Originally Posted by
3speed
OK, so you can shift down 3 more difficult gears at a time, but only up to one easier gear at a time? Like if all of the sudden I'm heading for a Really steep climb, I need to start clicking like crazy to get into my easy climbing gear? But if I'm about to head down that hill, I just need to do 3 multi-gear clicks and I'm in my most difficult gear, ready to bomb down a steep hill? That makes no sense to me, so hopefully I have this backwards...
Terminology seems to be getting confused.
"Down shifting" always means to a lower/easier/slower gear. "Up shifting" always refers to a higher/harder/faster gear. Just like a car.
People sometimes get confused when they look at the cassette and think that "down shifting" means shifting down the cassette to the smaller/more difficult sprockets, and upshifting refers to shifting upward on the cassette to the larger/easier sprockets.
Always think in the same terms of the terminology for car shifting and forget about the physical appearance of the cassette.