It's the other way around... I rode an X-9 equipped bike today and one stroke of the thumb shifter moves the derailleur through its entire motion. You can basically shift from 9 to 1 in one sweep of the thumb lever. With my Deore components, it's about 3 strokes to move the entire sweep. The only thing I thought was odd was the placement of the lever to go from larger cog to smaller. It's actually a press UPWARDS directly in front of the other lever. It would take some getting used to, but it was incredibly smooth shifting. I was pretty impressed.