Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - whats worse for your knees...

...skiing on moguls or riding fixed. those guys legs must kill after each run.

i'd say fixed gear riders - skipping and skidding put a lot of strain on the knees. plus the shocks that our knees are absorbing are more irregular and abrubt.

olympic mogul riders are conditioned to take each mogul as smoothly as possible so as to maintain control and minimize their times.

i'd say fixed gear riders - skipping and skidding put a lot of strain on the knees. plus the shocks that our knees are absorbing are more irregular and abrubt.



newb question - i keep on hearing 'skipping' what exactly is it? i understand its a stopping method. sorry for the hijack.

newb question - i keep on hearing 'skipping' what exactly is it? i understand its a stopping method. sorry for the hijack.
its pretty much skidding but instead of throwing youself forward, minimizing the weight on the back, you either stay seated or only put yourself slightly forward (whatever works, you gotta find a nice balance) so a far amount of weight remains on the back. This makes it so the wheel 'skip' instead of a long skid. It just takes a little pratice. If you can skid, you can skip after a tiny amount of trying it out.

I dont know how anyone who has tried freestyle mogul skiing and fixed gear riding could possibly say that riding fixed is harder on your knees. Your cruising at 20-30mph ramping of of 4ft speed bumps made of ice, then vaulting yourself 20ft into the air only to land on more ice. You cant tell me youve ever bruised your internal organs skidding to a stop. Sorry i live in colorado, and have spent my fair share of time as a ski bum, so i felt i had to chime in. And this goes for freestyle or even just plain old bump skiing. Fixed riding is easier no contest.

I'm no expert and I've only been skiing once, but I'd say that DenhamCla is spot on. What I saw during the olympics looked far rougher on the body than anything you could pull off on a fixed gear, including crashing.

Well, having a bit of experience in both, i'd say mogul skiing can lead to accidents that will really mess up your knees, but done properly, it's fine. skipping and skidding on a fixie doesn't seem to bad, but i find that spinning down long hills and trying to provide continual resistance to the pedals can feel really bad on my knees. Who knows, but how freakin awesome was the men's moguls?

i think moguls definitely! at least with fixed gear you can soft pedal; i can only imagine the disasterous consequences of letting your legs just go 'limp' in the middle of a mogul run.

plus, with skidding/skipping, those techniques are typically the perogative of the rider (except for emergencies), since you have the option of gently slowing down (i.e., without skids/skips or with the assistance of a brake).

Being that the moguls look exactly like the kind of sport I would come up with if I was asked to design a sport that destroys knees, it sort of wins... if that's a victory. What an idiotic sport! No wonder half the field is injured all the time.

Its definately the moguls. I would say that what i feel after a long ride is more similar to what i felt after a day of GS (giant slalom for the non-skiracing crowd) training in college.

And to add to what someone said in another thread (regarding speed skating being a great crosstrain for riding), skiing in all its alpine forms is also great training -add "just ask tyler hamilton"

i just broke my wrist snowboarding, so im sticking to bikes.

and art.

and running.

and girls.

i do both, and i vote for moguls. that **** is brutal, and thats if u are doing it right. if u get sloppy, forget it, youre done. i nearly broke my shin in aspen b/c i got sloppy. i guess if u get sloppy on your fixie u can get hurt pretty bad too.
i just think the impact and torsion from moguls is more intense...

i just broke my wrist snowboarding, so im sticking to bikes.
i twisted my knee skateboarding the other day, so i know the feeling.

I don't care for moguls. I was out at Alta two weeks ago, and every single time I came across a bumpy section of a groomed run, I started thinking, "Man, if I go down hard here, I'll probably mess up my knees and then there goes my cycling season."

So I wussed out and made an effort to cruise through the moguls deliberately. That's not to say I didn't ski hard, cause I did.

Deep powder felt harder on the legs, but only the muscles.

I broke my wrist the first time I went snowboarding... I advocate not giving up. It's a good time once you find your balance.

There's no reason fixed should be bad for your knees if you're using brakes, though, right? couldn't see why there would be...?

I think skiing moguls is more severe on the knees. I ski but I don't bother with moguls, but I know for sure that those bumps over time will destroy your knees. I was watching some of the Olympic moguls events yesterday and heard the reporters mention how the skiers knees and back have been giving them trouble. It's a common injury for that type of skiing. I get sore in the calves of my legs on my fixie more than my knees. Skidding stretches my achilies tendons and the muscles down there. But yes the knees get sore as well. This is a question that has no right or wrong answer. All opinion.

As a former ski bum and racer: skiing is worse for your knees times like a ****ing billion. Both in the long run and in the potential for catastrophic failure.