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Keep Those Knees In!

04.15.2014 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

Back when I started riding, I was with a friend who was an experienced biker, taking a few laps on the Veloway. At one point, a young woman passed us, and my friend picked up the pace to stay close to her. This surprised me, because this particular friend isn’t interested in women.

I caught up to him, and he said, “I wanted to see her position on the bike — if she kept her legs in. She does. Looking good.”

Huh?

“A good rider keeps the knees close to the top tube,” he replied. “Some people ride with their knees sticking out to the sides.”

Uh, guilty as charged. When I walk, my feet splay out a bit. I even have my cleats adjusted, ever so slightly, to maintain that foot position on the bike. But I realized that my knees not only looked bad, they were putting pressure on some of the muscles in my upper thighs.

I paid attention to my knee position after that. It took some work, because it wasn’t a normal position for me. But over the ensuing years, I forgot about knee position.

Just last week, I noticed it. I’m not sure why, but it came to me that my knees were sticking out again. I moved them toward the center, and whadya know — it felt a lot better. It seemed as though I was putting more power to the pedals.

Putting the knees toward the inside has another benefit. It helps get the feet into a heels-down position. I had been gradually getting on my toes when riding. It seemed as though I was generating power. But it had been flexing my calves, and they were often sore and achy after a ride. With the heels down, I really am generating power. It’s easier to pedal in a circle, and I’m getting a little faster. And when I finish a ride, my calves don’t ache.

But it’s not something that I can attend to once, and adopt it as a new habit. In the last few days, I’ve caught myself with my knees sticking out on every ride. I pull them in. But another mile or two down the road, they’re out again. It looks like it won’t be easy for me to keep my knees in.

But I know it’s the right way to pedal. I’ll keep working on it.

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Categories // Technique Tags // knee, riding position

Phantom Knee Pain

05.10.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 6 Comments

My knee was sore Tuesday, but I went for my usual Tuesday evening after-work ride anyway.  Made it worse.

Besides my saddle sore issues, I had another weird one last week. I noticed while climbing stairs during the day that my left knee hurt. Nothing big, but it was bothersome.

I didn’t think much of it, and I went out as I usually do on a Tuesday evening to take my small ring ride at the Veloway. While riding, the pain disappeared, so I figured it was just a temporary ache.

When I got home after an hour’s ride, the knee was quite sore. It ached with every step I took, and it was hard for me to get comfortable for any length of time in my easy chair that evening. I worried that I had stupidly done some serious damage to the knee.

While getting ready for bed, I applied pressure with my thumb to the edge of the kneecap. Hm, that was some noticeable soreness. I stared at the ceiling for awhile that night, rolling over in my mind all the dire medical problems I might have aggravated by riding the bike that day.

In the morning, the pain was gone. The night after, I rode again (the night when I aggravated the saddle sore – the fates were going to get me one way or the other!).

I was baffled. I had thought that somehow I had been riding out of position. Maybe the saddle slipped down a bit (No). Maybe I had loose cleats that caused my knee to be out of alignment when I pedaled (No, cleats are nice and tight). Maybe I had ridden with my knees pointed out, which I sometimes catch myself doing. But I haven’t really done that in two years, so I was confident that couldn’t be it.

Here I am a week later, and I have no knee pain. Still trying to figure out how it was able to come and go so quickly.

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Categories // soreness Tags // knee

Kneesavers

03.18.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 11 Comments

It’s fascinating what you can learn from the cycling community.

Last week, I was battling a painful bout of gout in my left knee. I couldn’t bend the knee without it hurting, and I walked with a pronounced limp.

That’s all in the past now. A steroid injection into the knee and some time on the bike has done wonders. I’m walking normally again. The more time I ride, the better the knee feels.

But while I was laid up, I got lots of interesting advice. One item didn’t apply to my gout, but it’s interesting enough that I’m going to look into it anyway. It’s called the Kneesaver.

The idea behind the Kneesaver is simple. It’s an extension to the pedal axle, just 20, 25 or 30 mm long. The company says that added width to the pedal (what it calls the “Q factor”) can reduce or eliminate pain in the hip, knee, ankle or foot.

The Kneesavers web site (www.kneesaver.net) has testimonials from satisfied users, but I put more stock in the unsolicited testimonials from riders in my club whose experience I respect.

One said he bought them to help alleviate pain in his hip that came on after a crash.  Not only did the pain go away, he said, but his knees felt younger, too (he’s in his upper 50s). When he started riding his “rain bike” during colder winter weather, the hip pain came back. He moved the Kneesavers over to his rain bike, and the pain went away. “A wider stance on the pedals will more closely approximate your ‘at rest’ standing position and that’s where you will have the most comfortable knee rotation,” he said.  “It’s an old guy thing.” He was so happy with his experience that he’s buying another set for his wife.

Lending even more credibility to the worth of Kneesavers is a comment from another club member, who happens to be a physician. He also complained of hip pain after long bike rides. “What put me onto it was I noticed that long rides on our tandem didn’t give me this problem,” he said, “so when I checked I discovered that the Q on the tandem was an estimated 30% wider–because they use a MTB crankset (MTB cranksets have a significantly wider Q). When I measured my ‘standing Q’ it was 10cm wider than my road bike, so I increased it the minimum.”

One thing to watch for if using pedal extenders is the increased possibility of “pedal strike” in corners. You can’t lean the bike as far without the pedal hitting the ground. But since we’re supposed to corner with the inside pedal up, that shouldn’t be a problem.

This post is not to be considered an endorsement for Kneesavers. I haven’t tried them yet.  But I’m not getting any younger, and anything that keeps me going in comfort is worth a look.

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Categories // Accessories, Injury Tags // Accessories, Injury, knee, pain

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