knee problems...bad ones! - Page 2

Don't know what your knee ailments are as you didn't really specify. I'm 6'2" with bad knees too. I've got osteoarthritis in both knees, patellar femoral syndrome and busted up ACLs. Lots of stiffness in the mornings, lots of popping and I don't dare bend my knees past 90º unless I want a world of pain. Very painful to ride. tried glucosamine for 4 months - nothing. Tried glucosamine with chondroitin - after 2 days, the sharp pains were really reduced. Reduced enough that I could ride much more comfortably. I also tried golden raisins soaked in gin - heard about that old recipe on the net. It acutally worked too, and no, the idea isn't that you get hammered on raisins. I'd take 3 raisins, 3 or 4 times a day, and it took the edge off almost as much as the GC w/chon did. I'm not really a fan of the taste of gin or golden raisins, so I stuck with the GC. If those hadn't worked, the next option was GC w/chondroitin and MSM - which was the last option for a friend when the first two formulations didn't work. Everyone is a little different and some meds work, others don't. I was taking 1000mg pills, 1 pill, 3 times a day. Anyway, because I could ride again, my muscles started getting stronger and helped stabilize the knee joint. This reduced the pain some more. I made sure I kept my hip - knee - 2nd toe lined up - this helped keep my knee lined up so I wasn't pedalling knock-kneed. After a few months, I didn't need to take the GC w/chondroitin anymore, and I can just ride now. Assuming you have the seat height set properly, the other two options are learn to spin ~90rpm+ (I was a grinder too) to reduce the knee loading, and consider shorter cranks because they bend your knee less. Bending the knee more also puts extra loading on the joint.

I met the same problem now.I had stopped cycling for about 1 month and I countinued cycling yesterday for just about 15miles.Night of the same day I felt the pain in the left and right knee is rising.Today morning after woke up,the pain began to rise in the right knee only and it got worse than before.Now my right leg cant stretch at all and cant walk straight due to the pain(sounds like semi-crippled).Is the size of the bike do make a difference??I used this bike for less than a year and still havent seasoned on it yet.Compared to my previous bike which is smaller size but felt much better and less obvious of knee pain(the height of the seat are same).

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I've found Reynolds Wrap on my spoked wheels to get the same aerodynamic benefit of any disc wheel in my Xero.Plus,I can peel it off and bake a potato after my ride. Can't do that with Zipp's. That's value add.