'No-Pedal' Bikes Offer Alternative To Training Wheels

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Now that kids are out of school, it's the perfect time to teach them how to ride a bike.

For years that's meant training wheels.

But now there are bikes called 'no-pedal' bikes, or Striders, on the market.

With a new option for bikers in training we got to thinking, which one is better?

At Penn Cycle, WCCO took a look at bikes with training wheels and Striders.

"Two things you need to learn when you learn how to ride a bike. You learn how to pedal and you need to learn how to balance," Tim Larson of Penn Cycle said.

Bikes with training wheels teach kids how to pedal while also helping them learn how to balance while they are riding.

"And as they get progressively better you move the training wheels progressively further up, the bike tips more and more and more," Larson said.

A Strider teaches balance right from the start.

"The balance is the harder of the two things to learn," Larson said.

A Strider bike has a solid plastic wheel and tire with no pedals.

Kids sit on the bike as they would on a traditional bike, but use their feet to push themselves around.

This helps them learn balance.

"If you can bypass the training wheels all together and let them start riding a bike before they even know that that's what they are doing, they get to skip that whole traumatic experience where dad is running alongside  you saying 'I got you, I got you,' and then you crash in the front yard," Larson said.

But if your kids really hate the Strider, Larson said getting them on a traditional bike is still good.

"They are getting into being outdoors and they are getting into cycling," Larson said.

He said he Striders will run you about $100 and bikes with training wheels start at about $175.