Serfas Floor Pump (dumb question?)

If you've got 120 psi in your tires, you won't be feeling them "give" at all (meaning that they need more air). The tires should be quite hard, pumped up, at that point.

I don't really think there's a proper technique to pumping up tires. First though you need to make sure that when you put the pump onto the stem that you lock it (flip the lever on the pump). It seems to me that if the gauge showed you were at 120 psi and the tire didn't seem fully inflated, that you don't have it locked down and so a large portion of the air is not going into your tire.

You also know when you're tire is getting close to being fully pumped that the pump becomes a little more difficult to push down.

Not sure about the pulling up and the pump reading lower pressure than when you're pushing down. I've not ever noticed that with my pump. Key though is make sure you've "locked" the little lever on the pump. It seems to me that maybe you might have forgotten that part.

I'm only going to bring this up because I actually saw it happen in the transition area at a triathlon, and I had to show the guy what he was doing wrong. Now this is not to say that you are doing the same thing, but weird things like this REALLY DO happen!

He had failed to unscrew the little presta valve on the tube, so when he put the pump head on and pumped up the pressure to 120 PSI, all he was doing was pressurizing the air hose...there was no air going into the tire!

His confusion stemmed from the fact that it was his first experience with presta valves, as previously he had only used Schrader (car-type) valves which are auto-sealing and don't have a valve screw on them!