Knee Health
Ok. Since I Do not ride track, I had a question that a ssfg regular told me to post here.
Ive noticed that many of the SSFG riders generally advise riders to go for gear ratios that have gear inches in the 60s and 50s. For a few months I pushed 48/15 ( i think thats about 84 gear inches) daily and really got used to it.
But someone on the ssfg said that I should gear down and learn to spin, which I did. I geared down to a 48/17.
However, I realized that true track racers run much higher gear ratios, and have to spin them at much higher speeds. What do you guys do to lessen the impact on your knees? What makes you able to push such high gear ratios and spin them at much higher rates, while still maintaining knee health, as opposed to say someone who rides fixed (even SS) in a lesser but still generally high gear ratio?
Do you have exercises designed specifically to improve knee strength? To prepare the knee for pushing such high ratios?
Or is it nothing to do with exercises at all, and more to do with the environment that the bike is ridden in?
Thanks guys. Vixtor told me that Carleton and Tejano might hop in on this.
- This was a child-thread of someone on the FG forum asking about gearing down from 48/17 to 48/19 for street use.