Originally Posted by
Sy Reene
I don't understand. Define how normal is established? There's much anecdotal stuff on the interwebz on how wider Q factors help some folks. MTBs have good amount wider Q's than Road by default, and Fatbikes wider than that. Equating to a walking gait doesn't seem appropriate. All the force in a pedal stroke is with the knee pretty sharply bent.
And the knee bends in line with what the leg is already doing. Walk, run, pedal boat, whatever. Your body is very happy with a wide variety of motions with your knees and feet much closer to each other than the arbitrary 6" gap that bikes demand.
Why would you assume that bicycle Q is at all natural? A great deal of the innovations in cycling have been to address the damaging ergonomic deficiencies of traditional saddles, pedals, seat height, handlebars, tire width, vibration, etc. No one was even aware of crank width as a thing before Grant Peterson and Graeme Obree started talking about it in the '90s.
This article mentions specific research on how narrower is better by University of Birmingham. Maybe that would be a good place to read about the actual science?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_factor_(bicycles)
