Hey, I've got a Mk4 1.6 petrol Golf with a five speed manual. I really like the car!

I just wanted to bounce a couple of ideas off of you guys in regards to manual shifting techniques.

I really like driving a stick shift and over time driving my Golf, I've put a lot of work into trying to develop my shifting techniques and I've pretty much got double de-clutching and heal-toeing down pat.

I'm aware that the transmission has synchronizers and double clutching isn't a necessity, but that doesn't mean it's not a good thing to learn, so, for the sake of extending the life of my clutch and the internal components of my transmission, I regularly employ these techniques.

Now for my question. It's to do with upshifting. When upshifting, if you keep the clutch disengaged throughout the whole shift, I would assume that the transmission would, just like when downshifting, put at least some load on the synchros to engage when the tranny isn't spinning at the correct speed. Now, again, I know it really isn't something that has to be done, but would I be right in assuming that engaging the clutch during an upshift to get the tranny spinning at the right speed would reduce some wear on the synchros, as well as making the actual engagement of the gears smoother? In my experience, I think I have found that using this kind of technique can actually reduce the amount of resistance in the transmission when shifting.

The only thing is, in my car at least, performing a full double clutch upshift will result in the engine revs falling too low before engaging the gear, unless you blip the throttle, which can be a bit annoying. So I've developed a bit of a hybrid technique that utilizes the advantages of both worlds.

Basically, when I go to upshift, I start by putting a very small amount of pressure on the gearstick towards the neutral position and then let off the gas. When the clutch is engaged and the transmission is under load, there is alot of resistance preventing the gear from disengaging, however I've found that if you supply a small amount of pressure before letting off the gas, there will be a split second where the transmission has zero load as the engine is moving from acceleration to deceleration and at this point the gear will slide right out with barely any effort, and will, in fact pull out easier than when the clutch is engaged. Then, just as the stick hits neutral, I dip the clutch to shift into the next gear. So this means that I get a smooth disengagement, plus the fact that the clutch is engaged for a short time while in neutral means I can usually also get a smoother engagement into the next gear and it all takes roughly the same amount of time as a typical upshift.

So, basically, I was curious to see what some of you guys thought about it and to see if you had any different perspectives, or if you actually do something similar.