Do you have to floor the brakes before you switch gears?

Answer 1

Floor the brakes??? NO, you do not even touch the brake to change gears. You push the clutch pedal in and change gears. On a modern car with an automatic transmission you have the apply the brake to switch from park to drive or reverse.

but if you wish to drive a little more enthusiastically with a stick the most fun thing to do is to downshift while braking. the first step is to sort of jam the brake in with the tip of your right foot and then simultaneously 1.press the clutch in 2. blip the gas with the heel of the braking foot 3.put the stick into the next lowest gear. this is a synchronizer dependent method and is very very fast, you should be able to downshift like this from gear to gear in less than a second. whenever you need a lower gear just press the gas and clutch in at the same time while downshifting and then get back on the gas. a very famous racecar driver keichi tsuchiya uses this very method.

a method that is not dependent on the synchronizers is the double clutch downshift which has seven steps and in my mind is the measure of every proficient shifter if he can carry out those seven steps in less than a second. 1clutch in 2.shift to neutral 3.clutch out 4.blip the throttle 5.clutch in 6.put it into gear 7.clutch out. all of this is done while braking. downshifting takes about 100hrs of seat time to become proficient. and an extra hundred to master. you should not feel any jerking forewards or backwards. but beware it costs about 500 bucks to replace clutch hydraulics. so I'd tell my son if he started doing this with a manual (he's not born yet), that the cost becoming good at downshifting like a racecar driver is 100hrs of seat time and 500 dollars cash. you will wear things out.