Gear Shifting Basics - Flat Bar shifters

hi this is dev with bicycles east and today we're going to talk about shifting the gears on your bicycle i'm going to be going over the basics as well as talking about some of the things that sometimes go wrong so we can work to avoid them so the gears on your bicycle are what help you to decide how to go faster how to go up hills easier or how to have your legs speed spin at a comfortable pace so a lot of the bikes that we're talking about will have sprockets both in the front and in the rear and this means that you're going to have gears that you can shift both with your right hand and gears that you can shift with your left hand now a simple way to think about it that i remember is that everything on the bike works right rear our r your rear brake connect your rear hand controls your rear brake your left hand controls your front brake and the same way your rear shifters control the sprockets in the back and your left shifters control the sprockets in the front a lot of the bicycles that we'll be talking about will have three sprockets in the front and anywhere from 6 to 10 or 11 in the back some of them will have fewer and we'll talk about that later so first we'll talk about the main way to function the shifters now there are a lot of shifters where you're using your thumbs and your fingers to work them and the key thing to know is that you should always be pedaling when you shift there's a few bikes that are different but 99 percent of bikes you should be pedaling when you shift now this type of shifter one of the most common you push in with your thumb to go to a lower gear on the right hand and you come back with your index finger it's like a toggle you're pushing with your thumb you're coming back with your index finger now there are some variations on this and you may have one where you work with your thumb in one direction and then there's another thumb shifter right underneath that you push some of them have the index finger lower there's various variations of them but the key is that of some type of toggle one way to go down one way to go back up so on all bikes the fundamentals of gears are the same the lower the number the lower the gear lower numbers are easier to pedal you'll be using them going up hills higher gears give you more resistance but you can go faster so when you're pedaling and you get that feeling your legs are going your legs are going they're kind of going faster than your body you go into a higher gear that will slow your legs down now you're going to have anywhere from six to twelve gears in the back depending on the type of bicycle the concepts are the same except that it works backwards so when you push with your thumb you'll be going to a higher gear when you come back with your index finger you'll be going to a lower gear again similar to the right side you may have two thumb shifters next to each other some variation of this and i know that some of you may have twist shifters where you turn your hand to move the gears we'll talk about those a little bit later but the concepts are the same now you're going to have if you have left shifters you'll have either two or three gears in the front to choose from and the concepts are the same the higher the number the higher the gear the faster you can go the more resistance you have the lower the number the lower the gear the easier it is to pedal so the function of this gear is a little bit different and there's a key thing that i want you to be aware of again you definitely need to be pedaling and it's even more important which i'll explain the reason why later that you're pedaling when you are shifting in the front now when you are going to a bigger gear and you push in with your thumb the key thing to be aware of is that you need to push further than you may feel like you need to it is a further reach to get the gear to engage if the gear doesn't engage i'll show you what that sounds like so i'm going to come back down simple toggle down to go back up you hear that sound that means i have an engage i need to go a little bit further maybe even past the number three before i let go and the gear has engaged so we'll show you that again we'll go back to two a little bit past now the gear has engaged now let's talk about the combinations of gears in this particular bike there are three sprockets in the front and seven sprockets in the back and that's a 21 speed bike the key is that you really don't have 21 good gear combinations to be in so the way to think about it is that you really have seven choices in the back so we talked about the low numbers being easier so the easiest gear to be in for the steepest hill is going to be the one sprocket in the front and the one sprocket in the back and for those who might be interested we're always counting if you look at the bikes themselves we're counting from the inside out one is always closest to the bike so the two lowest numbers one and one are going to be your easiest gear combination your fastest gear combination is going to be three and seven on this particular bike so why don't you have 21 good combinations well first of all that would get tremendously complicated and hard to figure out which gear to be in but the main reason is the function of the bike if we think about the single speed bikes that we grew up with or even when we just started with one gear one sprocket in the front and we started with one sprocket in the front and six or seven in the back it was pretty simple to know which gear to be in what has happened by adding chain rings is we've simply expanded the range of the gear how easy it can be how fast it can be the main thing about the function of these gear combinations is the chain likes to be relatively straight that's just a simple mechanical concept that the chain likes to be straight so when you if you have three chain rings and you're in the middle in the front you're in two you can move around in the back pretty easily everything will go smoothly now the simplest way to remember this is low numbers like to go together and high numbers like to go together so when you're in the low gear in the front when you're in one your bike is going to be to work best when you're in one through four in the back when you're in three in the front your bike is going to work best when you're in the higher numbers four through seven the reason for this again is that the chain likes to be straight we want to avoid what we call cross-training cross-chaining is that sort of annoying noise that you get when the chain is at a steep angle nothing terrible will happen it's just the bike telling you to change one of your gears so you even that chain out so again just to recap that low numbers like to go together high numbers like to go together and you all avoid that annoying cross-chaining sound now this is where less becomes more because a lot of bikes now are coming with two chain rings instead of three and even just one meaning two sprockets or one sprocket in the front instead of three and what that is doing is eliminating some of the chain issues but still giving you a big range of gears the other annoying problem that can happen with shifting gears is the chain can can fall off and well over 90 percent of the time that happens for the same reason and we can just simply prevent that so when we are pedaling we're going up or down hills we can move around in the back on our right hand side as much as we want we have to be a little bit more careful on the left hand side when we're going up a hill and we change from a harder gear a higher number to a lower number we need to have good momentum while we're doing that we need to be pedaling fairly quickly if we're going up a hill and we walk in here and it's getting harder and harder and harder we forgot to anticipate the hill and we're starting to move really really slowly and then we shift down to one in the front the chain will probably fall off we just don't have enough momentum to keep that chain moving properly so the key is that we should be either anticipating the hill and moving into our easiest gear our lowest gear in the front before we start to go up that hill or make sure that we change that gear before our legs are so tired that they're barely moving the final thing i'd like to say about gear shifting is address if you have a twist shifter everything works the same you turn one way to go into an easier gear you turn the other way to go into a harder gear and the same on the front all of the same rules apply when you're going into the harder gear in the front you have to turn it even further and make sure that you hear it and feel it engage everything is exactly the same so i hope this has helped you to understand gear shifting if you have any questions you can contact us at bicycles east or you can leave a comment and we'll do our best to answer that question for you so happy writing everybody and happy gear shifting thank you for watching this is deb at bicycles east

Channel: Bicycles East

Views: 104,069

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Id: BSP0eT2RzVM

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020