How to Use Your Gears: which lever changes which bike gear?

Which shifter does what, then?

Left-hand shifter/lever: controls the front derailleur, which guides the chain over the chainrings near your pedals – providing large jumps in gears. On the front, the bigger the chainring, the more resistance you get. 

Right-hand shifter/lever: controls the rear derailleur, which guides your chain over the back cogs – where you fine-tune your gearing. On the back, the bigger the cassette cog, the less resistance you get.

The best way to get to grips with this is to experiment, ideally somewhere quiet rather than out on the busy roads.

Tips for Your First Road Ride with Chris Boardman

Beginner Road Cyclist 101: TWC Catalogue of Advice to get you Started

Middle Gear

This is a great gear for everyday terrain when you’re cruising along on a flat road or on undulating terrain. You want some resistance, but not too much. If the road goes up and down a bit, you’ll probably flick between the rear gears to cater for changes.

Front gear = Small chainring on double/compact or middle chainring on a triple

Back gear = The middle sprockets (e.g. 3­-6)

High Gear

This one is great for descending, accelerating, or for use when you want to go nice and fast on a flat road. In a high gear, you travel a long way for each turn of the pedal.

Front gear = Big chainring

Back gear = Smallest sprockets (e.g. 4-7)

Chain Crossing – small chainring

This is another example of chain crossing – at the other extreme. The chain is in the small chainring (least resistance) and smallest cassette cog (most resistance).

The also may cause your chain to slip, not shift properly, and will stretch and damage the bike chain over time.

Front gear = smallest chainring
Back gear = smallest sprocket

Here, the rider should shift into a larger chainring and use the gears around the middle of the cassette.

Cadence and efficiency when changing gear on a bike

Thinking about your cadence, the rate at which you are pedalling at, can help you to answer the question – ‘am I in the right gear?’ Try experimenting with different gears on climbs, descents and even on the flat, as it will help your cycling efficiency.

Using a high gear that causes your muscles to scream means you use ‘fast twitch muscle fibres’. These will get you where you want to go quickly, but consume more glycogen and cause fatigue. They’re great for short, sharp efforts. Using a low gear using ‘slow twitch muscle fibres’. These are best used for endurance and if you stick to this low gear, high cadence approach you’ll be able to ride for longer. So put simply: if you want a short fast ride that will make you fatigued quickly but increase your ‘power’, use higher gears. If you’re out all day, be conservative and twiddle lower gears.

For each ride, imagine you have £10 (a limited amount of energy) in your pocket to “spend”. Each time you have to make a hard effort or are pushing really hard on the pedals think to yourself: “Am I spending my money wisely?”

Top tips for finding the right gear when cycling

A good way to understand your cadence and get the right gear on your bike is to find a nice quiet bit of road and practice riding at different cadences. For one revolution you count one foot doing a full revolution. It is best to count this at the bottom of the pedal stroke.

On flat or rolling terrain on your own or in a group, you should be looking to have a cadence of between 80-90 revolutions of the pedal per minute.

It’s also worth experimenting with different cadences and work out what feels most natural to you. The same goes for climbs; generally, the optimum cadence is between 60-80 revolutions per minute. Again, find a quiet hill and ride up it at different cadences and see which one got you up the hill for the least amount of energy spent (remember that £10 note). You can then try climbs of the different gradient, but always look for that optimum cadence and decide what gear is going to get you to that cadence.

You might also like… 

Tips for Your First Road Ride with Chris Boardman

Beginner Road Cyclist 101: TWC Catalogue of Advice to get you Started

How to Corner On a Road Bike