So… I have just had an MRI and been told that my knee pain is due to Osteoarthritis. I have got a further appointment planned with a surgeon so will get an idea from them of how bad it is and what can be done.

But, it got me thinking and reading the claimed benefits of oval chainrings, mainly the reducing the joint forces when the knee is at the weakest.

So, has anyone with knee pain tried oval rings and had good results?

I am tempted to get them for both the road and the two mtb’s, but as they cost a fair chunk of money would be good to hear peoples successes with them 😀

Phil

Don’t have a knee problem at present, but was running a 32t N/W works components ring on my MTB for a short while. Wasn’t my cup of tea in the end but that does mean it’s going cheap if you want to try it out.
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Running a 32t oval on the fat bike, seems to make me climb a bit better but didn’t have sore knees before so can’t help with that. Will probably get more and was considering putting some on the road bike.

I used to have to ice my knees after a long ride. I don’t have to since going absolute black oval. So, works for me

shorter cranks helped me .

also interested as have the same condition. In the meantime have found icing regularly + Voltarol cream ( diclofenic) and fisiocrem to help a lot ..both available without prescription.

Thanks for the offer Spawnofyorkshire, but I live in Switzerland and will prob buy for all bikes if I do go down that route.

To be honest, there is not that much pain that I need to ice them currently, they just end up a bit achey at the end of a day out.

I have been upping my riding this year doing monthly 150km rides with 2-3000m of climbing on the road bike and also long mtb days out, so I thin that has caused it to flair up a bit.

My wife works in a trauma research centre and her bosses told me which surgeon I should get referred too, he is based out of a sports clinic that deals with Swiss athletes so hopefully he will have some insight into ways to reduce the future damage I am doing.

It is good to hear that it has relieved issues with some of you though 🙂

I think I might have to go private too as my doctor doesn’t seem to want to refer me to specialists. I have been twice but get told to give it more time to heal even though it’s over two months since I first had real problems. Perhaps I should try oval , it will be cheaper than private health care!

Being in CH does have some good points, it has been 10 days since first seeing my GP to getting an MRI and having a follow up review and also getting referred to the surgeon of choice.

Pretty pleased with that, the MRI will cost me 300 odd pounds though and if i need surgery I will pay up to 1300 pounds then 10% over that… so the NHS does have some benefits!

The “oval rings are kind to knees” is total BS IMO (PhD in knee biomechanics here). If your knees are being irritated while cycling then chances are cranks are too long, saddle position is wrong, cleats are wrong, you have just upped your training load too quickly, etc. If you are just a but achey after a pretty long ride with a ton of climbing then just doing too much too soon is likely to be at least a contributor.

IANAD, but a diagnosis of “osteoarthritis” whilst maintaining these activity levels is likely a case of seeing a few classic signs of slight degeneration on MRI which you can find in almost anyone. If the signs are more serious then you’d not normally expect to be able to do 150km/ 30000m rides and the treatment options start getting pretty serious so I’d be very surprised if you were in to higher grades of OA. I suspect that some good off the bike work with a decent physio will be the biggest help for you too but don’t take internet advice over that of your surgeon 🙂

Cheers DanW, I went for a full bike setup at a well respected shop out here and they adjusted all contact points, but did not suggest a shorter crank.

My wife is a stem cell biologist who did her phd in cartilage regerneration in the knee using stem cells (it had a much cleverer title than that but I can’t spell half the words) and she is the one pushing me at least get it looked at.

As for pain, I have a constant dull ache almost all the time, after an hours running it will be quite noticeable for a few days, biking is kinder on it, but once riding I am always aware that it is not happy and try to minimise the loading of it. I notice a massive difference between ‘spinning’ up a hill or powering up one, although the climbs out here are brutal so I find myself in the lowest gear so early on. (Compact with a 32 rear).

I just thought about the oval as something to try as my position should be OK now… but I might look into the cranks a bit more, thanks for the tip

I hadan MRI for knee pain a few years ago. Showed evidence of “wear”. I moved thsaddle down and forwards slightly an guess what? Pain gone. It was an ITB irritation pulling the joint out of line. I think DanW has it nailed. Cycling is not really a high impact force activity for kees.

I dont run.

philholmes – Member
Cheers DanW, I went for a full bike setup at a well respected shop out here and they adjusted all contact points, but did not suggest a shorter crank.

the option of shorter cranks is an illusion, 165-175 is a 6% difference, ie. not really a difference (about the same as the difference between a 18″ frame, and a 19″ frame).

when it comes to cranks, we’re offered ‘one size fits all’. We like to see letters like ‘ultegra’ or ‘xt’ in big font on our cranks, not numbers, in tiny font, on the back.

I have arthritis in my right knee from having large chunks of the cartilages removed 40 years ago. The only way I can ride (or walk any reasonable distance over rough ground) is using a knee brace which removes some of the load and rotational forces on the joint. I have found the Mueller HG80 the best compromise. Might be worth trying before you spend a lot of money on new bike parts

the option of shorter cranks is an illusion, 165-175 is a 6% difference, ie. not really a difference

Percentages of length don’t reflect the difference in can make to pain etc. Most people tend to find relief on shorter cranks or notice no difference. If cranks are too long people are either generally fine or find knees get aggravated. Both may make no difference to an individual but going shorter generally has no negative outcomes wrt comfort whereas cranks too long are either no different or increase possibility of a negative impact on comfort on the bike.

Might be worth trying before you spend a lot of money on new bike parts

Conversely, I’d say that unless you have structural bits of the knee missing, you may be better off putting the money in to really thorough physiotherapy. Physio is a bit of a joke on the NHS but if you can find the right person to give you a kind of “full body functional MOT” then one would hope that eases the pain for you.

CaptainMW ….do you find cycling with the mueller OK? presume it’s the hinged version you linked to is the model you find best?
thanks
Bill

Physio is a bit of a joke on the NHS but if you can find the right person to give you a kind of “full body functional MOT” then one would hope that eases the pain for you.

Just to expand on this… a brace generally compensates a lack of stability somewhere in the joint and if the knee is structurally sound (no ligament deficiencies for example) then you don’t address the root cause of the pain just compensate for it, which in *should* be addressed with off the bike work (unless “degeneration” is severe of course and you are over the tipping point). I’d also be nervous of just selecting a brace by yourself without some physio/ othopod input

While we are on the subject of Knees….
I have just had the MRI scan and have been diagnosed with a torn ACL.
A month on from the injury and it still feels unstable, sometimes painful and still swollen.

Every person I know who has had this injury (which is quite a few) has had surgery to correct it.

so why the hell am I just having Physio?

I am 33 years old and play (or rather did play) a lot of sport including MTB (obviously), football, snowboard and climbing.

Am I being fobbed off to save the NHS money?

On the subject of oval rings – my physio has not recommended this…in fact her knowledge on the subject seemed pretty thin 😀

Don’t worry, I am not going to run out and buy a forest gump brace 😀

Just looked and I have a 165 crank that came on my medium Canyon Endurace CF.

I will have a gander at shorter cranks, but will also check what i have on my mtb’s.

I have Shim 105 currently and it seems that 165 is the shortest that they do :-s

I can drop my seat more obviously, but from the bike fit they took video of my riding and measures angles etc. etc. so a little bit reluctant as it now feels ‘right’ while on the bike. I do have marking on the seatpost though so I can put it back quite easily.

Cheers again for all your input, it is appreciated

While we are on the subject of Knees….
I have just had the MRI scan and have been diagnosed with a torn ACL.
A month on from the injury and it still feels unstable, sometimes painful and still swollen.

Every person I know who has had this injury (which is quite a few) has had surgery to correct it.

so why the hell am I just having Physio?

Again, tricky to say without more info and it depends on the severity of the “tear”. Not all ACL “tears” are equal.

If the ACL is completely ruptured and you have a desire to do anything pretty active (impact, jumping, turning for example) then the usual recommendation seems to be for surgery. Also, if you managed to damage anything at the same time (eg menisci, MCL) then a patient would usually have surgery to try and fix it all. If you don’t fall in to these categories then a just physio approach can be enough for many people and avoid the possible complications of surgery.

The other often debated point is with regards to the timing of the surgery. The traditional thinking as far as I am aware is that the reconstruction should be as early as possible and it seems kind of rare to happen early enough on the NHS (getting an MRI took me a year for example!). You may then hear the argument that by that time a reconstruction adds very little to the recovery and most people find some level of coping and can’t face surgery, however there does seem to be evidence that it can still help active people with complete ruptures for example.

Main thing seems to be to do all the physical therapy you can regardless of the surgical options in front of you at the present time and bring up your concerns with your surgeon who will be much better placed to advise.

but from the bike fit they took video of my riding and measures angles etc. etc. so a little bit reluctant as it now feels ‘right’ while on the bike

A “bike fit” isn’t an exact science and you may or may not have had good advice. A “bike fit” is also a dynamic process that is subject to change so it isn’t as though once a recommendation is made you can expect to stick with it for life and not encounter any issues. That said, if you feel good then stick with what works 🙂 165’s are more than short enough BTW but I’d be surprised if they were specced by default- very rare on anything other than DH bikes where they may be specced for ground clearance

DanW – As I understand it an oval ring would accelerate the knee at the point that it is most bent and is changing direction, that doesn’t sound very knee friendly. Am I right?

I should declare that I am of the opinion oval rings are snake oil. I also assume Shimano put more research into oval rings and came up with the opposite orientation.

I read that in doing that it is reducing the time when your knee is able to produce less power so therefore reducing the strain… that is the problem, I couldnt find a real study or paper on it.

It is unfortunately easy to find differing statements regarding them, that I why i thought it would be interesting to hear from those who use them / why they do.

DanW, 165 were standard on the Medium, 170 on the Large, 2015 model.

DanW – As I understand it an oval ring would accelerate the knee at the point that it is most bent and is changing direction, that doesn’t sound very knee friendly. Am I right?

I read that in doing that it is reducing the time when your knee is able to produce less power so therefore reducing the strain… that is the problem, I couldnt find a real study or paper on it.

The theory is that you basically have a bigger gear when you can best produce power in the down stroke and then a smaller gear where you transition to the next down stroke of the other leg. The benefits are supposed to more towards improved economy (still debatable and the established studies are shonky at best) by “smoothing” the pedal stroke and somewhere along the line a claims about being knee friendly came along (these seem to have dropped off, for example AB no longer claim an oval ring “uses different muscles to a round ring” which is of course utter BS). They are unlikely to do any harm but I wouldn’t be looking at an oval ring for anything related to joint comfort.

Interesting, thanks for your input DanW. My main problem is the lack of studies to back this all up.

AB do still make those claims, tbh that was what prompted me to ask on here about people experience of them.

from their site:
‘Because oval chainrings reduce the peak loads on knee joints,riders using them get less stress on the joints (knees)’

’11 scientific studies by leading universities around the globe show that; in comparison to round chainrings, when using oval chainrings, human legs utilize more muscle groups’

Ah, seems they’ve reverted back to these claims after some time off 😉 Never doubt the power of marketing! To give some context, the only way I am aware of to measure forces acting within the knee is to use an instrumented knee replacement (of which only a couple have been implanted in the world) and if you see anything that involves any kind of modelling of joint contact forces then this basically means someone has made some kind of massively simplified model that gives some kind of results and doesn’t just collapse on itself. Even getting some numbers out is an achievement let alone getting any kind of data you can trust. Put it this way if there hasn’t been a robust study that manages to measure something simple like blood lactate or oxygen consumption between round and oval then there most certainly hasn’t been one comparing something you can’t measure 🙂

This is one of the better reads on the subject

I’ve had knee problems from riding before. Things that have helped include shorter cranks, moving to an inline seatpost from set-back, not pushing too big a gear sat down riding up hill, riding SS, not riding so much.

I ride oval rings now on SS bikes, but as I’ve not had knee problems for a while, I don’t know if they help me knee-wise or not. I’m pretty sure the other things I mentioned would have more of an impact than wobbly rings, though.

Edit: Thanks for the link, Dan, very interesting!

A good physio will help a lot. Get your vmo strengthened, your quads stretched out and you will be able to unload your joint with better muscle balancing and support of your knee… Possibly.
Muscle imbalance and tightness can play havoc with knee pain.

Never quite get the shorter crank thing.
I can see that having a smaller circle of rotation might help reduce extremes of movement but surely you lose some leverage advantage and therefore increase strain on the knees all other things being equal?

Whenever I have a go on a mates bike with I think 165 cranks and an oval ring(I have 175 and standard ring) it just feels like an absolute dog to move uphill. Could be other factors I suppose(although he’s always the first to give up and push, and gets frequent knee pain) 🙂

Shorter cranks and an inline seat post. If you can, find Andy Pruitts Medical Guide for Cyclists.. its good on bike fit and knee issues.

Shorter cranks / longer cranks, another hardy perennial. Most of the leverage claims are negated, as Sheldon Brown suggests, by choosing another gear. For SS its different… leverage I guess counts more as there is only one gear.

Having tried 180 as opposed to 175 cranks, I now used 165 and no problems.

If you follow this, for 180 mm I lowered the seat post for the bottom of the stroke, causing a knee over bend at the top, the seat being lower and the pedal comes up higher… so I found shorter cranks helpful for the opposite reason. They are a bit more spinny but gears solve that.

Finally as your in der Schweiz, shop in the UK, the £ is on the floor and being outside of the EU, no vat.

Don’t you worry about my shopping Rick, all over it 😀

Thanks for the tip on AP’s Medical guide, I will try and find a copy.

EU VAT is knocked off but I do have to pay 8% import tax and a bonus 18-30 CHF handling fee on top!

Have you looked at moving your cleats back or shimming up the affected leg Imo the ring with the MAS spider works better if you double team the affected leg i

I have a good leg and a leg that was injured in a car crash which killed off my racing bikes used to get calf and knee pain after 3-4 miles in that leg where beforehand there was none

Moving the cleats back took a bit of pressure out of the knee this kind of buggers your power but the oval ring meant it could be moved around to compensate I don’t actually know if it’s based in sciencce but it worked somehow for me

Moving the cleats back took a bit of pressure out of the knee this kind of buggers your power but the oval ring meant it could be moved around to compensate I don’t actually know if it’s based in sciencce but it worked somehow for me

Cleats back basically reduces the work the calf muscles have to do which is helpful as they tire quicker than the other bigger muscles used while cycling. Most people seem to associate this with power loss, as you have, but really the calf muscles are “stabilisers” rather than “power producers”. As usual, Steve Hogg explains it best. As the “calf” muscles get tired then the passives structure you don’t want to be irritating (eg knee collateral ligaments) experience a lot of strain. What Steve Hogg doesn’t mention is that the contraction of the gastrocs (calf muscles) also causes the knee to flex since they attach proximally to the knee joint centre, so if your calf muscles are working hard at a point of knee extension (straight leg, which happens), then your posterior thigh muscles (e.g. hamstrings) have to work hard to counter this and keep the knee straight. Co-contraction like this happens all the time but you just increase the amount of time opposite muscle groups work against each other for no net effect. All that happens is the contact forces in the joint increase and you’ll inevitably tire sooner. Hard to explain in lay terms but hopefully the message of cleats back being positive for all aspects of comfort and power come through 🙂

my cleats are very far back on my shoes already so not much change I can do there, my calf muscles are fairly hefty and would cramp when the seat was too high, but not much stress with current saddle height and don’t hurt at all, even after some pretty big 2 hour plus climbs I have done.

Thanks for the tip though

Assuming you are using road shoes then the furthest back point can still be pretty far forwards. S-Works road with Look cleats seems to put me in about the middle position of S-Works MTB shoes with SPD cleats for example. Speedplay may be the devil but they do make rearward extenders which overcomes some of these problems with 3 hole road shoes.

OP, 2 hour climbs and running probably hint more at your knee pain than bike setup 🙂 I’d still be looking to make sure your body is tip top before any tinkering with shoes/ bikes/ etc

That’s what was happening with me my right calf muscles would be buggered and I’d get a pain right behind the lh side of my knee at the back of the leg where those tendons are….

Dan are you saying this is good or bad

Not sure I understand, but cleats back is a sensible thing for you to be trying to reduce calf pain. The other point is that there should be no loss of ability to generate power for you either (a common misconception) so it is win win.