- Gears on a bike can seem really complicated.
I mean, in a car
you've probably only got six to worry about or,
you might drive an automatic, in which case you don't need
to worry at all.
But on a bike, you might have 18, 20,
22, maybe even 33 gears.
So what are you supposed to do with them all?
(smooth, upbeat jazz music)
Well the good news is, firstly, that you can forget
about the number of gears that you have.
It's not actually important.
There are gears on my bike that I literally never use.
What is crucial, though, is the range of gears
that you've got and being able to swap
from your easiest gear, right through to your hardest gear.
So,
instead of explaining about all the different gears,
what I'm gonna give you now
is some basic rules.
So, your left hand controls big jumps in the gears
by moving the chain from the little cog
to the big cog at the front,
which are also called your chain rings.
Whereas your right hand
moves the chain across the smaller cogs at the back
and that makes finer adjustments.
You'll probably find
that when you're riding fast, so above 18 miles an hour
or about 30 kilometres an hour, that you'll be in
your big chain ring at the front, and when you're riding
on the flat, and climbing,
you'll be in your little chain ring.
But, you'll probably also find
that your left hand generally doesn't do all that much.
Your right hand will be much busier.
How do you know, then, when you're in the right gear?
Well, it is actually very straightforward.
You'll be pedaling
at between 70 to 100 pedal revolutions per minute,
and you'll be putting in the effort that you want to put in.
So, not going too hard
in order to keep the gear turning over, but then
not pedaling really fast and not going anywhere, either.
So, it is quite straight forward.
There are, however, one or two mistakes that you will
need to avoid.
Firstly, you want to make sure
that, if possible, you change gear
before you really need to.
So, in advance of perhaps a hill that's coming up.
Because if you do leave it a bit late,
gears don't generally like changing under pressure.
So, if you have to change from your big chain ring
to your little chain ring when you're on a climb,
you may find it's actually quite hard to do so.
So,
plan in advance
and
try and ease off the gears slightly when you do change.
One final point to be aware of, and that, is as I said
at the beginning, there are certain gears
that I almost never use.
Firstly, because
they actually don't feel all that nice
to use, but they also
put the chain
under a little bit more pressure than it would normally be.
So if you find that you're in your big chain ring
and the big cog at the back, that's called cross chaining,
and it will, if you do it a lot,
wear the chain out a bit more quickly.
And then conversely, the small chain ring and the smallest
cog in the back would also do the same thing.
But then, that is literally it.
Gear shifting
made easy.
Now, if you want some more content like this on GCN,
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And then for more content, well set your gear shifting
up to another level, you could click up there for how to
change gear like a pro, or, for some tips on how to
actually set up your gears, click just down there.