How to use the gearing correctly

mills2510

Hi,
So I am newish to road bikes and have been upping my mileage in the last few weeks.
I have a Whyte Dorset- It has Tiagra components of which is a 34-50 chain ring and a cassette of 11-32.

I find I spend the time going up and down gears- I find one gear easy for a while so i go down before finding that one hard. Is it a case of just getting cycling legs? I have watched a GCN video which confused me more stating you should be in the bottom gear for flat and climbing? does he mean the smaller one?

I do a lot of running so my cardio fitness is quite high.
Any help about how to use them would be appreciated.

cooldad

You go up to a higher gear, and down to a lower gear, just like in a car.

'Bottom' gear would be the lowest gear, so you might get into it on a steep hill, but not on a flat.

The idea is to stay within your ideal cadence, which will depend on the individual, and shift accordingly.

slowbike

you select a gear that gets your cadence into a comfortable range. For me that's 80-90rpm - although I can push along in the 70s and for hills it can drop down to 60's or lower depending on gradient.

With a 32->11 cassette - 10 or 11 speed - the range is quite wide, so the gaps between cogs is bigger - like going from 2nd to 4th gear in the car. If you don't use the 32 cog then you could get a narrower range cassette - ie 30-12 or 27-12 - or other variants - which will reduce the gaps between the cogs.
This is what I did for my "Do it All" bike when I used it for commuting - the 32-11 was way to big and I couldn't find a comfortable cadence - so swapped the (9 speed) cassette to a 23-11 - giving me a much closer gap. I then swapped the bigger cassette on (actually - just swapped wheels) when I wanted it for anything other than road riding.

lettingthedaysgoby

mills2510 wrote:

Hi,
So I am newish to road bikes and have been upping my mileage in the last few weeks.
I have a Whyte Dorset- It has Tiagra components of which is a 34-50 chain ring and a cassette of 11-32.

I find I spend the time going up and down gears- I find one gear easy for a while so i go down before finding that one hard. Is it a case of just getting cycling legs? I have watched a GCN video which confused me more stating you should be in the bottom gear for flat and climbing? does he mean the smaller one?

I do a lot of running so my cardio fitness is quite high.
Any help about how to use them would be appreciated.

Don't worry about the specific gear you're in, concentrate on how it is to be in that gear.

Have your legs spinning around 80rpm. Anytime it's getting to hard to keep that up change to a bigger cog on the back. If you're spinning too fast change to a smaller one.

If you get to a bigger change in gradient then use the front chainrings - this is the other way round to the back - a larger ring makes it harder to pedal (but you'll go faster).

Like pretty much everything in cycling it's a lot easier to do than explain - just get out there and play around with them, it'll soon make sense.

singleton

Just think of bike gearing like car gearing.
You don't come to a hill in the car and put it straight into first gear. You usually drop down the gears until you find the one that's comfortable for the engine and speed that you want to travel - same for a bike except the engine in this case is you and your legs.

Most beginners pedal too slowly - low cadence, like low revs with a car engine. Probably a bit like running technique, the advice is to not to overstride but to increase leg speed with a smaller stride - on a bike you will find it better to get used to turning your legs faster in a lower gear than grinding them slowly in a higher gear.