Our Story

From family bonding to engineering breakthrough—how Flex Guiders came to be.

Where It Began

My son and I share a love of the outdoors. Teaching him to ride a bike began as an opportunity to bond over this and became a cherished routine. I was consistently impressed with his coordination and athleticism on the balance bike, and I anticipated a smooth transition to his big kid bike.

On this day, however, reality hit hard. He mounted the bike with confidence, but pedaling was foreign to him—a gap in his muscle memory due to my training methods. Despite his best efforts, he could not propel himself forward and fell over time after time. Frustrated and scared of falling again, he did not want to continue the learning process.  Why would he?  The balance bike was fun, and his pedal bike just led to pain.

Admittedly, I was also frustrated.  I was, and am proud of my son.  I saw how he had practiced for months on the balance bike, was naturally confident and athletic for his age and I wanted the greatness I see in him to manifest itself in his ability to pick up biking quickly.  I was discouraged that he didn’t want to continue training.

I resorted to traditional training wheels—something I knew would feel like a setback—hoping to build his strength and confidence.  After a few training sessions he had pedaling down and had renewed confidence, or so I thought.

Eventually, we advanced to a regular bike again. His confidence was shattered after another series of failed attempts and a few tumbles.  As it turned out, his confidence was entirely connected to the training wheels and he didn’t want to ride without them. It became clear to me that training wheels had their own set of weaknesses completely separate from the balance bike….More frustration ensued as I switched back to the training wheels and tried to teach him to balance and pedal by raising the training wheels.  He had become so dependent on them that he rode the bike like a tricycle even though he had to lean in an extreme way to make contact with the raised wheel.  At this point it was almost comical. 

When he finally succeeded, it was hardly the momentous victory moment that I wanted for him.  The training experience was long, he got hurt, and he was often scared. He wanted to give up throughout most of the process—a process that’s supposed to be fun!

In hindsight, I can see that my frustration was misplaced.  I had expected a quick transition but hadn’t provided the proper tools to teach him the skills that he needed.  I had expected him to want to learn biking but hadn’t given him a proper taste of what it was like.  

The Bright Side

While watching him through the training process I learned a lot.  What was intuitive in my muscle memory became something I understood with my head.  I learned that balancing requires the right combination of speed, turning and tilt and that’s what made the balance bike great.  But I also learned that pedaling uses muscles that aren’t developed normally outside of biking which makes training wheels helpful.  And lastly I learned that it is not easy to stitch these skills together to make biking possible.

Creativity Strikes

After I had raised the training wheels and saw him leaned way over riding around on three wheels I realized that the problem with training wheels is that they offer binary support.  It’s all or nothing and with this no balance can be learned.  From there it struck me that if the support were flexible, he wouldn’t learn to depend on it and would be able to lean into his turns and learn balance.  Following that I thought if only the support were adjustable, he could slowly be weaned off support. 

As an engineer and father I set off to create a better solution for my daughter.  I set off to bring to life some sort of spring loaded, adjustable support system.  The first dozen iterations were unworkable, but I was determined. 

After countless more iterations I landed on something that not only worked but far exceeded my expectations.  Not only was I thrilled by the efficacy, but the timing worked out so that I could use Flex Guiders to train my daughter how to ride with them.  

Full Circle - Training with Flex Guiders

Training with Flex Guiders was night and day different than it was with the balance bike / training wheels.  Because I wasn’t scrambling to overcome the shortcomings of the balance bike / training wheels, I was able to focus on encouraging her and soaking in the joy of her excitement as she learned.  From the beginning, I could tell that she was having fun because she could feel, to a limited degree, what it was like to ride a bike.  I could see her eyes light up each time she got ready to ride after I reduced the support. When she rode totally on her own it was a joyful victory, like when she took her first steps.  It was a special experience that I won’t easily forget.