Up till now how you shifted gears has been a choice of finger and thumb Rapidfire action, or the Gripshift flick of the wrist. Now Shimano have introduced a whole new radically different shifting style – using your brake lever.

That’s right no trigger finger or thumbshifter (you can add one for an extra 30g weight gain) just push downwards to go faster, pull upwards to go easier.

But haven’t road bikes been doing that for ages? Congratulations my shaven legged friend, road bike STI has long used a sideways flick of the brake lever for downshifting, but they’ve always had a subsidiary lever tucked inside to control the upshift. XTR just uses the one single lever for braking and shifting. Those who care about their handlebars looking tidy might be upset by the big box sat on top of the lever to house the mechanism, but they’ve moved to the neat inline gear indicator on the cable (as used on the road groups) rather than the Rapidfire window indicators.

That’s precisely the question we were asking ourselves for the first two hours of riding too – not helped by the fact that the brake levers were reversed Continental style. We mastered pushing down for higher gears fairly quickly, but the whole concept of pushing up with the back of your fingers just felt totally wrong. I mean in what other situations do you try and lift anything with the back of your knuckles? Judging from it’s responses my brain has never even bothered to check if the neural pathways and muscles that could theoretically do that actually work.

So after two hours of gear mashing, weak fingered waggling and cursing we trooped off for lunch muttering that Shimano’s R+D department had excelled themselves. They’d finally developed something harder for the rest of the world to master than chopsticks.

Luckily though a typical Austrian ‘don’t ask what that is, just swallow it’ lunch seemed to have the right nutrients required for this new finger trick. Either that or having the brakes switched the right way round gave us enough spare brain power to start to get to grips with it. We still hadn’t mastered the two over, one under finger position recommended by the Shimano guys, but we could now use our index finger to shift down the block in single gear jumps if we had enough warning. We even realised you could fingertip shift either way from the bar ends which will be a very welcome capability for racers.

The next day we moved the levers round to a slightly flatter position which seemed to make things much easier. The Shimano boys had also fitted the thumbshift lever underneath, but after using it once out of curiosity in the hotel car park I got back from the ride several hours later and realised I hadn’t touched it once.

That’s not to say it was a faultless experience – we still shifted in the wrong direction or had to think for so long it was too late anyway a few times. Considering the tens of thousands of shifts I’ve done with Rapidfire over the years, getting pretty much 90% there in three rides was definitely surprising – certainly easier to get used to than the reverse action of Rapid Rise XTR.

Getting used to the system also started to reveal its pro’s and con’s:

XTR has been developed pure and simple as a race groupset, with all design functions targeted on that goal. On the plus side this means that its light, tough (so far) and chainset etc. are super stiff. On the downside it means that after 14 months of consultations with racer testers and their ‘Skunk’ riders they’ve gone for a Rapid Rise system that allows you to upshift (to harder gears) in chunks of two or three, but only allows downshifts (to easier gears) in single steps. This might be ideal for racers capable of the kind of acceleration that requires you to leap three gears at a time riding on courses they’ve pre-ridden. For most riders the ability to drop 3 cogs into a bail out gear faced with a sudden sharp climb or corner would be much more useful though. We found ourselves grumbling several times as we walked up sections that we could have cleaned with a faster downshift. It also doesn’t seem to make much sense that the easier shift under braking (pushing down the lever as you pull it back) puts you into a harder gear despite the fact you’ve obviously just slowed down. Still Shimano have been pretty relentless in their 14 months of alpha testing and consultation, so maybe it’s just us.

Shimano were keen to reinforce that these were final prototype set ups and that the front change would be slightly lighter on full production versions but to be honest once we learned the ‘XTR flick’ we had no trouble. What we did notice was that even with the new silicon grease injected cables and brand new chain and cassette the shifts at either end were noticeably slower than XTR Rapidfire or SRAM X.O. Even taking into account the longer lever waggle gear changes definitely seemed less immediate, especially under power. Given that tooth profiling and ramps / pins on the chainrings are the same as before we’re confused by this, maybe as our fingers get more used to their new dance routine it’ll sort itself out.

On the first ride we also worried about shifting accidentally as the up and down movement of the levers made us realise how much we pressed down on the levers to control bike positioning and rotation. By the second day we’d got used to the movement and with plenty of vertical ‘float’ in the levers accidental shifts just weren’t a problem.

Mixture of fleeting sunlight then alternating torrential Alpine thunderstorms and light mountain drizzle served on a mix of long fire road climbs followed by very steep woody, rooty and generally treacherous singletrack descents.
Pretty much ideal ‘mock British’ conditions for testing disc brakes and shifter systems then.

The news for those wanting the new shifters without having to replace masses of other kit is that it’s compatible with old XTR – albeit only Rapid Rise versions. More helpfully the disc brake versions are compatible with XT and Deore hydraulic units and there’s a V-brake version too.

Once we got used to the single lever concept and technique, we really liked it, and never used the thumbshift ‘cheat’ option.

That Shimano have worked really hard to create real differences between new and old XTR, rather than just a bit of gram shaving and a new colour.

The fact you can shift easily when braking or from the bar ends.

It’s compatibility with Shimano brakes at least.

The ‘Rapid Rise’ single down, multiple upshifts arrangement.
‘Rapid Rise’ only compatibility.

Seemingly slower shifting. We’ll wait until we’ve got a long term test set and played with that for a while before we confirm that though.

Aesthetics are a personal thing, but those big boxes above and below the lever don’t exactly match the functional minimalist chic of ‘old’ XTR.

We head for the heart of the new XTR transmission as we check out the new 2 piece chainset and radical ‘see thru’ bottom bracket axle.