Originally Posted by
shawmutt
I saw that site, and I understand the basics of shifting, but he doesn't really say anything about how to shift. I read in one place that the shifting should all be in the front, with the fine tuning reserved for the rears...
No. Ideally, you should be shifting the
rear more frequently. The rear shifts much faster and those shifts are less problematic than front shifts.
The steps between gears is larger in the front than the rear.
There is also some overlap.
The basic idea is to pick a gear that will allow you to maintain a particular cadence (within a reasonable range).
For example, if your preferred cadence is around 80 RPM, shift down (easier) when your cadence goes below 70 and shift up (harder) when your cadence gets above 90. (You should be using a cadence greater than about 60 RPM. As you cycle more and work on your cadence, your preferred cadence will likely get faster.)
When you are going up hill, you have to shift earlier because you lose momentum quickly. Thus, one strategy for long hills is to shift the front down and the rear up before the hill so that you can just downshift the rear as the hill gets harder.
You want to get into the habit of reducing the force on the pedals while shifting.