Hear ye, hear ye, get thee, and a mirror, to your indoor trainer. This is going to be a multi-part series on getting the rider and the ride to a more perfect union. Most of us have never been professionally fit for our bikes. An inseam measured, a glance at a reflection when riding by a store window is our bike fit. I’m not advocating that, but it’s true for me.
My friend Dave and I have been both suffering with ride -preventing knee injuries. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, besides being lucky, you have been spared a trip into a deep and dark cave. This is the depressing cave that makes you ask a question you don’t have an answer for. If you can’t ride anymore, you are no longer a cyclist. If you are no longer a cyclist, who are you? That, fellow riders, is a serious question, and not one I want to address right here and now.
In the USA you go to your general practitioner doctor, who eventually hands you off to a slightly more qualified doctor. You moan enough to get x-rays and and MRI at 0.45 CWUs (carbon wheel units*) cost and an eventual appointment with most-busy orthopedic specialist. He, of course, tells you there is nothing he can see but he can send you to the physical therapist. Why did you know this was the answer already, four months earlier?
The hospital’s physical therapist is not a cyclist and looks very skeptical when you inform him the “knee over pedal axle” axiom is rubbish. You go home with a page of exercises that address no obvious problem. At this point the road diverges. You keep pestering doctors, you start listening to anecdotal, crap advice, or you try to fix it yourself.
Dave has done his version of this also. Dave is not as lazy as I and he spends untold hours with his rollers, kinetic trainer, weight bench, watt meter and a mirror trying to figure out what he can modify to fix his knee.
We spent a long session filming each other shirtless, in bibs, while riding our bikes on his trainer. This all felt slightly illegal and unseemly. I’m relieved that neither his girlfriend or the UPS guy came in during this.
The initial video shot from behind was a revelation. If Chris Froome looks like a spider humping a lightbulb, I look like Quasimodo hunching a washing machine. Are you kidding me? Damien Gaudin looks better on a bike than I do. Was I hit by a car and don’t remember it? Has no one bothered to tell me what this view from behind looks like? Dave admitted he wanted to but didn’t dare. Actually, it may be that out here in Hawaii, no one is spending that much time in my awesome draft, going uphill at 10 kph, or I ignore these remarks all together.
We video as we try shims under cleats, raising saddles, lowering saddles. All this seems like too much guess work, or we are working with just enough information to do further damage? There are a lot of tweaks that skate around problems we don’t understand.
As it turns out Dave is possibly harder to live with than I am while playing the role of injured athlete. His girlfriend explained this to the woman seated next to her at a dinner party; this person happens to be a sports physical therapist with the dual virtues of a lot of formal medical education and decades of experience fixing people. Phase two of this story will delve into what a Pro knows and how she works.
In the meantime, do yourself a favor. Get your bike on a stationary trainer or rollers and have someone video from behind as you ride with moderate resistance. The Pro put reflective stickers dots and lines all over my legs but even a sharpie dot on the center of the knee cap and the center behind the knee will be useful. An iPhone and iMovie works just fine for some slow motion analysis. Alternatively, put a mirror in front of the bike so you can see your legs pedaling. One’s hips, knees and feet are working in a chain. The knee joint is a simple hinge that functions optimally when not going in four directions with each revolution, like mine.
Do your knees track directly over your feet, everything directly up and down, like dueling Swiss Bernina sewing machines? If yes, no worries, if no and you are not too old, it’s something to think about. The math is amazing; revolutions per kilometer times kilometers per year. Knees can absorb some misalignment, mine have for 36 years, but why wait until you are injured to seek the more perfect union?
*my CWU are based on ENVE 3.4 tubular rims and Chris King hubs, orange.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
@Deakus
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
@wiscot
+1. Don't touch!
For those in the N Midwest check out Bikefit Guru. Chris Balser does his fitting with a 3D motion scan that generates a stick figure image of the rider showing the relationship of body parts. From there he makes mechanical adjustments to the bike to bring sacrum, hips, knees and ankles into alignment. In the upper body he does the same with with neck, shoulders, elbows and wrists. It does wonders in improving efficiency and form. After the fit he put me back on the computrainer where I discovered I had found another 30 watts.The gains I made this past season speak loudest, though.
It's money well spent. At $350 it works out to .13 CUWs - a freaking bargain.
@teleguy57 Thanks I'll give that app a try too. The others were free so this bike specific paid one may have an extra feature or 2.
I was having back pain during and after rides and someone suggested I get a longer stem - did the trick. I still get the occasional twinge of lower back pain, but I just ice it and/or use Biofreeze (best stuff ever). I also use a foam roller and that seems to work well too.
I had a Bike fit with Steve Nash in Adelaide. Best $200 I've invested in my riding. I now feel a lot more confident about my position and have reduced issues with my knees and back. My right knee turns out when I pedal. Steve said that if I was 20 years old and a racer that he would correct my bad technique. 37 years too late and I don't race, so he altered my cleat angle so that my knee doesn't fight against float tension. So now the knee tracks the way it wants to. Much better and I just don't think about it any more. Think I'll start racing.
Those of you had Pro fit's, does crank arm length enter the conversation?
Had to change length due to getting proper fit? Or made do with what was on the steed?
@sthilzy Yes it does.
I'm ambivalent about them. I've had it done but I tend to think that many bike-fitters are like a combination of doctors and lawyers.
Doctors because they have their own pet specialities and by default diagnose problems within a particular frame of reference, whatever the symptoms.
Lawyers (or sub-editors) because they will never say "Sure, looks fine" and they feel compelled to make some alteration.
There are no doubt some very good ones out there, who can do it based on wide experience and knowledge and will assess the individual on their own merits or problems. I suspect they also tend to be the ones who don't rely on dots and lasers. Much of it seems to be pseudo-science when in reality what it needs is just experience.
No offence to any bike-fitters reading this - it's not a universal rule. But I would say to anyone thinking of doing it to ask around and get several opinions, preferably from riders who know what they're doing.
Many punters will praise a bike fit because why would you admit you paid hundreds of pounds/dollars/ringgat for a waste of time.And in any case physical problems are unlikely to manifest themselves immediately, so it's really not possible to assess the bike-fit until much later.
Lots of theories and approaches to fitting. What you need is someone with an experienced eye who can get us into a halfway decent position. I think a lot of what we call 'fit' is our adaptation to whatever the setup is. If you need to make big changes, it should be done incrementally. Following @ChrisO's analogy, I'd prefer the doctor bike fitter to the lawyer.
Have not read all the replies. I'll do that on thelowlight I'm about to board, but most knee tracking problems start at the hip with poor gluteus medius.
Shimming feet with orthotics of pedal shims is working from teh wrong end of the stick, even if it is effective.
Start doing some band work, side leg raises, and The Clam, which you may mistake for The Vagina.
Land do some squats. Cyclists, of which I am not one, tend to have poor muscle balance. Kettle bell squats are a must for everyone.
PS, I can help you with what one is when not a cyclist if yo like, though since you live on Maui North Shore, I know that you already know that.