One-sided sit bone pain? Bike Fit Viewer question
Recently I had a viewer ask me if I had ever had a client complain of sit bone pain but only on one side? Initially this may seem odd -- we are sitting on our butt on the bike seat, why wouldn't both sides be affected all the time? Well, it turns out that there are a couple reasons for this and uneven or one-sided sit bone pain actually happens a lot.https://youtu.be/8dyzkxAkgN4
One-sided Sit Bone Pain? What gives?
- Unbeknownst to many, most cyclists don'ts sit square on their saddle
- they either sit with one hip (and sit bone) further forward or with one hip off to one side of the saddle, or both
- this off-kilter sitting leads to uneven movement of the pelvis over the saddle
- moderate side to side movement is normal, but when we're not straight on the seat, this motion can be more diagonal
- when we're trying to generate power this way it can create a scenario that in order to provide more stability through the pelvis so that we have a somewhat stable base we're pushing from, we bear more weight through one sit bone which leads to one-sided discomfort
- How do we manage this?
- there are some bike fit fixes to address this to a small degree
- but the main thing to understand is that this uneven sitting stems from the fact that we all have small imbalances throughout our bodies in stability, strength, and flexibilty
- the best course of action is to always be working on our imbalances and short-comings
- spend a little time figuring out what these issues are and then spend a few minutes every week actively working on them
- a little work goes a long way -- we don't have to fix our imbalances 100% in order to see benefits
- if we can make a small amount of progress on them we can see big improvements