Originally Posted by
79pmooney
"Climbing out of the saddle puts a lot of strain on knee joints ..." Not necessarily bad. I have chrondomalcia patellae and my knees like coming out of the saddle. For one thing, when I throw the bike back and forth as part of the dance, the range of knee bend is less. They like that a lot. A real force and not a lot of change of bend angle isn't that harmful for my knees. (I do suffer from being a born mountain goat. Spinning high RPM and cranking going slow up hills will never be fun for me. But I can do the dance at whatever speed my body dictates,)
+1 for me. My joint hypermobility means that my knees risk dislocating slightly at extreme angles, and standing up on the pedals lowers the angle I'm requiring them to bend. My back can straighten too, if I've been tucked down in an aerodynamic position for too long with my back slightly arched. If I've been spinning or cranking hard, seated, for a long time, I use a climb out of the saddle as a way to give my knees and back a break.
It's interesting how simplistic cycling doctrine
"sit and spin, it's faster and easier on your knees" breaks down when you start looking at the diversity in cyclists. Sometimes I wonder if we can't blame this on Lance, too. I remember hearing comments from cycling's armchair quarterbacks that Jan Ullrich really mashed high gears and it was bad technique. Some went so far as to suggest that a cyclist who used a low cadence like this was doomed to second place. I've talked to some of those people recently, and they deny ever having said those things.
Some of us are just Jan Ullrich, and that's not a bad thing anymore! Or if you're a little older, how about Laurent Fignon? He lost by a rounding error in '89 spite of not using any aero gear. My dad, an inveterate spinner, prattles on about how Lemond won because his technique was better. Plus ça change, eh?