ASK GEARIST: The basics of bicycle shifting

hey there guys my name is Brandon from gear Escom and welcome to this episode of ask theorist today's question comes to us from Moe and Moe asks thanks so much for putting this series together I'm a new cyclist and looking to compete in my first triathlon in 2015 do you have any suggestions or tips on how to most efficiently use the gears on my road bike to help with performance right now I have one gear that I feel comfortable in and just stay there for my entire rides I know I'm probably working my legs harder than I should be in spots and not enough in other spots help thanks so much for the question moe that's a really common one that a lot of people have and are really kind of uncertain about so with this episode of ask us what we're going to do is break down the basics of bicycle shifting what the parts are what the terminology is and how to most efficiently shift your bicycle now before we get into the actual art of shifting let's talk about some of the parts that are on your bike and what you need to know is they pertain to shifting first up this right here is your cockpit this is what you see when you're behind the handlebars of your road bike now we're not going to get into the handlebar width thing and all that kind of stuff we're just going to talk about what pertains to shifting today now on the left hand side that's shifter right there houses you're shifting for the front derailleur and also for your front brake now in the right hand side that shifter takes care of your rear brake as well as your rear cassette or rear derailleur a good way to remember what's what when you get on your bicycle so you're not like which one of these controls which is right hand rear that's always the way that you can remember that whatever you're doing your right hand is going to influence what happens on the backside of the bike the basic way that shifter works and for the sake of today's video we're going to be talking about Shimano shifting is that you've got two basic parts to your shift lever now here you can see a Shimano shifter the parts that you'll notice on that first are the hood that's this thing here that's where your hands rest when your hands are kind of out there on those the second thing you're going to notice is the basic brake lever now that serves two purposes the first is obviously to power the brakes the second is that that moves to the side it has it's on a swivel point now if you're using the right hand what that's going to do is as you move that each click you shift that over that's going to move the chain up the cassette remember this is right hand in the rear it's going to move you up the cassette and make that gear a little bit easier that's up shifting now behind that you can see a smaller lever that smaller lever for each click of that is going to move you down the cassette that's going to make it harder the same is true on the left hand but kind of opposite if you're going from the small gear or a smaller gear to a bigger gear you're going to be shifting up by pushing the big lever inward and then back down to the easier gear with the smaller lever that you see behind the brake lever now on your bike you're going to see a series of cables coming from your shifters and depending on the way that your bike is set up whether it has external or internal cabling those cables are going to run back to their designated parts in other words from the left-hand shift or they're going to be cables that are going to run one to the brake up front and the other to the front derailleur likewise with the right hand you're going to have one that runs the rear brake and one that runs to the rear derailleur these cables in concert with the shifters are what make these parts move moving on back now this right here is an illustration of the drivetrain of a bicycle it's pretty generic there no cables involved it's just for the sake of this video right here now what you can see is that here is the front derailleur and here is the rear derailleur you can also see the front chainrings and you can also see the rear cassette and finally just in case you've never ridden a bike before that thing that goes around both those rings that's called the chain now let's start with the chain rings up front first of all they are called chain rings most bikes are either going to have two or three in the case where there are three generally speaking the smallest of those chain rings which is going to be the one closest to the bike or inside that's going to be called granny gears it's no offense it just makes it really really easy to pedal up pretty much any you can pedal up the side of it like the Hancock building in Chicago in that gear you'd be probably okay all gears on a bicycle are going to be designated by the number of teeth that are on them now on the front chainring on for instance the bike that I ride there's 53:39 you'll hear people throw around numbers like that 53 39 or 50 to 150 236 if it's compact or something like that you'll hear people throw these different names around and what that means is that the number of teeth on the large ring that we see here then this illustration I haven't counted I'm just saying that if this were 53 39 it's got 53 teeth and then the inner ring is going to have 39 teeth on it that also applies to the rear gears that we're going to talk about in a second now the chain rings are obviously attached to your crank arms the crank arms and the chain rings together make your crank set they are what to drive the bike with pedals on the end obviously now let's move back to the rear cassette now here's something that you may have heard when you're a kid you may still be using this terminology today is that oh I have a 21 speed bike or I have this many speeds on my bike this is the terminology that road cyclists are going to use we don't count the front you count only the back so if you've got ten speeds on the back giving ten speed bike not a thirty speed bike if you have three gears up front and to the back it's just a ten speed bike or an 11 speed most of the time it's going to be 10 or 11 every now and then you can find a 12 speed but that's kind of rare and sometimes 9 now the set of gears or cogs that's on the back of the bicycle is called your cassette now that cassette is also going to have a range of teeth classifications now sometimes it's going to be like an 11 28 which is on the compact that I ride sometimes you have something like at 12:27 it really really all depends and again what that means is that the smallest string on the cassette the smallest cog is going to have 11 teeth if it's at 11:28 and the largest is going to have a 28 teeth on it and so there's different spacing in between there that doesn't really matter it's whatever feels right to you so make sure that you're on a good kind of wide-ranging cassette that's going to allow you to climb and allow you to roll some flats and down hills without spinning out of gears and I'll talk about what that means in a few minutes now the next thing that we're going to talk about is terminology if you've ever driven a manual transmission or stick shift car then you're probably familiar with how you shift when you approach different parts of terrain so while we're talking about this if you have driven a stick shift or manual transmission car keep that in the back of your head because it'll really help some of your understanding of bicycle shifting as well the first thing is that when I say up and down shifting what I mean is if you're up shifting you're going into a harder gear so in the car if you like going into fourth or fifth gear now this is what you're going to use where you're going downhill or something like that if you're going uphill we're going to downshift into a easier gear where you're asking the engine which is you the engine doesn't have to put out quite as much power or effort to get up this hill or up this particular piece of terrain because the gearing allows the ratio to be such that it's easier for you to turn the pedals and thus get up the hill more efficiently another term we're going to talk about the second is cross-chaining we're going to talk a little bit more about these specifics of shifting in a minute but cross-chaining is pretty easy to understand it basically means that if you're in the biggest gear up front and the smallest gear in the back you're really going to be stressing the hardware because the chain is supposed to be like this and you're asking it to be really spread apart it's big gear up front small gear back or vice versa anytime you've got the chain operating at opposite ends of itself you're really going to kind of stress that chain the hardware itself a little bit you can if you're under force or under load you can actually really bend the derailleur or something your derailleur hanger which is going to mess up your entire drivetrain and trust me is very expensive to repair the last piece of terminology that I'll bring up that you heard me say a second ago is a load bearing shift what this basically means is if you have waited to go up a hill and you're actually already going up the hill a little bit your cadence is slowed down and you shift under load in other words you're really putting the screws to that gear you're really kind of putting some force on it that type of thing is a good way to chip a tooth drop a chain anything like that you don't want to do that so make sure you anticipate things we're going to talk about that a little bit in a second now let's talk about when to shift there are three basic types of terrain that you're going to deal with uphill downhill and flat now when you're on a flat stay wherever you're comfortable this plays into cadence a little bit so I like to have my legs going at about 95 to 100 rpms this is definitely subjective and as you become more comfortable on your bike your cadence is probably going to climb a little bit most people are comfortable spinning a lower gear and that is generally speaking the way that a lot of people ride you can of course see people back in the day like Yann Ulrich who's kind of like a big diesel engine a much slower cadence but he's also putting out a lot more power it's not as efficient going up hills and things like that but it is still a ton of power but more efficient can also equal the same amount of power output over time you're just having more pedal strokes so what does this mean for your shifting well here's the basic primer when you're approaching a hill and you see it coming what you should do is when you're about to get to the hill do not wait until you started to slow down when you're about to approach the hill then you should downshift begin to get into something easier at least one gear easier because once you've started up that hill number one you're going to like I mentioned a second ago compromise the hardware in some situations and number two you're going to run out of gears it's very very difficult to shift in a situation like that and your legs aren't going to be ready for it so when you see a hill coming make sure that you go ahead and get into a lower gear or even to lower gears if it's a super super steep hill that way when you're shifting even if it's under a little bit of load it's a smaller increment to shift rather than having to get down from one gear to 3 gears below that because it's dressing your legs too much and quite frankly you're going to start rolling backwards if you don't another time you're going to want to hang out in a lower gear whether it's on a flat or a hill is when you have a big head wind this is a wind that is in your face it's ok to go slow when you're getting fit on the bike or learning to ride one of the most important things is writing consistently so don't really pay so much attention to pace pay more attention to the effort that you're putting out and pay more attention to the power that you're putting the pedals and your cadence these are the things that are going to be important and in the long run you'll pay they'll pay much bigger dividends than just kind of forcing yourself through the wind now let's talk about going downhill with down hills or with the tailwind tailwind the opposite of headwind when a wind is coming from behind you you obviously have a lot more freedom and it's actually a lot easier so that's when you get into the biggest gear you can get that big ring going and that small cog in the back and just really rip on it because this is your opportunity to really fly down a hill or fly with the wind again really focus on keeping your cadence where it is but this is a great time where you can really play around with that big ring and feel some of that power shifting under load or something like that is not obviously a big deal when you're going downhill or anything where you've got a lot of assistance from the wind or something like that because again you're not going to be putting a load to it and you can always just coast out of it so not as big a deal is when you're going uphill now as for flats this is actually a very interesting situation in something where I would recommend finding where you're most comfortable a lot of flats you're going to have what are called false flats there's going to be either a little slight downhill that doesn't feel or look like one or likewise you're going to have a small uphill which is more commonly what's referred to as a false flat this is where you're feel like you're like why am i working so hard this is flat well probably not flat you're probably going uphill and you just don't know it and that's okay just really maintain your power output and your cadence and you'll be fine in my opinion the biggest thing with when to shift is really following your instincts with what it feels like and anticipating shifts if you're riding in a group of people especially with more experienced riders it's a really good idea if you see some guy or girl shift it's much more experienced than you you should probably go ahead and shift to but it's also okay to ask them questions hey why did you shift right there don't be afraid to ask questions that's how we learn that's what this series is all about the last thing I want to touch on is how you learn now I've given you all these things in abstract you're watching a YouTube video for crying out loud how do you put these things into practice here's this simplest way it's to get yourself on your bike find a nice piece of road that's pretty rolling you know not something that's got super steep hills or super big down hills just something that's flat to rolling this is going to give you a nice even terrain where you can play around with things the second thing is to get into that either if you've got granny gears a triple up front or you've got a double up front get into the lower gear on a double or the middle gear and triple and really stay right on that gear up front and just shift around using your cassette that would be using the right-hand shifter shift around using that find what works work it into your body that you're like I know exactly what's happening I know wearing shifting I know what I'm supposed to do next I up shift here and down shift here I'm going uphill I need to make the gears easier getting into one single gear and just playing with the cassette is going to be what you're going to need to do because that cassette is what you're going to be playing with most of the time the big chain rings upfront those are for big changes it's like in a car again going from first gear to fifth gear you're going to stall out don't worry about it so you need to figure out exactly how you're going to manipulate that to best fit your body one little tip is that very roughly each shift up front equals roughly three shifts in the back so if you're going from the middle chain ring or the small chain ring to the big chain ring that's roughly the same as going three shifts down the cassette that would be outward toward the smaller cogs on the rear cassette this is something that kind of comes in handy if you're like well I wonder how I'm going to shift this Hill should be on the big chain ring a small chain ring where should I be that's going to be a good Primmer to kind of remember now the final few things we'll say about learning to shift properly is one relax it's not that big a deal you can always turn around and go downhill or find a flat if you need to the second thing is to keep that cadence up yes your cadence is probably going to be around 80 or so when you first start riding really try to get it up you can kind of get it up to around 100 and it's great it makes it much more efficient and much easier to ride the other thing is spend time on your bike yes you can do some of this stuff on a bike trainer but I promise you that it is not the same as being on a road you will not know how to shift the same way once you've got shifting in your body and you know it very well that's fine spend all the time on the trainers you want but when you're learning spend time outside Thank You mo so much for the question it's a really important one I think that a lot of people probably just don't know about thank you guys so much for joining us for this episode of ask yours if you've got any questions don't hesitate to email info at Vericom or leave it right down there in the comment section below as always you can find us on all our social media outlets which you can see right over here Facebook Twitter Instagram my personal Strama right at the top and as always don't forget to subscribe to this youtube channel which you can do so by clicking that youtube button right over there as always don't forget to visit furious calm where all reviews live you can check out everything we've ever done and let us know what you think we'd love to hear from you guys thank you guys so much we'll see you next time

Channel: GEARIST

Views: 475,479

Keywords: How to, Tips, Beginner, Beginners, Cycling, Biking, Road Bike, Mountain Biking, MTB, Triathon, Shimano, Dura Ace, Ultegra, Shifters, Derailleurs, Howto, Tutorial, Instructions, Fitness, Trainer, Ride, Outdoors, Hills, Downhill, Help, Tricks, Riding, Basics, Rookie, Bicycle, Shifting, Bike shifting, Instructional, bike gears, gears, shift, triathlon, beginner, bicycle gears, bicycle shifting

Id: LGWxxIoWQP8

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 06 2015