How To Shift Your Gears Correctly

What are gear ratios? Why is your gear shift not smooth? What is a bicycle cassette? These are all normal questions for a beginner cyclist, and getting your head around bicycle mechanics and gears can be confusing. Conor and Manon talk you through how to use and shift gears effectively.

00:00 Intro
00:53 How do road bike gears work?
01:29 What do bike cassette numbers mean?
03:40 How to use bike gears properly
04:37 Change your bike gears early
05:40 Change your gears regularly
07:00 Smooth gear changes
07:40 Avoid cross-chaining

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the pros spend day in day out on their bike and changing gear is second nature to them but for the rest of us who aren’t spending so many hours on our bikes are we really getting the most out of our gears yeah if you learn how to change your gears more effectively it can make a significant difference to your riding and in this video we’re going to show you how to do just that let’s do it on man change up those gears we’re going on the [Music] attack [Music] when you first get into riding there is a lot to think about and changing gears can seem super confusing it’s like what gear should you be in on the flat what about going uphill when she you change gear there is a lot to it right let’s take a quick look at our gears so your right hand shifter will control the gears at the back of the bike and your left hand shifter will control the gears up front now up here you’ve got two chain rings and I like to call them the big ring and the little ring usually you’ll have two sometimes you’ll have one sometimes you’ll have three and essentially the Big Chain ring is a harder gear and the little chain ring in the in the inside of the bike is a smaller easier gear and this is your front Mech and this will essentially change the gear from your big ring to your little ring on the rear cassettes here is actually the smaller Cog which is is the harder one so when you’re traveling faster you need a bigger gear to be able to match the speed you’re riding at that’s when you’re looking for those smaller cogs down the block to the right hand side the bigger Cog that is easier for easier riding when you’re traveling up climbs you may hear these cassettes been described in the terms of their speed so are an8 speed N speed 10 speed all the way up to 12 speed there’s even a 13-speed option out there now that is the amount of cogs on that rear cassette the benefit of having more is that there’s smaller jumps smaller gaps between the gears so you’re not having to jump quite as much to get that Cadence right you might also have heard your gears be described as an 1128 or a 52 39 now those numbers refer to the smallest and biggest gear on the cassette and also on those front chain rings and they can be used to describe different sorts of ratios that you can put onto your bike to get the gears the sort of riding you’re doing those numbers the 1128 for example refer to the amount of teeth on each chain ring so on the cassette and on the Chain ring at the front so a 52 chain ring at the front that’s got 52 teeth the whole way around now you can swap these out if you so wish most bikes would come with standard gearing but you can opt for harder gears or easier gears if you want you can do this by swapping out that cassette on the back putting one in with the gear is that you’d like to match your riding and same on the front you can swap those chain rings out to match the sort of riding you’re up to too for example we’re out here in Jona there’s plenty of mountains so for me personally I’d look to opt for easier gears so I can cope with those mountains better but at the same time if you live somewhere that’s super flat maybe with absolutely banging Tailwinds where you’re often riding quite fast you may look to opt for a harder gear to match that style of riding [Music] so that is Gears explains now though how to actually get the most out of those gears on your bike and it’s not as easy as just saying you need to use this gear for that climb or that gear for that Flat Road because everyone is different everyone has their own personal preference their own personal Cadence they prefer to ride at now I actually prefer to spin my legs a bit more than Manon for example and Cadence is actually revolutions per minute or the amount of times one leg do one full Revolution per minute and a good ballpark figure to go off is somewhere between 80 to 95 revolutions per minute you can use a bike computer with a parameter to measure this but if you don’t have one you can simply count the amounts of revolutions per minute with a stopwatch on your bars or a watch on your wrist anticipate now this is a super important one because there’s nothing worse than going into a steep climb being in the wrong gear than having to clunk down all the gears because your bike is not going to thank you for it you want to start preparing for the climb maybe 20 M before you hit start moving your gears down and do it nice and gradually so then when you get to the really steep bit of the climb you’re in a nice easy gear and you can pedal up efficiently you don’t want to be in your hardest gear like this going up and then clunking down underload big no no obviously sometimes steep climbs come out of nowhere catch you off guard and just pop up out with the blue but then it’s even more important to keep looking forward and anticipate when a steep climb is coming so you’re never caught [Music] out it could be that you’re not changing gears as often as you need to it’s really important to try and maintain that same Cadence because it will really help with your Rhythm when you’re riding out on the roads it’s very rare to have such a uniform gradient have that same slope staying exactly the same re you’re riding in reality roads are always pitching different grain is always changing so you need to adapt how you’re pedaling to the terrain which you’re riding on so try and make those small gear changes to keep that Cadence the same and avoid leaving it too long where you get to the point that you really lose your Rhythm and have to totally start again to find that preferred style to your pedaling it’s also worth saying you don’t want to change gears too often and over think trying to always be in the right gear because if you are pushing on and the riding is getting tough and maybe you’re pushing on over a smaller climb there are times when you do need to just dig in push through the effort sticking that gear in and try and conquer the road you’re on in the best shape possible if you’re always always changing gear too often then what’s going to happen is you’re never going to have the opportunity to put the power down in the first place so sometimes it does pay to keep things simple stick in that same gear in and push on through are you finding that your gear changes aren’t the smoothest and is disturbing your riding a little bit well we’ve got a few tips to help with that and essentially it all comes down to a release in pressure in your pedals when changing gear now we are talking about backing off completely but just a slight little release in pressure is going to make a big difference and make a gear change nice and smooth now this can take a little bit of practice so next time you’re ar your give it a go until you find just the right amount of pressure released in the pedals to make those gear changes nice and smooth something you do really want to avoid in terms of Gears is cross chaining and that is when you have too aggressive an angle of the chain so it’s like you’re in the big ring at the front the big ring at the back and the train is so diagonal that it puts quite a lot of pressure on the front ders and the rear daders which which help you to change gear in the first place and potentially damage a chain or chain Rings or even lose your chain whilst you’re riding causing you to have to stop and put it back on again instead you want to maintain a more relaxed angle on that chain so don’t be put it all the way to the back of the cassette if that’s the case and think about changing the gear at the front now most electronic gears will have a system in place which will avoid you actually doing this in the first place and of course some of you will be using one by that’s only one chain ring at the front and in this case you don’t need to worry about cross chaining at all to use a full spread of those gears at the back but cross chaining is something you want to avoid especially on climbs if it can affect you can lead you with a nasty surprise the gradient starts to bite so always be conscious of what gear you’re in at what time you can sneak up on you to and you’re getting pounded by your riding bodies and you forget what gear you’re actually in before it’s too late there you go then that is hopefully a bit of advice that will get you changing those gears a bit more efficiently yeah hopefully this video has helped you and if you have any of your own tips please drop them in the comment section below because we’d love to read them as always make sure to like And subscribe to support the channel we’ll see you in the next one yeah I may have changed your gears bit funny there man I’m going to your back this is my one chance to beat you no