Originally Posted by blickblocks
I'm kind of confused by what you're saying Sheldon.
As I've understood it, since you're geared too high when starting from a standstill, the force of your pedalling is more than it should, so your chain is pulling harder. When you can spin on a geared bike instead of mash, you're trading an amount of force for an amount of chain pull. The chain isn't pulling as hard since it's moving faster.
Is this correct?
In practice:
A smaller chainring will ALLOW the rider to put more force on the chain.
A smaller cog will REQUIRE the rider to put more force on the chain in order to put the same torque on the rear wheel.