Road Cycling Skills

How to: Use Your Gears When Cycling Uphill

Get in gear and enjoy the climbs

Keep it smooth

Image: Brian Townsley
Get into the right chainring early... Image Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious
Use the descent to gain as much momentum as possible. Rain: optional. (Image: Peter Trimming)
That applies to you, too! (Image: Tejvan Pettinger)
Women's pedal strokes not as powerful?
Image: Brian Townsley
Over a sprint your heart rate won't react in time to register the effort. Image: Coda2

Keep it smooth

Sometimes when you’re trying to get up a hill as quickly as possible, you find yourself floundering between the gears, clicking up and down in an attempt to find the ‘perfect’ gear.

You may even click up, trying to hold a higher gear, then find fatigue bites quickly, forcing you to change down.

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Excessive gear changing is best avoided. Every time you change, you lose power for a few seconds, and you also lose your rhythm and your mindset. On a sustained hill, it’s usually faster to choose a lower gear, and keep tapping away, than it is to try to force a gear you can’t maintain.