knee strain

thomas · knee strain

On longer LDP rides, I end up with pain in my knees. Does anybody else have trouble with knee strain, or is it a technique issue? I love LDP, but am afraid to ruin my knees...

pavedwave

welcome thomas-- how is your stance? more parallel the better for knees, not necessarily with feet together, but pointed at the same angle. that way your knee joints are working somewhat more in synch.

the other thing I find is that the actual knee movement shouldn't really be too excessive, see if your core/ weight distribution can be changed without bending at the knees as much?

last, I've found to be true with feet issues more than knees, but just moving about the board a little more over the long haul, experimenting with other stances for minutes at a time, then shuffling back into your "main" style again, those little breaks can do wonders.

thomas

Ha James,

Thank you for your insight. I will give it a try!

I think I have more of a duck-stance at the moment, so I will try the parallel instead.

pavedwave

How's this been going? My knees have been making a little 'click' sound lately after I ride my bike hard for a few days in a row...so I've been mixing it up with some LDP whether it's wet or not. Winter's been either icy snowy or just plain wet a lot, save for a couple glorious weeks of dryness...

thomas

The good news is that I've still been able to get some miles here in the Netherlands. The bad is that parallel stance isn't really working for me. I just don't get the flow going that way.

I'm trying to make shorter runs, but it's hard to stop when you're having so much fun Smile

pavedwave

Good to hear! I guess what I really mean is not parallel stance in the old slalom tradition, but more like "race stance" where both feet are angled 45 degrees or so, like downhill snowboard racing...rather than having full-on surf stance where your back leg and front leg are cranking more at the knee. See if this works anyway?

WiZzY

Sorry for barging in like this but Thomas, lets meet somewhere the next week. Maybe I can see what's the problem. I showed you how to go downhill, I'm sure I can teach you a little about stances for pumping Wink

My problem was the achilles tendon of my back leg. Overstreching the whole time. A subtle change of stance solved this also (and streching before)

thomas

You're more then welcome!

Don't forget, you also showed me the pumping basics.

WiZzY

little offtopic: I did a 20 km pump session today on a new flat LDP and still my feet fall asleep (nerve tingeling). Going to runnersworld to see if an extra sole in my shoe can fix this. It's no fun to be forced to step off the board because my feet won't play along Evil or Very Mad

pavedwave

well I'm enjoying some knee strain now too, although I'm certain it came from several days of biking really hard and the learning curve of using clip-ins. since the commute was wet and I didn't feel like trashing my board, I decided to just ride the bike faster. now I appreciate more what barefoot Ted says about bikes being "alien" technology, not really a natural movement but really our body forcing itself into something mechanical. I think with the bike I just need to get out of the saddle more often on hills, and gear down.

I still think longboarding is a lot more natural, and should be low impact on the knees. I'm going to do a lot more pushing switch / mongo next week.

Foot cramping and numbness is a very interesting phenom. I ran into that a lot when I first started doing 20+ miles without a stop (2+ hours at a time), sometimes I would literally have so much arch pain I couldn't even walk. just sat down and waited 5-10 minutes for the pain to go away. I think relaxation and moving the feet around on the board regularly, even bouncing them off the board a little, goes a really long way in keeping your feet alive. On a long ride with Panda the other day, I spent a major part of the time pumping switch, which is really tough -- and I discovered that old familiar foot arch pain again! So that's why I think relaxation plays a huge part in this, I was anything but relaxed, since pumping switch is really like learning from scratch again.

WiZzY

Relaxation would indeed be the key. I think that I cramped my feet too much because of the rough terrain. About 12 km of sidewalk pavement and only 8 km asphalt.
Maybe I overdid it a little bit because this was the second time I did an LDP session. (my first was only 10 km)

So now I'm thinking of doing 10 km 3 times a week and 1 time 20 km for training and let my feet adjust themselves to their new way of movement.

scooterdad

As someone who had knee surgery last year for a meniscal tear, I am pretty cautious with my knees now. I still feel a little something when I run but so far no pain with LDP or longboarding in general.

I do remember some foot pain starting out as my feet got stronger. One thing that I think helped me was building pretty slowly each session: 1 mile, 3 miles, 5 miles, etc. up to the longer distances. I also found I did much better with skateboard shoes (Old School or it is Skool? Vans) than with running shoes. It may have something to do with the last(curvature) of the running shoe as the flat-bottom Vans allow more contact area with the deck to absorb vibrations. Barefoot Ted will know a lot more about this stuff, but I recall reading something a while back that some of the perceived comfort of running shoes may come from dampening vibrations rather than cushioning the blows of hitting the ground as they seem to do a mediocre to poor job for most people in that regard. My Vans do a pretty good job I think in minimizing vibrations. I also agree that moving one's feet around to new positions often seems to help. Barefoot walking around the house or wearing an everyday minimalist shoe(lightweight, flexible) helps too to build up your foot and calf strength.

James, with the clip-in pedals for cycling, I assume you've already purchased some. If not, I really like my Speedplay X series. They allow for a LOT of float. It gives you the efficiency of clipping in, with good freedom of movement to allow your knee to "find" a proper alignment. I also believe strongly in a proper fitting with a bike shop or someone that knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. Subtle adjustments to your seat (fore/aft) and seat height can make significant changes to your comfort. Anyway, I may just be lucky but I've had no twinges of pain in my knee with cycling yet, and I still get quite a bit with running.