I recently acquired a geared 36 and am trying to figure out how to not dismount after shifting. I can ride in 1:1 no problem and push the shift buttons easily enough with the heal of my shoe but once the high gear kicks in the increase in speed causes me to dismount. Any insight into mastering the high gear would be appreciated.
lol, I told you you needed more time before hitting that button! : P
You need to spend some time in high gear. Try starting with it in high gear against a wall and get it going so you know how it feels to ride shifted up first.
running a higher pressure in the tire may help too to make the wheel feel a bit more responsive.
You won’t be able to accelerate as fast, so at least my tendency when I started was to lean forward too much.
I’m no master of shifting yet, but I noticed that it’s easier if I shift as I’m slightly falling to the front. Slightly, just enough to not have to pedal right away to regain balance - it’s a short moment, just a micro second long…
Oh yeah great! After all these years of darkness and despair we finally have a thread about Schlumpf hubs. You must know, until now we all had to deal with our shifting problems for our selves cause there were no possibility to talk on the forum about it before you gave us this thread. How long have we been waiting for this deliverance. You’re our true messiah!
Joking apart … I’m sure you’ll find lots of answers to your questions if you use the search function of this forum: http://unicyclist.com/forums/search.php?searchid=8338661
Keep on practicing!
if the search function worked…
google does a good job of searching though
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I don’t know how it is when you start on G36, but when I was learning on my G26 it was much easier to ride high gear when I managed to switch while riding than to start in high gear.
I think you just need practising, it comes with a time and many dismounts 
Also if you have possibility to try Schlumpf on smaller wheel, it would help.
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And please make topic titles more descriptive… we have ton’s of them and at least several could be just named schlumpf.
+1
I also ride a g26 (with is more like a g27.5 because of the 3" tyre) , I have tried the g24 of Pierrox and never tried a g36 but I can imagine how hard it must be to learn geared unicycle with such a big wheel.
Riding in high gear is much harder from 0 to a certain speed than when you reach a certain speed.
Thus shifting to early or starting directly in high gear is pretty tricky.
There is one thing that took me more than 500km to understand to prevent random upd when shifting up: do not shift up when you body(center of gravity) is behind or above the axle.
Make sure you are leaning forward before shifting.
A second advice: do not bend your body too much when trying to keep balance in high gear. Instead, stay more or less straight to keep some flexibility in the case you fel youself falling forward.
When you feel you are falling too much forward you can have the reflex to accelerate to keep balance, don’t do that!
If you do that you will reach a dangerous speed and if you fall…
Good luck and take your time to learn, it can take 500-1000 miles or more to feel comfortable with a geared unicycle, especially on a g36 I guess.
Truth.
Use your brake
Try shifting into high gear with your brake slightly dragging. This will help you retain control of the wheel, particularly if you are on a slight decline. If you feel the wheel start to shoot out in front you can apply slightly more brake pressure to keep the wheel under you.
It works just fine if you type “schlumpf” into that search box (not sure what was wrong with the link). It should do, as it just uses a custom google search! Amongst the links on the first page of results is one to this definitive thread for anybody with a few hours to spare:
I have a G29 which is what I learned on, and tend to agree that actually learning to shift is a lot easier than learning to ride from a standstill in high gear - or at least for me now shifting is straightforward whilst even just riding at speed in high still isn’t totally comfortable, riding at low speed in high is downright difficult.
I have to admit I can’t do any of the first few items on John Foss’s list - but I can cope with the slight freewheel during a shift on a Schlumpf. Contrary to other advice, it feels to me that leaning forwards is a bad idea - I feel it works best when my weight is right over the axle as it would be if I was trying to freewheel (if I could do that - well actually clearly I can cope with a brief freewheel). I’m fairly sure the answer, as with all things unicycling, is simply to practice more.
Personally, I need to slow down for either up- or downshifts.
I can’t do any of the things John Foss suggested either, but I’m getting pretty good at riding a freewheel, since about every 6th shift it goes into freewheel mode. I used to fall right off, but now I can usually hold on and spin the cranks for another revolution and hit the button again. It always goes the second time. (It’s a little aggravating, but not enough to tear it all down and ship the hub back to the factory, and I’m getting used to it.)
As a former schlumpf owner, the closest I could come to replicating the feeling of shifting gears is one footed riding. I’d suggest practicing one footing with a normal unicycle while you continue practicing on the guni.
While this may work with rim brakes I’m not sure if it will even shift when breaking with a disc brake because it only shifts when there is not too much force on the pedals.
The advice to slightly brake while shifting is fantastic advice, and works especially well with a disc brake (Shimano on KH36), since you can apply a consistent light brake during multiple shifting attempts when necessary. The braking gives your brain a little more feedback as to what’s going on, especially if the hub goes into “neutral” for a bit. Never fell on my ass again after discovering this technique, and quickly gained shifting confidence & competence.
Using the brake is great advice. Between practicing speeding up and slowing down and applying the brake I was able to successfully ride in high gear without getting tossed off and then downshift again a few times in a row. I still need to keep practicing.
I’m glad that using the brake helped you. It was very helpful to me when I was learning to shift into high gear, especially going downhill.