Medial Knee Pain

2zanzibar

God its one thing after another with my knees. I did manage to get to the point of doing 60 mile rides again without out too much problem on the medial side. The PT I saw suggested lots of glute strengthening exercises (if you want I can try and explain some of them) and of course stretching everything which I do anyway as I suffer from chondromalacia, and its this little affliction thats kept me of the bike again! I now just ride to work and back, just spinning and trying to keep under joint pain threshold, and doing this for as long as it takes.
I'm also scheduled for an artthroscope to see what kind of a mess is in there! though I now want to postpone this til the end of the summer
If you do have paella issues, my PT reckons this can also precipitate medial problems by overcompensating ie. your leg tries to use the medial side on the down stroke to avoid the patella shifting laterally

artmichalek

What kind of pedals are you using? I started having severe pain in my right MCL last fall and tracked it down to a mis-aligned cleat. It seems that the torque from unclipping had twisted the cleat a bit on the bottom of the shoe puting that heel out a few milimeters. I figured this out the morning of a metric century after hardly sleeping the night before because of the pain. I fixed the cleat and figured I would start the ride, but turn back if it hurt too much. The pain went away as soon as I started pedaling and hasn't been back since.

rainaged

The PT I saw suggested lots of glute strengthening exercises (if you want I can try and explain some of them) and of course stretching everything which I do anyway as I suffer from chondromalacia, and its this little affliction thats kept me of the bike again!

Would you be willing to describe a few of those exercises? I think I'm still free from chondromalacia, but want to clear things up so that it doesn't come to that. Thanks

pjhiggins

I have watched this thread in earnest lately to learn if anything new is coming along, but now I think I can help some of you. I started seeing a man who is a biomechanical engineer, but also works with athletes to train them for power and speed. His theories are much different than I am used to, but his math backs it up (seeing him is like going through college physics again).

What he has me doing are these squats in which my legs are spread very wide (almost uncomfortably so) with my toes pointed outward. If you are having trouble visualizing, think of a sumo wrestler in the opening position. From this position I begin doing the squat in much the same manner that regular squats are performed, only most of the work is distributed over many joints, rather than just the knee. The results are tremendous. No medial knee pain and the hamstring that was tweaked has really responded as well.

Eventually, I will add weight to the squat and perform it continuously for 15-17 minutes. Right now, I do them without weight for 15 minutes straight. It really forces the medial side of the quad and hamstring to pull their weight.

frkm0005

I was getting medial knee pain and it happened after I put new cleats on my shoes.

The source of the problem: cleat position. I read an article that said if you're getting medial knee pain than the likely source is your cleat position. Mainly that it is positioned in a way that makes your toes point outwards.

After some trial and error with positioning the cleats the pain went away. Essentially you need to have your toes pointing forward and the smallest amout of misalignment will cause sharp pains after a few kilometers of riding.

That's under the assumption that you're using clipless pedals. And regardless of how much float you have you should have your cleats set straight because you want that float to help you on your pedal strokes.

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