Small adjustments

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

MrHappyCyclist

Riding the Devil's HIghway
Location
Bolton, England
(May be a long, boring story; sorry if so.)

Since I got my hybrid, I have been amazed how much difference very small adjustments in geometry make.

I have arthritis in my left hip, so my left knee won't come right up without moving out a bit. I didn't have a problem with this on my old bike, so I measured the lengths of the 3 sides of the triangle between the handlebars, saddle and bottom bracket and set the new one up with the same distances. The whole triangle would be canted forwards compared to the old one, but it seemed to me that this would result in the same degree of hip flexion, so should be OK.

Well, I found that I didn't like the "more aggressive position" (my LBS's description) so resolved to get a higher stem, but stuck with it for the time being. However, I found the hip movement was uncomfortable so moved the seat up by just 8mm and that made a huge difference; 8mm seems like nothing, so I was surprised by the difference.

I started to find over the last few weeks, though, that I was starting to get irritation on the outside of my left knee. I thought it might be cartilage, and I put the problem down possibly to a visible outward rotation of my femur when my knee comes up, which could be pinching the meniscus cartilage, but I am not a physician, so that was just a guess. When my new stem came, that shortened the forward reach from my shoulders to the bars by 2", so I hoped the consequent reduction in knee flexion would solve the problem. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make any difference and I have been getting quite worried about the knee problem.

I tried cycling with the knee further out to reduce the femur rotation, but that seemed to make matters worse. So, I tried to keep my knee closer in to the top tube, which made some difference provided I also turned my foot in (moved the heel outwards). Unfortunately, all that was hard work, so I knew I couldn't keep that up.

I then thought about what are the other differences about this bike compared to my old one, and one of these things is that I now have toe clips, which I have never had before. These force my toe to be in a specific position, so I tried moving my toe to the outside a bit and noticed that this made a bit of improvement, So, today before coming home, I loosened the screws on the toe clip and moved it as far out as it would go. This was only a difference of about 5mm, but coming home I didn't have a single twinge in the knee. The difference is amazing given the tiny adjustment, hence the title of the post!
 

cyberknight

As long as I breathe, I attack.
Yup it is amazing how much a little bit can affect your comfort :biggrin:

I have been posting on a few threads about how much difference to my back a move of 3 mm made ...
 

fossyant

Ride It Like You Stole It!
Location
South Manchester
It takes some time. I spent a very long time with Bernard Hinault's book Training and Racing getting my bike set up. All the three other bikes are set up as close as possible to my reference, including the mtb. Foot positioning is the other key area. I can tell immediately if a cleat isn't right as my knew complains.
 
Top Bottom