Picture 2 guys riding slowly along while 1 coaches the other hoping to unload his crummy, former ride!

I can't remember, is the 506th part of the 82nd?
Bounced around a bit in the past 70-odd years, but most often associated with the 101st ABN DIV. Was an air-assault outfit in my time, but always had one battalion on jump status.
Not so much nowadays, sadly.

Top, my son-in-law, now a retired Colonel, was once the weather officer of the 101st. At least back then, Air Force did weather for the Army. Don

Skill level doesn't solve the issue, though. Even the best usually need to brace their butt against their saddle to shift, which is disruptive to your stride. Obviously you can just shift less, but this is disruptive to your stride as well.

It can be a tangible issue if someone attacks on something whacky like this:



Why embarrassed? In my experience, people are usually more impressed than anything else.

Still no answer so I think that website is dead and the owner not responding.

I'm unfamiliar with any need to brace against the saddle while shifting. I'd be more inclined to say that it was a common behavior in those learning how to reach to the down tube levers than in all but the best.
Or perhaps it is related to core body strength?

Steve in Peoria

When I say "brace", I don't mean clamping the saddle, I mean to make some amount of contact with the saddle.

I'm impressed that we got to 80 posts on what is quite possibly the single most simple thing to do in bikes.

my mistake.... I missed the inferred reference to post #44 where you discussed shifting while standing.....
"Integration makes it much easier to shift out of the saddle, which can be handy in spirited riding. It allows you to more cleanly maintain a good stride during standing sprinting moments, and it's nice when hammering up short hills with lots of grade variation."

I have to admit that I don't shift with DT levers while standing. Maintaining any sort of power while standing with only one hand on the bars seems like it would be difficult. I've heard friends comment that this was why bar-end shifters were invented... but I think they were just joking around.

Steve in Peoria

I'm only embarrassed if people actually compliment me on doing something so basic, which has happened.

RE shifting out of the saddle - Simply put, we didn't do that. I was taught not to. Shifts were anticipated. That was kind of the key. Got to be second nature quickly. If attacking, generally you just got up and went, wound it up, and then sat back down and shifted if needed.

It actually kind of scares me when I see people stand up for a small hill, and then change gears while standing on the pedals. KLUNK! Yeah, you can get away with it now, but that's got to be hard on your chain.

I get your point that shifting while out of the saddle could be advantageous in certain situations. OTOH, I find when riding with people with brifters that oftentimes they'll lose a few meters shifting for a minor little rise are gradient change. Simply staying in the same gear and stomping for short sections can sometimes be useful too. One example would be cutting across the apex of a switchback.

As I mentioned earlier, the only place on a fast group ride where I'd missed brifters is on fast and winding country roads, with a general downhill tendency but lots of grade changes. If you need to keep both hands on the bars to deal with ruts and turns and potholes, you do miss some shifts.

Chains are cheap. Even a decent 11-speed chain can be had for about $20-$30, and they can last many thousands of miles.

Rear shifts usually aren't all that bad anyway. The bottom half of the drivetrain is where they occur, and that isn't directly tensioned by drive forces. And modern hyperglide cogs allow the chain to flow pretty gracefully to the teeth on the next cog without fully lifting from the previous cog, so the drive tension stays better-isolated to the top part of the drivetrain than it used to.

And of course there's a lot of subconscious technique to it. Just like people unthinkingly reduce pedal force for a brief instant while shifting from the saddle, they subtly do the same out of the saddle.

Brifters provide some extra capabilities, but you can still use them poorly.

I'm somewhat unclear as to how choosing to shift for a small gradient change would cause someone to fall several meters back in and of itself, though. If it was a very badly-executed shift or if their legs didn't respond correctly to the gear change, sure.

So yesterday I'm in a little pickup group. Three riders came by going 1mph faster than me and asked me in. Not used to seeing that sort of sociability amongst new riders. And they were riding clean so I got on. We did about 6 miles together. It was dead flat, all with a small tailwind square behind us. At the end of the section they told me (no computer on my bike, not realistic at all on a 1960 bike) it had been mostly 24-28mph. They all had latest and greatest derailleurs. Those things are fast and precise. Two of them were making these sharp clicks when they shifted and the other one sounded like a small caliber pistol. It was resonating a lot on the deep dish carbon rim. In six miles I would guess each of them shifted 50 to 100 times. If you need to do that sure it helps to have a derailleur that shifts in one thousandth of a second. I didn't touch my shift lever once. No need.

Rolling hills the superfast new derailleurs could be useful. Also helps to have the ability to push and the ability to spin. Legs that can do more than one thing. Legs not tech.

He! Good legs (and lungs) make up for fancy-schmancy-click derailleurs. If you don't need to shift it doesn't matter how fast it shifts. Duh...

My experience with rolling hills (and that's sort of what much if New England is like) is that the terrain may suggest a shift but doing so just means a shift the other direction in another 10 seconds. Or a shift of two sprockets instead of just one. If the legs can tolerate the brief "non-optimal" gears, then why bother to shift? Just pedal!

Why not both?
The self imposed handicap of riding a thoroughly obsolete FG certainly does maintain the technique and attitude to produce both grunt and spin on demand as it did "back when", and is still useful to me.
With several generations of my old race bikes to ride the choice is the modern-ish CF Merckx for when the pace is high, the company a generation or so younger and the terrain challenging.
I don't pretend that my obsolete hardware is still competitive or that there is some intrinsic virtue of competence in operating old designs.
I enjoy riding the old machines because the were well selected/fitted when new and are still useful today without pretending it's still 1974, '77 or '92.

-Bandera

Umm. I don't have anything so recent as 1974. Well, my shoes might be 1974. Service parts and tires are new. Although I have this one set of brake pads from the 1950s that work very well.

It's not pretending. It's full blown obsession, delusion, hallucination. It's classic and vintage.