From the balance bike to the start line: How to succeed in cycling with children

Enjoying your own hobby is something you want to share with your children. Children should learn to cycle anyway, so what could be more obvious than making cycling appealing to them? It can work, but it can't be forced. And above all, you have to scale back your own ambitions considerably and exercise a lot of patience and a sense of proportion. I have three sons. I was able to get two of them interested in cycling, at least in phases, but one didn't take much of a liking to it. Read on to find out how things got rolling.

Children and cycling in five phases

• Phase 1 (0.5 to 3 years): When the children are in the trailer, the parents have the greatest relative freedom.
• Phase 2 (3 to 6 years): Children learn to drive themselves - playfully with towing or trailers. Parents have to take a back seat.
• Phase 3 (7 to 10 years): The radius of action increases. Children learn technical skills. First competitions take place. Small tours with children are possible.
• Phase 4 (11 to 13 years): Children become more persistent, joint sport is possible, competitions become tougher.
• Phase 5 (14 years and older): Cutting the cord. If young people stick with it, they can become stronger than their parents from the age of 15.

Phase 1: Towing

There are children who love being pulled in a trailer. Not for hours on end, but long enough for the ride together to have a sporty character. I was lucky. None of my children objected to the right amount of trailer driving, which, as I know from friends, is not always the case. I invested in a second-hand single trailer as soon as my eldest was born. It's the only serious trailer in a sea of mediocre designs. Expensive, but worth every cent. I was following in Florian Wiesmann's footsteps. The Swiss frame builder developed this fantastic vehicle to take his offspring out on the trail. And that's exactly what I did. I avoided the roads and mostly rode with my son Ben through forests and pine forests, uphill and downhill. I chose the mountain bike as my towing vehicle.

Uphill it was challenging, downhill it was great fun. If my handlebars could fit between the trees, I was sure that the much narrower trailer could follow. With its softly adjusted downhill suspension and 200 millimetres of suspension travel, the Singletrailer is a sedan chair. The trailer even takes stairs more gently than a standard trailer on a bad road. Sometimes Ben would whoop with joy at the back when we let it run downhill. The first lesson I taught him: If it's rushing and the treetops are flying by above his open top, it's good. Stops at forest play areas ensured that it didn't get too boring for him. When my second son Leo was born, we added a second trailer to the fleet, and my wife Andrea also pulled a single trailer from then on.

This gave us one or two years in which we ploughed through the countryside together as a family. The sporting restrictions were subjectively minimal and we were able to pursue our hobby together. On holiday, we took the trailers on half-day tours with an adventurous character. Even challenging trails, for example in Finale Ligure, were doable with these trailers. Looking back, it was a good time that challenged us athletically, but also formed the family team. Pedalling the trailers uphill without e-assistance required a lot of muscle fat and kept us fit. A final rebellion before phase two, which was to take on a completely different character.

We blew up the system with the birth of our third son. An attempt to pull two children in a standard two-seater and one in a single trailer failed due to my limited leg power and the nature of the two-seater. The thing proved to be a misconstruction in many respects and reduced the driving pleasure to such an extent that it became clear: Phase 1 had come to its natural end. Five was one too many.

Phase 2: Drive yourself

Ben learnt to drive himself at the age of three and a half. Pedalling on his own and his last trailer rides overlapped briefly, then it was clear that he would only want to pedal himself from then on. With the tiny 16-inch wheels, there was a lot to do in the forest. But thanks to Kania, even these first trips were made under his own steam with well thought-out and good equipment. Small suppliers specialising in children's bikes had and still have better offers than the big bike companies that don't take children's bikes seriously. Leo learnt to ride a bike before his third birthday and soon joined the pedal faction, so we were now travelling as a mixed team. One son in the trailer, two riding independently.

In contrast to phase 1, the routes were much shorter as the children had to pedal themselves. It was no longer sport for us adults, but we still had fun with the family on bikes. The focus was on learning the riding technique. We rode small laps in the city forest and enjoyed the family-friendly area in Punta Ala in Tuscany during our holidays, which combines trail fun and fun by the sea more effectively than any other. We stopped at natural obstacles, practised line choice and riding technique. The bikes grew quickly with us. The 20-inch wheels were a little smoother over the roots.

Attempts to attach a child to the single trail trailer using an expander to pull it were not only positive - the trailer became too long and too confusing. I also accidentally pulled a fallen child further over the gravel without the perceived riding resistance changing significantly. The speed was very slow at this stage. Patience was required and the adults had to let off steam solo when there was a window of opportunity. Personal fitness naturally declined during this phase. Riding little and slowly is not a recipe for top form.

Phase 3: Breakthrough with 26 inches

The breakthrough in self-propelled bikes was made possible by the first 26-inch bikes, which became rideable at the age of six. The concept was similar to that of 29-inch bikes for adults: sitting between the wheels instead of on top of them. The children quickly made huge leaps in riding technique and were able to ride fun trails smoothly, so that I wasn't bored to death when I followed them. With these bikes, the difference to ordinary children's bikes - heavy, small wheels, lousy geometries - became more than obvious. The realisation: If you want to do something good for yourself and your children, you shouldn't skimp on materials. Although the service life is limited because children grow quickly, the resale value of good children's bikes is high. The actual costs of use are therefore not that dramatic.

The larger wheels also paved the way for the children to start racing. From the U7 age group, the two older sons began to race mountain bikes. Why MTB? Because road racing simply doesn't make sense at this age. Accompanying their own kids to races created a new perspective: namely to support them in competing with others. There was a lot to learn: power distribution, positioning, riding technique, fair play and how to deal with the ups and downs of competitive sport. At this age, children are open to playful things. They have a natural urge to move, but not the kind of toughness that endurance sports require. They are more serial sprinters than endurance runners.

Watching the children race was therefore ambivalent right from the start. Quite a few of them overdo it at first, which leads to ugly scenes. Screaming parents, crying children. Nothing that's fun. Races that challenged the children technically were good. Sometimes there were also qualifying sessions beforehand, which were all about skill and not endurance. That pointed in the right direction. After all, there was plenty of time for mindless endurance training later on.

Phase 4: Joint training and race

From the age of eleven, talented young athletes have developed to the point where they can do larger laps. Joint sport becomes possible. My children have never been fans of day-long cycling, but in training camps they have sometimes covered 100 kilometres in a row as a group. No small feat on the MTB.

I had to realise that cycling is a fringe sport, and a conducive group dynamic is also a matter of luck. We still went to a few competitions, including mountain time trials, where we competed as a family team. This brought joint success, but it became clear early on that the children's racing careers would not continue in a straight line.

Phase 5: Cutting the cord and going your own way

My eldest son raced at U17 level, then he switched to football. That's the sport that all his friends play. On a normal training day, football in a small town is busier than a cycling race with a 100-kilometre radius. He therefore fully understands my decision to switch sports. His departure from racing is no exception. The number of participants declines from the U15 level onwards and collapses completely in the U17 category. His brother Leo showed solidarity and also stopped racing at U15 level. We still cycle together from time to time. Sometimes even racing bikes.

I'm now cycling more with my friends again. Despite my advanced age, my fitness level with the children is increasing again. For a while, it looked as if my children could catch up in terms of fitness. Because that would be normal: from the age of 15, young cyclists can be just as fit as adult cyclists. But only if they train. The strength and fearlessness of young people is evident elsewhere: in the bike park, I am now definitely left behind. The boys outpace me in the technical sections. I think that's good. Because that was the plan.

In principle, I don't like being left behind. Not from anyone. But when it comes to my children, fatherly pride prevails. And the fact that they run away from me shows that this part of the training has fallen on fertile ground. I imagine I can see a direct line between their first carriage rides and the downhill action of today. Perhaps they will take a liking to racing bikes later on and grant me the favour of their slipstream.