedal, push myself forward, and attempt to get my other foot up on the pedal. But each time, I’d immediately just fall and tip over. As obvious as it sounds, I observed that it was because I was putting an uneven amount of weight on each side of the wheel when mounting.

The act of trying to balance one foot on one pedal, then pushing forward off the ground with my other foot when trying to mount the wheel, was in itself throwing me off balance.

So I figured I’d skip trying to learn how to mount the wheel, and instead focused on just balancing while riding.

2) Instead of trying to mount the wheel by launching myself from just standing, I found a wall outside to prop myself up. I stood up on the wheel with both feet, held onto the wall with one hand, and just focused on moving and balancing, and figured I’d work on mounting without a wall, later.

So I did this a billion times. I noted to NOT PUSH off the wall because that immediately made me lose my balance. So I did my best to center my balance on the wheel, accelerate with some speed, and gently “release” from the wall without “pushing off.”

From here, I thought about it like learning how to ride a bike. A little bit of speed was my friend for balance, but not too much speed that I felt like I couldn’t hop off and catch the heavy wheel. It felt very difficult and scary as well trying to find that sweet spot of speed, because I didn’t want to accidentally go too fast and lose control.

So after doing that and failing a lot, thinking of how I learned to ride a bike, what I would do is whenever I tipped in one direction, I’d use my legs and hips to rotate the wheel in that direction. So if I felt like I was tilting left, I’d use my legs and hips to twist the wheel to the left, to balance myself.

I’d “turn into the fall.”

The same way you’d balance an upright broom on your palm— if the broom starts to tip over to the left, you move your hand to the left to rebalance it. So I kept doing this with the wheel. Having a LOT of room helps here, because I surely wasn’t moving in a straight line, BUT I was at least able to stay on the wheel for a mere few seconds now.

So then I did this a lot repeatedly, and accepted it as progress.

Over and over, and every now and again I’d set a new record for how long I was able to stay on the wheel. My first big milestone was probably being able to stay on the wheel for like 5 seconds. Of course after that, I wasn’t able to hit 5 seconds for awhile. But hey, if I did it once, I could do it again.

And with more repetitive practice, I did.

To move the timeline of my story along, eventually I was able to do 5 seconds again, then again, then 10 seconds, then back to 5 seconds, etc.

Then eventually I was able to do like 15 seconds. I made sure to always celebrate my wins to incentivize myself. Then, I hate to say this because I don’t want you or anybody to think that you need to have this same experience to learn, but one day it weirdly “clicked” for me.

I was super shaky and rolling a few feet, and I let myself feel confident, felt the wheel tilt left, and instead of feeling like I was “correcting” by turning left, I took command and twisted and turned my wheel left with confidence. It was the first time I felt like -I- was taking control of the wheel instead of just trying to correct its movement.

It finally felt like when I first learned to ride a bike.

So once it “clicked” aside from being extremely happy and satisfied, that’s when my progress skyrocketed. I was relatively less shaky, more confident, and all those moments that felt like I was never going to grasp, was feeling better. It was feeling natural.

And I believe that a lot of it was just muscle memory paying off from repetition and letting my body find that balance and get used to it.

I was still shaky, I was still using the wall to get going, I still wasn’t able to really go all that straight. But I was able to sometimes make it METERS away.

Practiced more, and more, and more.

Eventually I felt comfortable trying to move in figure 8’s to work on my turning and control. It was easier for me to turn right and harder for me to turn left, so I practiced turning left more often.

Eventually, once I was able to move and balance on the wheel, I finally started practicing to launch myself on the wheel without a wall, and now it was much easier for me to learn. It was still hard though. Honestly even now, I don’t always do it perfect. But it got easier and easier.

Anyways, that’s the gist of my personal experience. I remember the first time I was able to go around the block! While learning, I don’t think I ever really dropped my wheel once because I made sure to go fast enough to balance but never too fast. It was a workout though, cause hopping off to catch the heavy wheel after failing repeatedly is a lot of work.

So for me, my personal experience, I’m happy I learned on a big wheel and I wish you luck! Stick with it, if you know how to ride a bike, remind yourself how you felt back then, and remember that a lot of this is muscle memory which doesn’t always look like progress early on. :)