When you pedal, do you ever notice your knees doing something funny?
It doesn't hurt at all, but you see them move around as you pedal. They're not consistently in line with your feet and they collapse inward or move outward when you pedal. No big deal, right?

WRONG!

Ever since I started riding, my right knee would collapse inward every pedal stroke. Never caused pain or anything, and my fitters said that it wasn't a big deal. I'm here to tell you different.

When your knees move like that, it's normally a case of a muscle weakness in your quad. If your knee collapses inwards, it means that your outer quad is stronger than your inner quad (VMO weakness). What this means, is that you're setting yourself up for injury.

It happened to me. I was racing all last year up to 5 times a week, and training hard. I was NOT overtraining and I thought everything was fine, that was till my knee started feeling funny. I felt fine on the bike, but off the bike my knee would really hurt. The pain didn't go away, so I stopped riding for a bit. When I rode, the pain came right back again.

Turns out, my imbalance led to chondromalacia. I've been off training for half a year now, and have been rehabbing. I can ride easy now with pain that lasts only for an evening. That is awesome compared to what it used to be.

My warning is simply to keep an eye out for movements that don't look right and then check with your PT or medical person to see if this is a movement issue that needs to be addressed.

We do this for fun, but need to pay attention to our bodies and make sure that we don't set ourselves up for injury.

Thanks for reading.