Meet a Team Rider: Max Schulze
It’s hard to outline Max’s style of riding - he’ll pick up a uni and exceed anything you’ve imagined on an trials or street obstacle, as well as on flat ground and mountain trails. Rumor has it, he’s not actually human, but a robot. Read more about our superhuman in the last of our Factory Team riders portraits.
Hi Max! How is your riding season going?
Totally awesome! Back in March I was up in Moab, Utah for an unofficial muni fest. There, I got to ride with lots of fun people including KH team member Scott Wilton. This time I rode a new trail I’ve never ridden before, Captain Ahab, which has a fast and technical contour along the edge of a slickrock canyon. In May I was in Durango, Colorado for the Iron Horse Bike Classic, where I’ve had the chance to be part of a trials demo in front of incredibly high energy crowds in previous years. This year, I again demoed unicycle trials along with some bike trials riders, and set a person high jump record of 142cm during the demo.
I’ve also had the chance to get out with friends and ride and make some intense but still goofy and fun videos! I’ve been wanting to try combining multiple styles into a single video where I can add trials and street tricks into a muni ride for example. I feel like I have achieved that marginally well with my most recent video Mad Max: Muni Road. As good as I think it turned out, I feel like I could film clips with an even cooler hybrid discipline kind of style. Think Chris Akrigg of mountain/trials biking for example.
On top of that, MadUni club help me direct a successful trials event at NAUCC in Madison, Wisconsin this summer. I additionally competed in speedtrials, flatland, street, highjump, longjump, and the muni events. My combined performance in all of those events got me the 1st overall award in the urban disciplines and 2nd in the muni.
I just moved up to Colorado to start graduate school. It’s put me closer to some bigger mountains and some new riding places to explore so I hope to be riding and filming some sweet muni videos in the near future.
And last year, how was that?
Last year was an excellent year! I went to UNICON in Montreal and secured the world champion title in trials for the third time in a row! Wooo! I also surprised myself by doing unexpectedly well in a couple of other disciplines. I won the speed trials event, got 3rd in expert street, 4th in the expert downhill, 4th in expert high jump, and most surprising of all, made it to the equivalent of 4th place in the flatland land final battles after qualifying 16th.
In the fall after UNICON, I put together one of my best videos (I think) of fast and flowy big street.
Additionally, some video footage that John Lesage helped capture during the March Moab Munifest and in the fall was picked up and showcased by both GoPro and Bear Grylls (here’s a second one), which was good exposure for the sport of unicycling.
Fun fact about you?
If you yell, “CAKE!” at me, I’ll ride faster.
What do you like about being on the KH Team?
Kris Holm’s riding segments in movies like “New World Disorder” and “Universe 2” were some of my original inspiration for unicycling. Kris choses riders not only for their unicycling ability but their character, and everybody on the team has been and are excellent people in their own right. It’s really an honor to be recognized as part of this group. Another fun part is helping Kris with product development! I get to test prototype parts before they are in production, and give Kris feedback on how prototypes or other existing production parts can be improved.
Anything else you’d like the world to know?
I’m actually a robot; my legs look like metal pipes.
Thanks, for the chat Max, all the best to you.
Find out more about Max on his Factory Team rider profile and Facebook and check out all his videos on Vimeo.
Photos by Minesh Bacrania.
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