Cycling Knees Moving Laterally

Ever experience cycling knees moving laterally? You're not alone as many cyclists experience some side to side movement of the knees while they pedal. But two questions to consider:Can you do anything about it? Should you do anything about it?https://youtu.be/zdEepaGQqwk

• idealized picture of how our legs should pump vertically like pistons
  • vertical knee path might improve efficiency and power in some
  • some riders may even mimmick their favorite pro and tuck the knees in
  • But is a vertical knee path common? Desired?
    • maybe not for you
• important to remember that knee drift will often be caused by the foot or the hip -- why we call it the slave joint
  • we need to evaluate whether that reason is able to be fixed
  • causes:
    • forefoot posture drives hip
    • foot inversion
    • too wide/narrow stance (q-factor)
    • weak hip muscles
    • hip OA
• rules for trying to fix
  • if you have knee pain, you should look into it
  • if you have pain elsewhere while biking -- foot discomfort, saddle issues -- you might look into it
    • but this is a tough path because now we're dealing with this as a secondary source of pain and things get complicated fast; and can be difficult to relate things back to
  • especially if movement is bilateral you might leave it alone -- greater chance of not being fixable
    • one-sided can be addressed but it's tough because it's often complicated by how we sit on the bike -- twisted pelvis
      • can also cause windswept knees -- one knee drifts out and one drifts in
• how to
  • complicated -- shoot high speed video from front (free program on website shows you how) and analyze
  • trial and error -- could try some forefoot varus posting -- pretty cheap and most people tolerate a couple degrees of posting without any difficulty
    • or try moving cleats to change q-factor
    • or work on hip strength but this of course will take longer
    • not the most expeditious way to go about this but if you already have an inkling about the cause the trial and error route might be simplest
• illustrate how remote and difficult this can be -- client I had yesterday
  • knee was drifting out -- not caused by anything local
    • her reach was barely too long -- only indication of this was her scapulaes were off in their posture
    • this drew her pelvis into slightly more anterior pelvic tilt than her lumbar spine and trunk strength was capable of managing
      • this caused one side of pelvis (nd hip) drift forward more creating a twist in her sitting posture which drove her knee on the forward hip side in and the backward hip side out
    • just managing her reach and restoring scp posture resolved pelvic posture and knee drift completely
• take home -- there are some simple ways to address knee pain but I can't stress enough that in a lot of cases it may be best to just leave things alone -- the knee may be moving like that for a very good (and impossible to correct) reason; forcing the knee may create other new issues