A absolutely dumb question

[OakLeaf]

What's dumb is not your question, it's the shop selling you the bike without making sure you knew how the "brifters" (brake/shifters) work...

On both derailleurs/shifters, the (smaller) inner paddle shifts you to a smaller cog, and the (larger) brake lever shifts you to a larger cog. Shifting is always by pushing centerward on the appropriate lever. So to downshift the front derailleur, you'd push the left inner paddle to the right; to downshift the rear derailleur, you'd push the right brake lever to the left; and vice versa for upshifting.

Make sure you're pedaling, but not putting too much force on the pedals, while you shift.


Unless it's the Avail 3 with the Shimano 2200 shifters that have the very small inner lever. I haven't seen those in real life, but from Shimano's website, it looks like it's the same principle of big lever->bigger cog, small lever->smaller cog, except the small lever gets pressed toward the brake lever rather than in the same direction as with the paddles in Tiagra, Sora, 105, Ultegra and Dura-Ace.

HTH