There are many benefits to riding a bike and it can be a fun and easy way to get a little exercise in and enjoy some fresh air. Riding a bike can improve your cardiovascular fitness, strength, endurance and even your mood and mental clarity. But what do you do if riding your bike causes pain and you just can’t ride that far anymore? Do you just need a new bike? Should something be adjusted? How do you know?
The Bike Fit experts at Active Physical Therapy have a solution for you. We will fit your bike to you to compensate for injuries, pain, or annoyances.
- Does your neck hurt on long straight aways?
- Numbness and tingling in your hands?
- Knee pain with hill climbs?
- Low back pain or even saddle soreness that isn’t from first ride of the season?
All of these things can be tied to your position on the bike, and can be addressed and FIXED with a proper Bike Fit. By assessing how you sit on your bike, your seat position, saddle tilt, handle bar tilt and position, pedal position and even shoes and shorts, we can address some of the most commonly occurring injuries in the biking world.
What if you don’t have a new bike? Or a nice bike?
It doesn’t matter what kind of bike you ride, we can make sure that the fit is right for you. We can fit you to your cruiser bike, road, mountain, cross country, downhill, triathlon bike, tandem, or even unicycle. We can fit multiple bikes in a session, so just let us know you are bringing in more than one so we can allot enough time to address each bike appropriately.
How do we analyze you on your bike?
You will get a full evaluation of you and your bike. We will look at your posture, your gait pattern, flexibility, strength and potential muscle imbalances, range of motion, and watch what happens when you are riding your bike.
Your therapist will put your bike on a trainer – this is a small machine that allows your to pedal your bike without going anywhere – and we can see what you look like while riding your bike. Through a series of measurements and observations of both you and your bike, using multiple tools and techniques, we can analyze what the cause of your problem is and from there make adjustments to change it. In some cases, it may be that the bike adjustments aren’t enough to take all the discomfort away. There may be more underlying physical issues in your body that may have to be addressed as well. As physical therapists, we are well-suited to address these issues right away. It may be that you have limitations in movement and strength that are holding you back and causing the pain. We can determine this and make suggestions about specific exercises and strength that will help you improve those limitations and weaknesses. There may be a restriction or tension in the muscle or joint that we can address with manual therapy and modalities to improve your mobility and in turn your ride. Getting you into a structured PT plan if necessary, can greatly improve your comfort, performance and endurance while riding your bike. It is a combination of all these factors that makes us different from a bike fit performed anywhere else. We can immediately educate, treat, and alleviate ALL factors associated with your pain while biking. We have the knowledge and skills to not only adjust your bike, but to adjust your body, to improve your riding experience.
So get on your bike and head down to Active Physical Therapy. Let us assess your biking frustrations and get you back to pedaling.