How do all. I’ve had a lingering pain in my vastus medialis-

which develops as I cycle. It’s always the first muscle to start to hurt and the last one to ease off. I don’t have any other unusual muscular pain in my legs.
Seat height is set fine and the pain develops irrespective of bike. I stretch post-ride and use a foam roller also.
I’m fit and ride a 10TT a week and normally 150 miles in addition.
Anyone else had owt similar? Any pointers please?

Yip,
Road Bike was too big for me. I had a classic retro Raleigh Eclipse 22″ basically way too big for me but it was a £25 charity shop find so I rode it and really shouldn’t have. My knee was well behind the pedal axle when extended. I was just asking for trouble and I found it.

Mine would flare up as soon as I got out of the saddle on climbs, low cadence, high torque and it was like something exploded in my thigh to the point that I finished a couple of climbs pedalling on one leg!

Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation… NO MASSAGE, lay off racing check your saddle fore aft position in relation to the end of your femur. If you have to cycle (I did as I commute) then spinning is the key, don’t pull big gears.

I cured mine by following the above and getting a new Bianchi Impulso that fitted me 2 months ago

It’s a small but important muscle that gets lazy very quickly as the other larger surrounding muscles can compensate quite easily. Some people will also try to tell you that VM injury causes patella maltracking and anterior knee pain around the patella but personally I think that is not entirely true for many reasons (e.g. the fibres of the VM are actually quite longitudinal rather than diagonal as most illustrations will show).

It also tends to pick up small tears if you have other medial knee injuries (e.g. MCL rupture)- any history of other injuries in that area? The VM is most active towards a fully extended (straight knee) so it could be that the saddle is too high or too far back causing you to extend your knee too much perhaps? I know you say this is irrespective of bike but once irritated it will be painful on any bike IMO.

What has changed recently with the bikes? New bike? Riding an old bike more recently? New shoes changing the stack height? New shorts?

When I was going through a similar thing it was actually a lot of glute stretching and strengthening that helped me the most (another area that cyclists develop notoriously lazy muscles). If you search for glute stretches and exercises like clams or glute toe touches then this might help once the inflammation has settled down. With the VM itself I also found relief from improving the coordination of the muscle in relation to the RF and VL muscles. If you lie or sit with your leg straight but relaxed then extend (straighten) the knee and raise your foot a few cm from the floor then you want the VM to be firing before the RF and VL. You can test this by holding your hands over the 3 muscles, extending the knee and raising the foot and feeling for which order the muscles start to tense and contract in.

Quite a rambling but hopefully some things to be looking at! 😀

Move your saddle forward one centimetre on the rails. Pain should disappear. Had the same on my commuting road bike. When I checked the geometry carefully, the slacker seat angle meant that the saddle was a centimetre further back. Once moved, all pain vanished and has never come back.

All my bikes have the same saddle to BB relative position now; 74cm BB to top of saddle, and nose of saddle is 5cm behind the BB. Check yours. It’s not just saddle height that is important.

Dropping the saddle 5mm sorted it for me, which I seem to remember actually stemmed from new pedals.

Thanks for the replies.
It started when I rode my g/f’s bike, a Medium Singular Kite. Too small rather than too large. I only rode the bike a few times back in March but the pain seems to be lingering no matter what bike I ride.
DanW, thanks for the in depth reply. I’ll try the exercises you mention. There’s no history of injury to that side, all my injuries are on the left, always have been!
Pedals, shoes, kit all the same. I’ll go through adjustments one by one and see how I get on.
Thanks all again.

Too small rather than too large

Did you move the saddle back to accommodate the smaller size frame? Or just raise the saddle to your normal height? My money is still on saddle fore and aft position. I suffered for ages before I spotted the difference on my bike.

What kind of stretching do you do?

As hamstrings get very tight from cycling this can cause quad pain, this is a great exercise to do pre ride, mid ride, post ride. Along with touching toes, and holding foot to ass.

https://www.exercise.com/exercise/crossed-legs-hamstring-stretch

Don’t get quad pain anymore.

Only other thing which I founded helped was a truvativ 25mm layback seatpost, put me in a better position over the pedals.

TiRED I stopped riding it.
Just back from a 10 including 20 miles warm up/down and leg feels fine so I will take some base measurements from the TT bike and see how it compares to the other bikes.
Cruzcampo, I do heel to bum each side, calf stretches and crossed legs toe touching. I’ll check the link.
Thanks again.