Musings on Geared Riding - inspired to get back to writing here due to reading @hillin post 
This post is to allow me to share the realisations Iāve had that both speak directly to the process of shifting up, but also more generally on the art of this weird experience - riding a uni in high gear.
Iām by no means a great geared rider, but Iāve had lots of stuff whirling around my head about it and how it both makes me feel, and how I tackle areas I find either challenging or am fearful of.
I tend to use metaphor or simile or just plain odd ways to describe what Iāve experienced and that āeureka momentā, so please bear with
1ā Itās all forward!!!
What do I mean by this? Moving forward on a unicycle is pretty essential as speed is your friend. Iāve recently realised (or my brain has finally transferred this realisation to my body, and disengaged its over-control) that focusing forward is even more important on a geared wheel.
I had a bad experience shifting when I was too behind the wheel and the free play of the shift led me to fall backward flat on my back. Not fun.
You want to fall forwards. Always!
2ā Itās muscular
When it gets asked if a G26 is like a 39ā wheel or rides like one - or if it is harder or easier etc etc, I personally kind of shrug and mental type back my reply: āItās just differentā.
Geared riding for me feels like a whole new animal in the Kingdom of The One Wheel. Is so different that Iād be inclined to say it isnāt anything like normal fixed unicycling, and the ride is much more like on a bike*!
(*in some ways, not the balancing bitā thatās like unicycling 
)
So the way the trippy, buzzy, feeling of riding a geared up unicycle strikes me most is: itās muscular.
This means, it is initially more of a physical work out, and your legs do feel they are doing more to get the results you get. Am I riding a virtual 39ā wheel? Possibly, I canāt tell - but I am riding a more muscular 26er, YES! It has more grunt, more weight, more heft, more leverage, more MOREā¦
But speed to my mind comes way down the list of what the system can offer. (Admittedly Iām a scaredy-cat, and enjoy the continued integral nature of my skeletal structureā but I donāt think you automatically just go faster in high gear)
So youāre landed with a new unicycling species - itās more gorilla 
than rocket 
I think this chunk of text completed grunt point 
ā¦ But whatās with the weight aspect, Felix?
It may be stating the obvious, but any wheel geared up will āfeelā more weighty. I guess this is coming from the increase in the torque - cranks to tyre, and the fact that moving said crank from from 12 oāclock to 1, shifts tyre-rubber over dirt by double the distance.
I hear the words: āvirtual 39erā forming on someoneās lips somewhere. Yes. I guess this is why weāve come to coin the comparison via the extrapolated 1:1.5 wheel ratio. G34>>36er, G36>54ā etc., etcā¦.
But the wiring in your brain is being altered when riding an actual 26ā wheel, in its high gear mode. I donāt believe it feels the same as if I just hopped on an actual 39ā wheel. So we come back to my feeling the wheel is a weighty 26er in high 
More heft and more LEVERAGE comes next, as a way to sum up the feelings I have too I feel.
With weight, you also get more heft or power if you like. Press down hard enough to go over X size root and you will quickly realise you donāt need to press as hard. At least I think thatās the case logically. The brainās rewiring happens by itself and Iām no electricianā¦ but the sense is that you get more for your input to the pedal rotation. Thatās not to say with less energy expended though.
So heft being power, what does that really get you in the unicycling space? Power via gearing on a bike is all about speed in high, upwards gearing ā but on a geared unicycle itās also leverage.
I think the easiest thing to forget when first getting acquainted with high gear riding for me, was that it works forwards and backwards.
I could feel the forwards sensation and the increase in the rotational torque I had under my toes, but it took me a while to realise this was on tap in equal measure on rear pedal pressure, or in effect ābrakingā.
I still forget this from time to time, even today! The gearing is fixed in high so youāre able to control the wheel forward and backwards in the same āheft spaceā, if you follow my mental picture 
I think it is this control, that is makes the whole experience of riding a geared so trippy and almost magically unreal. If you ride bikes you know the feeling of a high gear and its cadence, but itās not quite the same feeling on a uni in 1:1.5.
You need leverage for the process of riding (unless you freewheel) so having it under your front and rear foot does make you feel like youāre atop a larger wheel. Itās darn cool 
The above point leads me nicely onto:
3ā Misconceptions
āāA) I recently realised that shifting up into high gear wasnāt going to make me suddenly go faster.
Iād always just tense up at the idea of pressing the button and not in any sense looking forward to the experience of the shift. It was to me like I was about to press Turbo or the Ejector-seat switch - and my brain was solely focused on the shift being likely unpleasant.
This was a misconception, as Iāve realised that shifting up isnāt about increasing your speed, but slowing your pedals cadence. At the point of having just shifted, they - the pedals, feel stiffer, slower - and I now see that you have to trust your body: it wonāt be pressing down on them at double the pressure instantly after shifting.
Just like on a bike, if you shift up into a high gear too early, things become slower regarding your pedalling and you may need to stand up and work harder to match the bikeās gearing size, with more speed.
Another way of looking at this - when unicycling up a hill, falling off suddenly doesnāt really happen, itās more that the wheel gets too slow or hard to turn and you stall. So Iāve started to focus on trusting it and mentally picturing that Iām shifting /across/ not /up/ - across to a different Rotational World Order.
āāB) I had always felt when I first started riding in high gear that I should: āhold it all togetherā and cling on in there. This tense Felix was going no where fast. It was exhausting!
I was in fact making myself sit too much behind the wheel. On a fixed unicycle the principal of being always in a state of falling forwards can (after practice) feel like an acceptable thing and when you get good you want to have a body position thatās more forward, over your wheel ā on a wheel in high gear I found this much, much more scary.
But you donāt need to be scared (Iāve discovered). Itās again back to the leverage the high gear gives you. It may seem like youāre reaching into the abyss by trying to fall further forward, but youāre helping ensure you put direction into those pedals, and as you do, the high gearing brings things back into line as with a fixed wheel, it just does more of it: so you need more of that falling forwards too!
āāC) Needing to anticipate moreā¦
It dawned on me yesterday, after Iād taken a big dive forwards when my high gear control had been lost āthat I was over-reading the road.
All of the stuff Iāve said so far for A - re shifting not being an instant turbo boost is true at that stage, the shift - but I think it is very easy when settling into high gear to at times over-compensate for the road. You can think you need X when you need Y - and this can lead you to get into uncontrollable speed.
Ride the hill, when youāre on the hill -
I was looking ahead far down the path, and physically over preparing myself for a small uphill hump. I was starting however to ride as if I was there already - in the hill, but before the hill. Big mistake 
While high gear riding can feel like youāre on top of this big muscular wheel, you are in fact still riding the patch of earth beneath you - just like any wheeled device.
So, Iāve now recognised the need to dispel the desire or misconception: to be prepared for whatās coming up. Scan the road for sure, but riding that hill when I got to it, would have been a piece of cake and a matter of a bit of extra pressure to push the gearing and me up and over it. Doing this too early in anticipation, got me going faster than intended and I stopped reading the road where I was ridingā¦ and probably missed a slight mini-downwards section of the track which is what led me to go flying forwards off the GUni andā¦. splat.
[I swear when you fall like this, your brainās film speed goes up to something like 240fps. It was all so gloriously slow. CRAAASH!]
So Iāll draw this long ramble of a post to a close with some recent practical tips that helped me shift up better-er than before:
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Speaking to yourself out-loud when struggling to shift - āCome on! Now! Go go go on you ****** thing!ā - whatever takes your fancy, actually helps. I used this when I was determined Iād get it to shift, and was trying to push my brain past its natural caution and reticence. Shouting at yourself as you ride may make you look a little mad to other passers-by, but heck they donāt know the lengths a Schlumpf owner has to go to master their art 
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Steady pedalling - this seems key to a nice non-shock of a shift. I found my last two shifts to happen without any real jolt or balance correction, and I credit the fact I was focused on keeping my pedalling going evenly round in circles and not letting the process of shifting change this. Like tapping your head with one hand, while doing circles on your belly with the other 
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Once youāve shifted, take a beat and ābeā there in the new space. Youāve got to keep pedalling of course, forward forward forward, but I have found it helps centre oneself to take a few seconds - 30 even, directly after shifting where you focus on controlling your speed. This lets you recognise you have geared up backpedal braking at your disposal, which I find reassuring when I the decide to put on a bit of steam and move forward faster.
Iām sure Iāve got few other ideas rattling around in my head regarding this magical version of unicycling - but Iāll let them brew and distil for another day.
Iām cog-nisant this post has gone on for long enough
