question for Tidesigns or someone like that

[michael white]

today on my ride, I happened to glance at my knees as I was pedalling, and noticed my right knee oscillating laterally a couple of centimeters with each push. The left, not so much. Thru the rest of the ride, when I glanced down from time to time, I was doing it about as often as not. I am not trying to be really fast or anything, just a rider, but I'm curious, is this a bad thing? Should I try to train myself to keep the knees going in a vertical plane?

best,
mike

[Richard]

Do your knees hurt? If not, why look to change. I know lots of very fast, very fit riders whose knees move in or out to varying degrees.

[Ti Designs]

today on my ride, I happened to glance at my knees as I was pedalling, and noticed my right knee oscillating laterally a couple of centimeters with each push. The left, not so much. Thru the rest of the ride, when I glanced down from time to time, I was doing it about as often as not. I am not trying to be really fast or anything, just a rider, but I'm curious, is this a bad thing? Should I try to train myself to keep the knees going in a vertical plane?


This may or may not be something that should be corrected for. If it's simply a matter of your hip being rotated outward, your knee will move away from the top tube as the pedal comes over the top - nothing there to correct for. There's no reason both hips will point in the same direction, so don't take the fact that only one does this as an indication that you need to correct for it. I have a number of clients who have had hip reconstruction. When this happens they really don't know the original angle the socket was at, so they rebuild it dead straight. Pretty much all of these people have some knee problems on that side because the knees now have to compensate for the change in femur angle. The thing to learn here is that "perfect" and the human body don't play well together...

In a fitting I'll watch femur angle off the hip in two cases. The first case is in a nothing gear, or what I call pedaling air. This shows me the skeletal rotation. Then I'll have them shift to a much harder gear and drive out the power. The added forces make a huge difference as none of the joints in the body are on center. The glutes wrap around the hip, pulling the femur out, the quads are seperated into mediallis and laterallis which when fired move the tibia in different directions. In the end most of the change I see between the two cases is about the interaction at the foot. If you're running SPD pedals which only hold at front and back of the cleat, any you pronate, you can expect your knee to move in.

At this point I'm gonna say that I don't have an answer for you. I don't know what kind of pedals or shoes you're using, I know nothing of your set-up or the history of your knees. The answer is finding a good fitter who can tell if it's something worth correcting for and how much correction, and where to make the correction. The tendency for new fitters is to try to make a 100% correction, which means it's going to go all wrong in the other direction. There should be talk of "splitting the difference" and come back if that isn't enough after your body has adapted to it. As for your changing how you pedal, it's rare that I would suggest that anyone try to keep their knees in a single line. The one case would be a reattached ACL or MCL. If you think of the knee as a suspension bridge, the ligaments are the cables holding it all together. They just took one of those cables and moved where it's anchored. Your job in rehab is to wear new orbits in the meniscus. One of my riders tore her ACL in January, spent March and April on a trainer with a laser line on her femur, spinning a light gear and keeping that knee in line. She went from a cat 4 to a cat 2 that season (which also included a broken collarbone) so I guess it worked out...




So much for not spending any time on the Serotta forum...

[dekindy]

You cannot train your knees. They are going to follow the natural motion based upon your position. All it took was one Lemond wage to keep my knees in the vertical plain over the pedals. An extra one on one leg to compensate for a small disparity in length between legs and I was good. I was not aware of this product until my LBS's Serotta trained fitter told me about them. Very nice invention.

http://www.glorycycles.com/lemondlewedge.html

If there is a large leg length discrepancy the wedges can be layered such that a pair does not change the angle of your foot and only increases the length. A riding buddy of mine has something like 16 on one shoe to equalize leg length.

Specialized shoes contain insoles that do the same thing as the Lemond Wedges and they also come with various Vargus wedges that will enhance this. Or you can purchase only the insoles that come with wedges and put them in your shoes.

Hope this helps. A fitting would be the best way to determine what you need.

[dekindy]

Do your knees hurt? If not, why look to change. I know lots of very fast, very fit riders whose knees move in or out to varying degrees.

Are you sure you want to give this kind of advice? We don't know how many miles or how long he has been riding. I was not having any knee pain either. Once I started riding thousands of miles I figured that I better havethe absolute best position possible to avoid injury.

[Richard]

well, it cuts both ways. I have been riding and racing for lots o' years and I have known people who also have years of experience, then get a bug about some idiosyncratic issue that has caused them no problem. After work with fitters, wedges, all sorts of stuff, they wind up injured and off the bike. As I said and it is advice I would give to anyone...if it works, don't f..k with it.

[michael white]

thanks,

I'm a longtime rider, formerly competitive. . . no knee pain on that side. I am just interested in the mechanics, if it is worth it to worry about things like that. fwiw, on that bike I'm riding Looks with fixed cleats.

[dekindy]

Ok, I am with Richard now. If you competed and did not worry about it then there is no reason to bother with it now.

I just know that for me a fitting made me much more comfortable on the bike and confident that I was not doing anything wrong that was not going to generate a long term injury. And whether the knee alignment adjustment was necessary of not may not be known. I know it was darn annoying and I am glad the Lewedges corrected it.

[Lifelover]

.....

So much for not spending any time on the Serotta forum...


We all need our vices and you post are generally very informative.

Stick around and enjoy it purely as a ONLINE community.

[michael white]

I also want to thank TiDesign for the great response to my question, which I didn't even have to pay for, and which everyone got to enjoy!