Changing gears in a tournament

I'm sitting here playing a 5000 guy 6max tournament on pokerstars. I haven't played very many large man tournaments before, and came up with a bit of a question while playing this one. Everyone says you have to switch gears for the different stages of a tournament. I was wondering if this was not so much a direct result of where you are in the tournament or just the fact that you have played a few hundred hands with the people you are playing with and know a good bit more about how they play. I could be way of but was just curious.

yeah, its very important to change gears in a mega event like 6000-10000 participants...

My strategy is to survive the first break initially, then try and play aggressively till the next break and den if u have good stack u can play every hand any try you luck at flop...Or if u have minimum stack, i would try and play aggressive with aa,kk,ak,aq,qq,jj, and wont play other hands at all...

One tip: if you are going to go deep into a tournament, learn to steal and re-steal. It is very common to go card dead for looooooong periods of time.

Answer: "BOTH"

Many will say to play super tight at the start. This isn't always best imo... sometimes you'll want to establish a loose image so that your big hands will get paid off (so a bluff goes bad... big deal... cuz when you play that flopped set in a similiar manner, you're looking to get paid off big).
Advice re: Look to be making steals & re-steals alot as the tourney progresses. This is great advice,... especially the 're-steals' imo. Know who will call down light though when you do 're-steal' and be sure you have some fold equity (ie. I pull a re-steal from SB on 16bb's with K7s, to CO's umpteenth raise, only to find him calling my resteal shove light with A-8o and then BOOM.. going out of the tourney, lol..... I figured he'd be laying it down.... I 'figured' wrong, lol).

Thanks for the answer guys. I ended up doing pretty well in that tournament. I cashed I came in 400th or something I think. Not to bad for my first MTT. Stealing does seem to play a lot big part then I though it would.

Harrington calls these -inflection points- alot of these have to do with the blinds relative to peoples stacks. As the game progresses the blinds represent more of your stack. The hands you play when your 20bb deep are different then when you are 100bb deep. Hand values goes up as more people have shorter stacks and draws lose there strength.

At the beginning you should play very tight most times...
If the blinds raise fast you have to play more hands and use your image...
Thats switching gears.
First you play tight and in the later stages of a tournement you play much more hands!

changing gears is very important in any majour MTT. The one rule i tend to go by to change gears is who is table playing? If there is alot of limping and loose plays then ill tighten up. But if i've seen the table tighten up then its time to play alot of cards in possition and try take advantage if uve got a healthy stack. B-in short stacked u cant change gear as u only have one play.