Probably the most important thing to understand about riding a Onewheel. The board automatically leans you back in an attempt to slow you down as a safety measure in various circumstances. Ignoring pushback can and likely will result in a nasty fall.
The Onewheel will automatically lean you back to reduce speed in a number of different circumstances including (but not limited to) battery level, grade of terrain, speed, tire pressure, and rider weight. It is very important to understand that you can defeat pushback… If you continue to lean forward and accelerate, you are essentially asking the board to go faster than it can manage, and on one wheel, there is little power left to maintain balance and stability. This is how riders are thrown off and get injured. A common scenario for pushback-related falls is riders pushing the board to it’s speed limit, then continuing to accelerate through the pushback.
In many community forums, veteran riders will display their top speeds and discuss how they push the board through pushback. I do not recommend this. When the board has nothing left to give and you ask it for more, it does something called a “nosedive” (detailed below) and can throw you off very suddenly. Many serious injuries result from this, and is almost always due to the rider disregarding pushback.
It is worth mentioning that pushback is much stronger (more noticeable) on the Pint models than it is on the full-sized models XR and GT. It’s possible for riders to not “feel” the pushback and fall due to this, so it’s important to listen to the board and pay attention to this as it can occur in many difference scenarios, often not related to the speed you’re travelling.
