Aches and Pains, and a Professional Bike Fitment

Preamble

I've been working hard to get back up to some kind of cycling shape since late January.

As I mentioned in Starting On Fitness, I picked up a smart trainer and started doing a lot of indoor cycling, or "spinning" if that term hasn't been trademarked yet.  As of March 28th (so two months of trainer ownership), I've done 700km.  Pretty good start to the season.

However, I don't plan to do a lot more indoor riding from now through to next fall, because I really hate indoor cycling!  In the past couple of weeks, I've done 290km of outdoor riding, and it has been glorious!  

Maybe those are pedestrian numbers, but they're great in my books, after so many years of zero kms.

Anyway.

Getting back into cycling, I'm being reminded of a lot of bodily aches that have slowed or stopped me in the past, sometimes for a year or more at a time.  And since I will NOT allow myself to have an excuse, I'm tackling them up as they come up.

The biggest is probably knee pain.

I've also known my legs are somehow disproportional to the rest of my body, and asymmetrical to each other somehow, but I never knew how to discover more nor what to do about it.

Pain

My efforts with my Bowflex home gym were going great, until I started cycling again.  In particular, my knees started to really hurt and make a crackling sound when I would do leg extensions and squats.  And I was 100% certain it was the bike, and figured it was probably poor cleat positioning.

I won't talk about running here; my knees hurt just thinking about it, but it is something I'd like to get back into.  But to that track, I've noticed that I also started feeling knee pain when walking since getting back into cycling!

A quick Google search brought me to a whole slew of bike fitting videos on YouTube, and one particular playlist with Neill Stanbury, a professional bike fitter by Cam Nicholls really resonated with me.  Basically, it was probably way more than just my cleats.  It got me thinking about my legs and feet as part of the whole system; I'd basically stopped riding for 7 years after a disastrous RTCC because of intense foot pain from my new shoes.

Fortunately, all this came up just after Peel Region crawled out of stay-at-home, so I booked a physio appointment with Merin at Square One Physio to start looking at my knees and I was hoping for an orthopedic session to look at my feet.  Those appointments started mid-March.

Continuing to watch more videos with Neill, several other things came up.  I'd known my seat was still "low" compared to what I used before, but when I tried raising it up, I got a lot of male-specific groin pressure.  Moving my seat all the way back and tilting its nose down helped a little bit, but that was contrary to common practice.  But Neill also mentioned SQlab seats specific to the groin pressure problem.  In looking up SQlab seats, I'd ordered their fitting kit (really just some paper and a crushable fitting cardboard to sit on).  Further investigation for SQlab in the GTA, I came across Fitt1st Bike Fit, an SQlab certified fitter.

Scott Judges at Fitt1st caught my attention partially because his blog said he went beyond the standard calculations, something Neill also discusses a lot.  I wanted more than just a calculated fit, I wanted it personalised.

I reached out to Fitt1st in February, and got an appointment for late March, 5 weeks later.  I was genuinely pleased, because I was concerned he might not be open due to the lockdowns.  I count myself doubly lucky now, because he's now so busy that by time I had my appointment, he's now taking appointments into July!

Since the fitting appointment was so far off in time, once I got the SQlab seat fitting kit, it said I was looking for something between a 13cm and 14cm seat, and Amazon happened to have a 14cm 612 Ergowave S-Tube seat in stock.  I grabbed it instead of waiting, and it has proved to be a great upgrade!

While I waited for my fitting appointment, I started on my physio sessions.  Merin immediately focused on my knees and muscle imbalance causing the knee caps to become misaligned while sliding over the knee, and has given me daily exercises to perform to help balance things out.  After two weeks, I will say I'm seeing an improvement.

I also picked up new handlebars for the bike, as I knew the old ones were irritating me.  Grabbed them when I did because parts are really hard to come by.

The Fitting!

The bike fitting appointment was about 4 hours long, and touched on just about everything.

Cycling is all about efficiency.  You want 100% of your power going straight into the pedals, not off on an angle or needing muscles to compensate for misalignments.

Scott started with a million questions; where are my pains, where do I think I need help, how do I feel when I ride, do I clench my toes when I ride, and so on.  He took measurements of my bike, seat position, expressed horror at my new handlebars, and then things got busy.

Though not in order, he did things like have me dangle my feet looking for various conditions (like Varus Foot), measured my major bone lengths (Femur and Tibia stuck in my mind), tested several points of flexibility, then had me get on the bike and start spinning while aiming a laser on my knees to watch how they track, measured my 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock knee angles (I think he said 140-155 degrees is preferable?), measured my lean angle.  And lots of boxes were getting checked off.

He also went into depth around specific fitting challenges and solutions throughout the session.  99% of it flew right past, but I did grab a bit.

For instance, think about the cycling shoe, clamped into the pedals.  You might have a bit of horizontal twisting "float" (your heel swivels from left to right), but you are unable to twist your feet to be more outside-edge-down.  And most people actually need that to properly align their foot bones.

Biggest Takeaways

My foot width is pretty normal.  Not narrow, not wide.

I have Varus Foot, in particular a Rearset Varus Foot, if I understood him correctly.  

My arches aren't terrible, but not great.  My feet grow a size between sitting and standing as the arch stretches.

My legs are basically the same length.  I did not expect that.

My Femurs (upper leg) is disproportionately long when compared to my Tibias (lower leg).  He said this is great for cycling, but it does present serious bike fitting challenges.

My bike frame size is okay-ish.

My flexibility isn't great.

I feel I'm putting too much weight on my hands.

Drilling Down

Feet Width

Nothing major here.  I've always found I had "narrow" feet when it came to cycling shoes, but that's because that's "unloaded".  If I go too wide, my feet can move around inside the shoes and ultimately, I end up pulling my feet out in a sprint, with comedic leg-over-head actions.  Shimano shoes have always made me happy here.  Nothing to change.

Varus Foot

Apparently Varus Foot is suffered by 86% of the population, and we just learn to compensate for it while unintentionally damaging our knees.

Basically:

If you're standing at rest, you want to use your skeleton to support all your weight, with zero muscle involvement.  This requires two major bones, one from your leg, and one in your foot, to be properly aligned.  They are not aligned naturally in my feet, with my right foot further out of alignment than the left, hence the asymmetry I've always suspected.

We found this out pretty simply; sit on a high bench and just let your feet dangle.  Are they flat?  Or are they twisted to one side or another?  Mine twist outside-edges-down.

Why does this matter?  Because your feet are locked into the pedals at level.  NOT where your foot design wants them to be.

Imagine your feet in the pedals.  Imagine you're applying force down on your right leg.  Now imagine your primary bones between your leg and foot are misaligned such that your leg (and knee) needs to move inside to get aligned.  Now your muscles are overcompensating, and those muscles are causing your knee cap to float off centre, and rub against your cartilage, and so on.  I was doing this on both legs, though moreso on the right.

To compensate for my specific issue, I sometimes "clenched" my big toes, in order to sort of lift the inside arch of my feet (if you will) inside the shoes, which puts those bones closer into alignment.  Considering I've probably been doing this for most of my life, I've been doing this unconsciously, and during the interview, I told him I did not clench my toes.  But once he started taking steps to change the fit to account for my Rearset Varus Foot, that's when I discovered that wow, my toes can be neutral, in contrast to whatever I was doing before.  It felt very different, it felt wonderful, but it is going to take me a while to learn to relax my toes it seems.

With Rearset Varus Foot and cycling, the best way to account for it is to twist the entire shoe towards your natural position.

In the end, he tested out a 2 degree cleat wedge on the left, and 3 degrees (2 + 1 wedges) on the right.  Using his laser to track my knees in relation to my toes, that did a good job of keeping the knees on a straight track on the power stroke.  I still pull my knees out on the "recovery" (return) stroke, but that's mostly because my muscles are out of balance due to having to account for the misalignment all my life.  Stretching and balance-reinforcing exercises will eventually fix that up.

Arches

On the bike, I wear a size 44 Shimano cycling shoe.  I've worn other cycling shoes through the years, but none of them fit as well as Shimanos, and some actively destroyed me (like Sidi cycling shoes).

But I usually go for larger not-cycling shoes, like 45-45.5 trail shoes and 46 motorcycle boots (more space for thick vibration-absorbing socks).

This agrees with what he saw when he measured my feet between sitting and standing.  Since cycling is not "weight bearing" in the same way, that's what dictates my cycling shoe size.  

My right foot arch is slightly longer than my left foot arch.

To help reinforce my arches on the bicycle, there are a couple options.  Cheapest is to buy off-the-shelf arch inserts, like the Smartfeet Carbons (specifically thin to fit into cycling shoes), but the best is to get proper orthopaedic insoles made at great expense, especially if your arches are way out of symmetry.  Another alternative would be to get adjustable off-the-shelf insoles, like the G8 Pro Series 2820 adjustable orthotics, as recommended by Neill Stanbury.

Now, the length of my arches is important here.  Though textbook sizing suggested I should be looking at a Smartfeet size E for both feet, in fact I should be looking at the larger size F for my left, and even larger size G for my right.  But since the kit only comes with one size for both feet, I cheaped out and just got a pair of F's, at least for now.

All of this also coincides with me noticing that since my knees have started hurting while walking after I got back on the bicycle, sometimes if I deliberately walk outside-edge-down, the knee pain would abate.  

For note, I've since ordered a set of Smartfeet Run Comfort inserts (size F) for my trail shoes.  They're due to arrive today, just in time for a cold 0c walk (instead of a 0c ride.)

Leg and Body Proportions

Scott specifically called out my Femur to Tibia ratio as being in the goldilocks zone where my Femur is considerably longer than average, such that I don't require as much flexibility to get the most out of my legs, I suspect I have more muscles available for the 2-5 o'clock pedal stroke portion, and so on.  

But due to the length of my Femurs, the best option is to get my seat way back, like waaaay back.  I'd figured this from watching online videos (like the Cam/Neill series), but it still didn't seem far enough back even at max, so I thought I was doing something wrong.  Turns out, I was spot on.  And this creates a problem.

My upper body and arms are not overlong though, meaning I can't reach as far forward as an average human.  This creates a challenge for my top tube length, stem height, and stem length.

Frame Size

This is a harder-to-solve thing.

Many many years ago, when I went to buy my Cinelli SuperCorsa, I had a quick "FitKit" done that recommended a 60.1cm seat tube, so that's what I got.

Modern wisdom seems to measure frames differently (top tube instead of seat tube), and I keep seeing the "textbook" recommendation that you go one size down from what you would think is right.  To that point, when I went to put a down payment on a beautiful size XL Time Fluidity 2018 frameset a few weeks ago at La Bicicletta, they tried to talk me into going "one size down" to an L.  Not knowing anything but my 30+ year old bike fitting knowledge, I stuck with the XL with its 58cm "equivalent" seat tube.  (modern frames do not have level top tubes, so the bottom-bracket to top of top tube seat tube measurement doesn't work anymore.)

First thing Scott said was that my frame is actually a 58cm, but that's based on the top tube measure.  The seat tube is definitely 60cm.  Okay, moving on.

Scott set my seat about 2cm higher, and rolled it back as far as he could.  This brought my knee bend into the right range.  

But now, I need to pretzel over in order to reach my bars.  In previous years, I used a 120mm stem, and handlebars with a very long reach.  Some weeks ago, I'd bought a 90mm stem and bars with about 20mm less reach.  And both raised alarms with him as being wildly too long.

He did a number of tests with an adjustable stem and FSA Gossamer Compact, and I really liked it.  As per the shoulder measurements, 40cm (42cm at the drops) ordered!

As for the stem, that's a bigger problem.  In truth, he wanted as short as possible, because I'm too far bent over trying to reach the bars, apparently beyond what even a flexible pro would be expected to contort himself to.  His adjustable stem contraption offered as low as 55mm, which was good, but he settled on 60mm because even that's so short that bike handling may be compromised.  Ordered!

He also jacked up my stem to a little beyond the max height (I'm using a threadless adapter on ancient threaded forks), again to reduce my contortion.  Now he's terrified that it'll drop down after a good pothole.  Compromises everywhere.  :/

The real solution here is to get a custom frame with an unusually short but tall top tube.  $$$$$, I have to imagine, especially if I go carbon fiber!

Anyway, there's nothing "wrong" with my new Time frame sizing; going smaller would not have saved me, and going larger (if they even had a larger) would just have stretched me out more.  There's no happy medium.  I just have to deal with it.

Cripes, I need to crawl all over the Earth to find parts in stock, and it is costing me a mint in shipping charges.

Flexibility

Scott supplied several YouTube video links after the session to demonstrate proper stretching and exercises to perform to work on my flexibility.  Maybe I'll look at them someday?  :(

Too Much Weight On My Hands

Basically, I feel I'm still putting way too much pressure on my hands, and always have.

In the YouTube videos, they say you should have barely any weight on your hands, and one symptom is your hands going numb.  My hands have been going numb since I first started road bikes.

However, moving my seat around has never solved it.  Forward, back, no difference.  I imagine if I moved the seat waaaaaaaaay back, yes, that might help, but that's just not realistic.

Why all this?  Because my upper body is just too heavy.  I need to lose more weight from my upper body.

Workin' on it!

The Result

It still feels a little weird.  I've done about 50km since the fitment, and I have different knee pain now, mostly in my left knee.  But this is not unexpected, since I need to now re-learn how to do a proper pedal stroke, rebalance my muscles, and stop overcompensating for my deformities.  

The seat height feels great.  Bar height does scare me, but I'm still riding on my 90mm stem too.  Can't wait to get the shorter stem in..  Oh hey, it was supposedly delivered 9 minutes ago!  

The entire process with Fitt1st was excellent.  I had so many questions answered that have been stumbling around in my head since I was 15.  I can't wait to see what this riding season feels like!