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	Mountain Bike Gears for Dummies

Mountain bikes look the best looking yet complex piece of engineering when it comes to bicycles. With many sprockets in the front and nearly thrice that number in the rear, it seems like rocket science to figure how to use all of these while riding, isn’t it?

Well, the good news is that it is not rocket science to figure mountain bike gears and even you and me can apply them while riding. Here’s how.

Mountain bikes these days have gears, the count of which goes up to a whooping 27 even. With 9 gears in the rear and 3 sprockets in the front, it may seem a little complex at the start but its not. To begin with, a bicycle with a single gear has a simple ratio of one complete rotation of the rear wheel with one complete rotation of the front sprocket. Assuming the rate of pedaling was constant and yet we wanted to increase or decrease the rate of rotation of the rear wheel per minute, what would be the solution? The answer is quite simple, we have to subsequently decrease or increase the ratio of the front sprocket rotation with that of the rear wheel.

For example, for every one rotation of the sprocket, if the rear wheel were to rotate more than once, the speed of the bike would increase, while if one rotation of the sprocket only rotated the rear wheel by half its circumference, the speed would also be halved.

The concept of gears is applied this ways. The advantage being that the rider can pedal at a constant rate and yet increase or decrease the speed, which is quite an essential requirement while going over steep and sloping terrains.

Until this point, concept of gears was pure mathematics applied, but what gives an edge to a rider over the other is the instinctive knowledge of applying the correct gear over the correct terrain. This is what differentiates the winners and is acquired only by sheer practice and hard work.

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