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Hi,
Just been to the Physio regarding pains in my hips and the outcome was soft tissue damage, I asked if road cycling would be better for my joints (45 years old and a touch of athritis in the hip)over mountain bikes and he said Mtb would be better! is this correct?
mtb: more variety of movement in MTB, less time actually pedalling, big tyres and suspension (probably), more time out of the saddle so legs act as springs/suspension too, more likely to promote bone growth due to forces through entire body.
Ask the physio why they think but roads is manly hours with your legs doing a very short range of movement at the hips which is probably 'a bad thing'
Depends where you ride. An MTB with big tyres running at 30psi (and probably suspension too) will transmit less vibration to your joints over the same surface than a road bike with skinny high pressure tyres. But if you then use the MTB to chuck yourself off a cliff it's probably going to be worse than just bimbling down the road on your road bike.
[quote=wwaswas ]mtb: more variety of movement in MTB, less time actually pedalling, big tyres and suspension (probably), more time out of the saddle so legs act as springs/suspension too, more likely to promote bone growth due to forces through entire body.
Ask the physio why they think but roads is manly hours with your legs doing a very short range of movement at the hips which is probably 'a bad thing'
+1
MTBers - specifically dirt jumpers - seem to roll far better joints than their roadie brethren.
No contest.
+1 for more variety of movements on the MTB, less chance of an RSI type injury and more muscles built ups tabilising the joints rather than pushing them through the same range of movement reppetitively?
MTBers - specifically dirt jumpers - seem to roll far better joints than their roadie brethren.
Dam the UCI and their stringent drug testing
The pains started when I rode my hardtail at stainburn most weekends for about 2 years also jumping the rock drop. I've changed my way of riding to more xc rather than jumps/drops (now 45 and should know better) If road cycling is harsh and unforgiving I'll stick with my Prophet for the minute as I nearly bought a Bianchi last week thinking I would benefit.
Depends on the joint problem I would imagine. My 60 yo dad has arthritic knees, one of which has now been replaced, the other will be done soon. He finds the MTB jars his joints to much where as sitting and spinning on the road seems to give him less pain. His physio said that with his problems the gentle spinning movement on a road bike was much better than the less smooth movements on the MTB.
So I guess the answer is "it depends".
I think there are two different questions/answers at play here...
(a) What is likely to be the least painful on your joints?
(b) What would be better to maintain movement in your joints?
I'd say that rod riding will be smoother and will have less "shock" so you'd be able to ride for longer. However, you're not using the same range of movement, so any "wear and tear" could happen sooner and you're not building up other muscles around the joints.