Should i shift while pedaling

The best way to get a hang of what your bike gears feel like is to take your bike to a safe place away from traffic, like an empty parking lot, and shift through all the gears in the front and rear to understand how they feel while riding. Cyclists spend most of their time shifting the rear gears to find their cadence sweet spot. Use a harder gear on flats or if the wind is blowing from behind a tailwind. When in doubt, shift before the terrain changes, especially on hills.

This will allow you to get the hang of it before you shift into harder gears. Once you feel more comfortable, you can start playing with different bike gears in different situations. You also want to avoid cross-chaining, where the chain is at an extreme slant either in the big ring up front and the biggest cog in back, or the small ring up front and the small cog in back. This not only stresses the hardware, but it also limits your options if you need to shift again.

Cross-chaining can also cause your chain to slide off the chainring, known as a dropped chain. This typically happens when shifting between the big and small ring in the front or when you shift under too much pressure. But, if shifting is necessary, the best thing to do is ease off the pace for a moment, cleanly shift gears, and then continue powering on. If you do drop your chain, the first thing to do is slowly and safely pull over and step off your bike.

Push the rear derailleur the mini wheel that hangs below the cogset toward the front wheel to give yourself some slack, grab your chain, and manually guide it back onto the chainring.

Fair warning: Your hands will get covered with grease when you touch your chain so you may want to keep a pair of medical gloves or a packet of hand wipes in your saddle bag for such instances. Sometimes, you can fix a dropped chain without getting off your bike.

Your right-hand shifter controls making the chain move from one cog to another. The relation of the size of the cog to the ease of pedaling is the opposite of what it is for chainrings; i. Thus, you'll shift the front chainrings much less often compared to the rear cogs.

When you're cruising along on flat or gently-rolling ground, you'll spend most of your time in the middle or largest chainring, while shifting the rear cogs as frequently as needed to account for small changes in the terrain.

If you come upon an uphill section of road or trail, you'll switch to the smallest chainring to get the very easy-to-pedal gear to help you spin up the hill. On three-chainring setups, when you're using the middle chainring, you can use the full range of cogs, from the largest to the smallest.

However, when you're in the smallest easiest chainring, you want to avoid shifting into the smallest hardest cog. Likewise, when you're in the largest hardest chainring, you want to avoid shifting into the smallest easiest cog.

These situations are called cross-chaining , and you want to avoid them for two reasons. First, your chain will likely rub on the front derailer. Second, the extreme angle of the chain will cause premature wear and tear on your chain and gears. While you are shifting gears, you must keep pedaling in order for the chain to move from one gear to the next.

When you're in a particular gear and pedaling, the chain is pulling on the teeth of that gear. But, for the split second that the chain is moving from one gear to another, the chain is pulling on nothing , or, you might say, it's just pullin on air. So, you don't want to be pedaling with full force while you're shifting, especially if you're pedaling uphill.

It may sound difficult or counter-intuitive at first, but you have to ease up on pedaling ever so slightly while you shift, while still keeping a nice, smooth pedal stroke. With a little practice, it will become second nature. This will help keep your chain from "slipping" while you shift, and from falling completely off your gears. You should continue pedaling but ease up on the force. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes.

Use the Clutch! Improve this answer. ShemSeger ShemSeger 1, 1 1 gold badge 11 11 silver badges 18 18 bronze badges. I'm not sure the "use the clutch" part will do anything but confuse people; its not like theres a clutch lever on a bicycle, like there is on a motorcycle.

Batman Not everyone has ridden a motorcycle, but lots of people have experienced grinding the gears trying to drive standard.

I'm referencing cars with this expression, not motorcycles. ShemSeger I found it confusing as well. Mt first association was a rear derailleur with clutch that keeps the returning chain taut. With ESL users and users who may not drive a car such metaphors easily get lost. It is normal to reduce pedaling force when shifting. Sander Heinsalu Sander Heinsalu 4 4 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges.

Whereas the rear shifts even under load with the new generation of cassettes it is best to ease the pressure on the pedals when shifting at the front. Community Bot 1. Steyn W. It should be noted that many 3x fronts have a facility to allow "fine tuning" the derailer mainly when on the middle sprocket by making partial clicks with the shifter.

To change gears using derailleurs, you should continue pedaling. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name.