Originally Posted by
jamesdak
Negative, lol! I've always been a masher up hills and mountains. i also grew up a masher on my single speed bike. I progressed into being a spinner about 10 years ago as the knee problems kicked in. But honestly you have your opinion, I have mine and in the grand scheme neither matters.
I do know that my physician, knee surgeon (he's operated on my 5 times) and physical therapist are all cyclist and all have advised me to spin easy and avoid the stress of mashing. That carries more weight with me than my on opinion. The surgeon has mentioned studies on this but who knows?
Oh, and you've actually mentioned something interesting. If you agree that mashing on bad knees can now be problematic isn't that admitting that the stresses of mashing are more than spinning and thus detrimental? Common sense being applied here of course...
Injuries that affect a joint can make stresses that you normally could handle without damage painful and irritating. Are you saying we shouldn't weight lift because people with bad backs from car accidents can't lift weights without too much pain? That's not common sense at all.
We actually had a guy posting here a couple years ago who said his arthritic knees could handle mashing but not spinning, so I think it depends on the injury, btw.