How Do Road Bikes Shift Gears

How and when to use your gears.

How do road bikes shift gears. Left hand shifter controls front shifting. Riding a road bike is one of the best ways to exercise to keep fit. Use your left hand to shift the front gears. Shifting explained for beginners if you haven t a clue how many gears your bike has how many you actually need or even how to use them properly don t worry you re not alone.

When the chain is closer to the bike front or rear you re in your easier gears. Learning how to shift may seem basic but gearing practice and shifting efficiently is something that even veteran riders can work on. Along with your brakes shifting your gears is one of the fundamental mechanical functions of your bike. You roll out of your garage and start pedaling and find the going too.

How to shift gears on a bike shifting 101. When you use the left hand controls a metal loop called a derailleur de railer shifts the chain from side to side to make it catch on a new front gear. Push the shift lever behind the brake lever inboard sweeping left to right to shift up into a larger chainring a larger harder gear. The best way to get a hang of what your 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.

Push down on the. Bikes with gears almost always have hand controls on the handlebars to use for shifting. Road bikes aren t usually shifted that way. One way to remember where you are in the gears.

You then shift whenever you feel like the gear isn t quite right making it easier or harder to pedal depending on what feels right to your legs and lungs. Instead you start riding and pay attention to your pedaling effort how easy or hard it is to ride down the road you re on. One of the most critical things every biker should know is how to shift gears. A shifting example so a short ride might go something like this.

As the chain shifts away from the bike to the right the gears get harder. You probably spend countless hours in the saddle speeding just to stay fit but there are things you need to be very familiar with when riding a road bike the bike comes in different styles colors and even the gears are of various types. The gear changing mechanism on a bicycle has changed quite a bit over the past 30 years or so but these days all of your shifting is typically done from the same levers that control your braking.