Playing sports is good. Always. Stay with that and do not cling to the accidents or accidental ailments that this may entail because if you do it with knowledge, practicing it in a continuous and healthy way, it can only generate health and a good habit. Even more so if you like a specific sport and enjoy doing it.
In the case of cycling, the same thing happens. Continuous riding or long days pedaling your bike can cause problems in your extremities, especially in the knees, which is one of the parts that work the most when we practice BTTor >road cycling. Hence, one of the most common ailments suffered by cyclists is Chondromalacia or Patellar chondropathy.
Chondromalacia is possibly the ailment that most affects the knees of cyclists. It is a pathology related to the repetition of a gesture in a cyclical manner that generates wear and tear of the cartilaginous area of the back of the kneecap when it rubs against the femoral condyle (the end of the femur).
The kneecap is that small triangular-shaped bone located just above the knee. The rectus femoris muscle (one of the four parts of the quadriceps, the muscle of the thigh) inserts into its upper part. And in its lower part it joins the tibia through the patellar ligament.
The causes of this degeneration or wear of cartilage can be very varied. In addition to pain in the anterior part of the knee, the most common symptoms of Chondropathy are pain when going down hills or stairs as well as a feeling of stiffness and difficulty in extending the knee. knee after spending a long time with the knee bent (a car trip or a movie at the cinema).
It is most advisable that a traumatologist determine the degree of Chondropathy using MRI, since it may be more or less advanced. It is important, or at least highly recommended, that the medical specialist has some experience with cyclists or at least athletes, since if not, his first recommendation may simply be to tell you to stop riding a bike or that his diagnosis is a "simple" sprain.
If Chondromalacia is not very advanced, there are a series of treatments or methods to reduce this friction and therefore stop wear and eliminate discomfort:
- Raise the saddle. By doing this, we will bend the knee less and therefore put less pressure on the kneecap. Raise it as much as you can without your hips "dancing" with each pedal stroke.
- Increase the cadence: it is another way to reduce the load on the kneecap. To do this, you have to get used to shifting just before starting the climbs.
- Check that you do not carry the saddle too far forward, as this also increases knee flexion.
- Using pedals with few degrees of movement helps reduce lateral deviations of the knee while pedaling, which may be increasing the pressure of the femoral condyles on the patella.
- Through a biomechanical analysis of the pedal stroke, we can improve the support of the foot on the pedal, making the pertinent modifications that contribute to reducing pressure on the kneecap.
- It is possible that by increasing the separation between the crank and the pedal we will improve, since a possible cause may be that we have a larger than normal hip separation. This would cause the tibia to not be aligned with the femur and therefore would be another source of added pressure on the kneecap.
- In everyday life you should avoid spending a lot of time with your knee bent. If you work seated, it is advisable to try to get up from time to time and look for positions in which the knees are straight.
Performing a series of quadriceps strengthening exercises will help better support the kneecap and reduce cartilage wear. To improve this knee pathology without giving up cycling, we recommend a few:
- Standing with your legs extended, simply contract your quadriceps hard as if pushing towards the ground and hold the contraction for 10 seconds. Rest for another 10 seconds and contract again. Do 10 repetitions.
- Leaning your back against the wall, bend your knees about 45 degrees, hold a ball between your knees. 8 repetitions of 20 seconds resting 20 seconds between repetitions.
- Sitting in a chair, stretch one leg and keep it extended horizontally. On the fifth day, put on some ankle weight. 8 repetitions of 20 seconds, resting 20 seconds between repetitions.
- In the extension machine quadriceps, do only the last 10 degrees of the movement and maintain the muscle contraction for 5 seconds with the knee extended.
- Sitting on the floor, with your back against the wall and your legs extended. Place a rolled towel under your knees. Contract your quadriceps, straighten your knee and lift your ankle off the ground. Start with 15 repetitions and increase.
- Hamstring stretches (sitting, leg bent with the knee out, bring your hands to the feet of the stretched leg) and quadriceps (standing, bend the leg holding the ankle with your hand).
Always using your own mountain bike also helps to strengthen the quadriceps and therefore to better support the kneecap and thus avoid rubbing against the femur. All this in order to avoid the happy and annoying Chondromalacia patella.
But as we told you at the beginning, if you like to practice a sport, do not abandon it unless a specialist expressly tells you otherwise. If in your case it is cycling, even better because throughout the country you will find the best opportunities to ride your bike, either on a MTB route or renting the bicycle that best suits the journey you want to travel by pedaling.
