How To Use Road Bike Shifters | Change Gear On Your Road Bike

if you just bought a road bike you could be forgiven for wondering where on Earth your gear shifters are now until about 1990 they were pretty obvious they were located here on the down tube and they were enormous levers but then then they became seamlessly integrated into your brakes so in this video we are going to go right back to basics and explain how you actually use them broadly speaking there are three main manufacturers of gears and with only one exception across all the models your left gear shifter here controls the gears at the front so the big jumps between your chain Rings whereas the gear shifter and your right hand controls the smaller jumps at the cassette at the back swam gears are different once again and that's because they only have one shift lever on each side and they can do that because they invented something called double tap so to click into a smaller sprocket or a smaller chain ring you push the lever until it clicks however if you want to change into a bigger chain ring or a bigger sprocket you push the lever through the click and then keep going until it clicks again which will do the opposite of the single click and you also on the right hand shifter have the ability to multi-shift at the back simply by keeping on pushing until you change three gears this is the Shimano STI STI standing for Shimano total integration as opposed to any kind of transmitted infection now with most SD Shimano ones anyway the whole brake lever will move in in order to shift a gear and then inside it there's another lever that will shift the gears in the opposite directions so with the big lever you'll be changing into a larger sprocket or a larger chain ring depending on whether you're using your right hand shifter or your left hand shifter then the smaller lever changes into smaller sprockets and smaller chain ring however there is a slight complication and that is that moving into smaller chain rings at the front makes the gears easier but yet moving into smaller rings at the back makes gears harder I know I'm sorry about that so small rings at the front means easier gears small rings at the back means harder gears now to try and simplify things a little bit if you were imagining that you were coming up to a big hill if you click down with the small lever with your left hand you will be moving into an easy gear at the front and then you move the whole shifter across with your right hand you'll be moving into an easy gear at the back however if you then come to a large downhill and you start pedaling too fast you want to do the opposite so you move the whole shifter across with your left hand and then click down with the small lever on your right hand now there are two exceptions with Shimano gears the firstly is for di2 which is more expensive and we'll gloss straight over but the second is with a less expensive levers you will find that to shift into a smaller sprocket or smaller chain ring there is a lever located on the inside of the shifter here where you rest your hands which is much like the campanello shifters which funly enough we'll move on to next campolo are an Italian brand and their lever are called Ergo power unlike Shimano the brake lever itself does not move although they still have the lever on the inside that now does the opposite so you press that lever and you will move into bigger sprockets and bigger chain rings and then to shift into smaller ones they have that lever located on the inside of the shifter there that you operate with your thumb so smaller gears bigger Rings smaller Rings bigger Rings now like Shimano you have the ability to multi-shift up so that lever has several clicks on it but unlike Shimano you have the ability to multi-shift down into smaller Rings like so with all the systems that we talked about here today you are actually able to simultaneously shift both your front chain rings and your rear sprockets at the same time but you will find that most your gear changing will be done using the rear sprocket so your right hand making those small incremental changes but there is one thing that you should look out for and that's called cross chaining which is where you use extreme gear ratios so for example the biggest sprocket at the back and the biggest chain ring at the front or the smallest bracket and the smallest chain ring and you should avoid it for two reasons firstly it's mechanically less efficient so it's detrimental to you but then also it can actually prematurely wear your gears so then I guess it's detrimental ultimately to your wallet so in order to watch out for it you'll find that as you are in the Big Chain ring and you start to move up the gears at the back when you get towards the top of the cassette you want to shift into that smaller chain ring and then vice versa when you're in the small cogs and the small chain ring make sure you remember to shift into your big chain ring now if you want to know a little bit more in depth about how you should use your gears like a pro in fact or a w Old Pro in this case then you can watch a video on exactly that subject just up there or to see how to index your gears so effectively make them work properly then click just down there for that maintenance video otherwise make sure you subscribe to gcn before leaving this one to do that just click on the globe

Channel: Global Cycling Network

Views: 1,638,114

Keywords: GCN, Global Cycling Network, Sports, Cycling, Bike, Road Bike, Cyclist, GCN Cycling, Cycling Tips, Bikes, Bicycle (Product Category), cycling workout, cycling training, velo, bicicletas, bici ciclismo, velo route, fahrrad, fiets, s16, sec-maint-mon, plc101, sca15, sreyn15, gc11sas, gc24s, gc21s, c1, shifting, how to shift, change gear, how to use bike gears, sti, shift lever, shifter, gears, shimano, sram, campagnolo, double tap, mechanical shifter

Id: EY7yNx3Gj_Q

Length: 5min 10sec (310 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2016