As you get older dealing with pain becomes more and more of a reality. Old injuries flare up, wear and tear add up and it all leads to more and more pain. Pain leads to time off or even surgeries and surgeries definitely lead to time off. Time off leads to loss of fitness and motivation which can lead to quitting. 

So one of the best strategies for riding for a lifetime is to do everything you can to address pain early and to prevent it from getting worse. Prevention is the best plan of all because pain that you never had doesn’t need to be addressed at all.

In an effort to help more riders achieve the goal of Riding For A Lifetime I wanted to start sharing some tips on addressing pain for some of the most common problem areas faced by riders as we get older. In this post I wanted to start with one that almost every rider faces at some point, which is knee pain.

The knees take a beating on the trail. Everything we do on the trail involves the knees, from standing to seated efforts, from uphills to downhills and from techy trails to smooth flow trails, the knees are working hard to help us perform at our best.

The knees are an amazing structure that need to be both stable and mobile. Lacking in either of these things can lead to stress being placed on the wrong areas, which lead to pain and loss of performance.

On top of that, you need your feet to be supported properly so that your legs can move in the most functional way possible. Poor foot support is a major cause of knee pain both on and off the bike and an area that a lot of riders are confused about.

So let’s break down what each of these things means for us on the bike and how we can support our goals of having strong, stable knees that can take a pounding and come back for more.

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Stability

Having stable knees comes down to a couple of things. The first is making sure that all of the muscles around the knee are strong and you don’t have one that is taking over and creating unnatural stress. The second thing is making sure that the knee is stable during your movements so that you aren’t creating unnatural stress while moving.

When you look at how the knee is designed to move you see that there are two spots where it is most sensitive to overuse injuries – at 90 degrees and at full extension. At 90 degrees the knee is in the least stable position and at full extension you are running the highest level of stress through them.

On a side note, a lot of knee pain is caused by bad training and riding advice. Telling people to never go below 90 degrees when training the legs means that you are actually stopping and trying to reverse direction at the least stable position as well as never getting to load a range of motion that you will be forced into, especially off the bike. 

And telling people to rely on seated pedaling while trying to focus on doing a leg curl at the bottom of the pedal stroke is horrible for the knees. At full extension the hamstring and the quad co-contract to stabilize the knee while the hips (glute + hamstring junction) sweeps the leg through the bottom of the motion. This only happens if there is pressure at the knee and you get full knee extension, which is only possible if you are standing up and aren’t trying to curl your hamstring. 

So if you are stopping at 90 degrees when doing squats and trying to rely on seated pedaling and “scraping something off the sole of your shoe” then you are making it almost impossible to have healthy, pain free knees. The instability from these positions means that you are beating your knees up every time you squat or pedal and until you get back to a more natural way of moving you’ll struggle to fix your knee pain.

So, this means that you need to focus on a full range of motion squats and lunges while also using standing pedaling to power your high tension movements and only sitting down for easy/ recovery efforts that don’t put a lot of stress on the knees. And even when sitting down you should rely on the hips to “scrape” the foot through the bottom of the pedal stroke.

Another thing you can do to help build stability in the knee is to use isometric exercises like squats and lunges. Holding the bottom position of a lunge for 60-90 seconds will change your definition of “hard” while also building functional strength and stability that will pay huge dividends on the trail.

In fact, I’m such a fan of isometric lunge holds that I feel they are a “must do” exercise for every 40+ year old mountain biker. They are tough so you may need to start with a few 10-15 seconds holds but nothing builds bulletproof knees like this exercise IMO.

If you suffer from knee pain already or have any sort of knee injury then isometrics are also the best choice for safely building strength and stability in the lower body. Movement based exercises create friction and require you to safely control momentum, both of which can lead to wear and tear or injuries to the knee. In fact, I rely on isometrics to build “strength” while using movement based exercises to practice the skill of applying that strength to the movement I need.

Mobility

This is a term that gets thrown around a lot but it is important to understand what the definition is when we use it in the context of designing a strength and conditioning program. It often gets used interchangeably with flexibility but they are not the same thing.

In fact, this confusion leads to a lot of well meaning riders missing this important element in their training program. Flexibility refers to your range of motion around a joint while mobility refers to your ability to create force throughout that range of motion. Doing a lot of stretching helps build flexibility but it doesn’t help with mobility, which can lead to problems.

If you can get into a range of motion but you can’t create tension and stabilize the extremes of that range of motion you end up with a situation where you get your joints into positions that your body can’t stabilize, which opens up the chance of injuries.

So mobility requires both flexibility and strength/ stability. This requires you to both stretch and to do exercises that create stability through that range of motion. The truth is that mobility training sucks and isn’t comfortable but it is the secret sauce for knees that can carry us into old age with confidence.

The first way to do this is to do deep, full range of motion lower body exercises. This ties into the previous point about not stopping at 90 degrees when squatting – besides creating an injury potential by stopping at the least stable point in your range of motion you don’t get the chance to build strength and stability in those extreme ranges that are also open to injury potential.

Another thing you can do is to create a deficit when doing lunges or split squats. Stepping on a 6-12 inch box with your lead leg when doing these exercises will force you into a much lower range of motion, exposing your knees to an extreme that you don’t normally get into. This will build true mobility as your knees get stronger and more stable in the extremes, which makes it easier to stabilize in the rest of your range of motion.

And isometrics are a great way to work on this as well. Holding a deep squat of lunge will build strength in that part of the movement without the injury potential of loaded movements. If you find that deep squats and lunges hurt your knees then try using isometrics to help you build the strength and stability you need to start using them.

Foot Support

So this is where I start to lose a lot of riders. Most mountain bikers will nod in agreement with a lot of what I’ve said so far but start to cringe at my next piece of advice.

If you want to really have healthy, pain free knees then your foot support matters a lot. And the worst foot support you can have on the bike comes from clipless pedals.

Clipless pedals create an extremely unnatural interface for your foot at the pedals. You have a single pressure point that your foot is forced to use and the pedal itself doesn’t provide great support, which requires you to rely on the shoe you are wearing to support the foot.

This creates all sorts of problems for the foot, which manifests itself in a lot of different ways. One of these is knee pain because the poor foot support means that you can’t get the leg muscles to function optimally, placing a lot of unnatural stress on the knee.

So the best thing you can do for your knees is to ditch the clipless pedals and get a good pair of flats. Flat pedals allow for a much more natural experience for your foot which leads to more natural movement and less pain.

In fact, I have heard from countless riders who found that switching to flats took care of knee pain that nothing else could help. Bike fits, shoe inserts and all those other band-aids can’t fix the core issue of just how shitty clipless pedals are for your feet.

And even if you are using flats you need to get away from the advice to push through the ball of your foot. I have a lot of posts at BikeJames.com dispelling this persistent myth but trust me, using a more mid-foot position on your pedals will take a lot of stress off the knees.

And if you really want to get the best foot support possible then get a pair of Catalyst Pedals. I designed the Catalyst Pedal to provide the best, most natural foot support possible, which is why we have so many riders report back that their knee pain simply goes away after a couple of rides on them.

By looking at the science of the pedal stroke as well as applying movement principles to the problem you come up with a much different approach than what the cycling industry tells us. This is why so many riders suffer from riding related pain and only by getting away from this toxic advice can you find freedom from pain.

Conclusion – If you suffer from knee pain then you do have some options for addressing it.

First, use isometrics to safely build strength and stability.

Second, use full range of motion squats and deficit lunges/ split squats to build mobility (isometrics can help here as well).

Third, stand up to pedal during your hard, high tension efforts and don’t try to use a leg curl to “scrape” your foot through the bottom of the pedal stroke, just let mother nature do her thing and use the hips instead.

And fourth, ditch the clipless pedals, use a mid-foot position on your flats and invest in a pair of Catalyst Pedals to really get the best, most natural foot support possible.

I hope these tips give you some direction and hope if you are suffering from knee pain. Being limited in how much you can ride or how often you can ride isn’t a great way to achieve the Riding For A Lifetime goal and with the right approach you don’t have to accept it.

If you have any questions about the advice in this post let me know. And if you have other areas of the body you want me to address let me know as well, I’m always looking for ideas from my newsletter readers so I know what you want to learn more about.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson