cosmo starr

for the first time i felt some knee pain....easy ride, i was actually just out trying to find my dog....so no hard pedaling.....but for the past week or better i have been doing some hard riding,
am i tiring my knees out by pedaling hard and just feeling the repercussions

DannoXYZ 

yes and no. Your position on the bike probably makes a bigger difference than mashing. But it depends upon how severely you're mashing as well.. So be careful about bike-fit and mashing, I've got a lot of ex-racer friends who are permanently injured and disabled from knee-injuries. Find a shop with a FitKit who knows how to use it and get yourself measured on the bike to see what your position is. Then keep an eye on the gears and take it easy.

531Aussie

Like Danno said, I would also say that poor position is much worse than mashing big gears. Anyway, you'd probably find it very difficult to pound big gears for much of a ride. I'd struggle to grind along at 60 or 70rpm for more than 15 mins

If you ride with any intensity, there always some risk of injury, even at high revs.

Puppypaws

did you find your dog?

JJakucyk

It depends on the person, but mashing (or climbing) eventually causes my right knee to get a bit sore/inflamed. I know my bike fit is good, it's just a recurring injury that doesn't seem to want to go away.

SandySwimmer

I had funny knee pains . . . and inner calf pains . . . and various other over-use pains until I went with the clip pedals and shoes (Specialized). There must be something with my weight distribution on the pedal or the allignment that fixed themselves.

Sandy

operator

Never, ever mash.

DannoXYZ 

...except for potatoes...

ed073

how's the dog?

DGale

Define mashing

DannoXYZ 

Using big gears, pushing hard only on the downstroke, not being able to spin circles one-legged. Viewed from the front/rear, your knees also splay outwards at the top of the pedal-stroke and takes a sudden rise in pressure going into the downstroke. This causes the knee to move back inwards. A lot of lateral movement's not good for the knees as well as sharp transistions in load.

ed073

What the hell**********

Cyclaholic

Squashing peeled, diced and boiled potatoes into a rough pasty consistency, adding a little milk and a pinch of salt to taste as you go.

Yum.

DannoXYZ 

yeah, follow a gear masher, you'll see a lot of lateral movement of their knees throughout the pedal-stroke...

ed073

First I've heard of it. When doing strength efforts, my own pedal stroke also stays the same. Slower cadence, same action.

Lateral movement of the knees during pedalling is a result of individual's biomechanics.

DannoXYZ 

Yeah, it's also positioning on the bike, typically caused my too-low of a saddle. Check out Moulton's fit & sizing guides. If you have a smooth transition from the upstroke, across th e top to the downstroke, then you're really spinning with a smooth circular stroke and not really mashing. Big gears or low gears doesn't matter as much as smoothness of the circle.