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You should be starting with the stoker completely ready to go, providing 90% of the torque off the line. Captain must be happy with getting feet sorted while moving, especially clipless.
Best way to get your head around being a stoker is to be captained first by someone bigger (and uglier) who you trust. Their beef will reduce your impact but its the trust that's most important. Close your eyes/stare at their back, whatever you need to just sit there and let the captain balance the bike.
I can always tell when the better part of my team is spooked by my captaining because she can physically steer the bike just by involuntarily shifting her weight towards the kerb. This makes her invaluable to particularly slow/fast manoeuvring but that's next level.
hamrack-
You should be starting with the stoker completely ready to go, providing 90% of the torque off the line. Captain must be happy with getting feet sorted while moving, especially clipless.
Ah, that's interesting. It felt like my girlfriend was pedalling off before I got a chance to get my feet sorted. We were trying to pedal off at the same time.
Weird though, we had no trouble with me on the front aside from the first two or three attempts to set off. And in those instances low speed wobble was definitely a factor - I would have had nearly as much trouble alone I think.
I'm guessing it's a good idea to be able to do both positions, in case the captain hurts themselves or something, which is what prompted us to try it the other way!
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Amen to that. My first time on a tandem was steered by rob ‘the gorilla’ Jeffries rip who then proceeded to track stand, trundle slowly round the top of the bank etc until we’d established who had the bigger balls and I agreed to sit still
frankenbike
Tallboy
More practice needed then! I tried to sit on without pedalling and even that was too difficult. In my defence, the stoker's bars didn't seemed to be clamped in any way resulting in them twisting in that tube, and the basket was positioned horribly meaning that I couldn't jump on/off the back. So when we started rolling I would get stuck between the saddle and basket running along with my feet either side of the bike