How to Shift Gears on a Mountain Bike

Video Transcript

"Mountain bikes these days have a lot of gears it really helps you cover a lot of distance you know go real fast down hill and get up a real big steep hill. But with so many gears come confusion and sometime with so many options so I'm going to try to talk about how your shifters work and then a little later we'll talk about why you need to shift. This is probably the most common shift you seen now which is called the trigger shifter you have paddles that change the gears. So the bigger paddle usually adds tension to the shift cable which runs down here. So your right side is your rear shifter your left side is your front shifter and that usually easy to remember because that's the way people usually set up there brakes, with there back brake to the right, the front brake to the left. So if I push the big silver paddle on this trigger shifter if increases tension down there and you see when I pick up the bike and shift, it changes gears, so when I hit the black lever here the small lever that releases tension I hit it 2 times so it moves down 2 gears, pretty simple. Front shifters same sort of thing except they usually don't have as quit as many positions. This bicycle here has 2 chain rings up front most mountain bikes have 3, 2 is becoming more popular but so I want to get a harder gear, bigger gear up front. So I push this big lever and eventually it's going to shift up. The other type of shifters that we still see pretty commonly today are twist shifters, so there sort of a motorcycle throttle. So if I take this, this is my right shifter, my rear shifter, this is my front shifter, to shift this I twist it backwards to get an easier gear, twist it forward to get a harder gear, and when I rotate the front shifter backwards pulls on the chain, moving the dueler up and out into a harder gear. Shifting can be confusing because you know do I put the bike in a harder gear, do I put the bike in a easier gear and what shifter does what. The thing to remember is here on the back of your bike the smaller the cog is the less number of teeth, the more distance per revolution of the cranks you get the harder your gear as you move up it gets easier. On the front is the exact opposite just the way this pulley system works basically the bigger chain ring here is for going faster, the smaller chain ring is for going slower. So that's the basics of what goes on when your shifting a mountain bike."