I’m starting to incorporate video analysis of my athletes and have a couple questions for our PT folks:
The two athletes I analyzed have some serious ankle inversion at BDC of their pedal stroke (~110 - 120 degrees). What potential injury occurs with excessive ankle inversion that you’ve actually seen? There seems to be some debate in the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy whether ankle eversion/inversion is actually connected to various sports injuries (e.g. ITBS) so I’m not looking for “validated” scientific evidence…just some anecdotal/empirical evidence of injury propencity. Is this just an issue of poor cycling technique or would ankle flexibility work help correct this?
The next question is how this type of ankle inversion affects a proper bike fit. Both of these athletes had bike fits at the LBS and the guy there uses the Retul system/setup and is pretty reputable. They both had that near “ideal” 145 degree angle at BDC of their pedal stroke BUT some serious ankle inversion. It looked like the one guy had his seat post set too high. At first glance, it looked like he had to “reach” through the bottom of his pedal stroke but he had that 145 degree angle. We played around with the seat height and did some more video analysis and his ankle inversion never changed.
Finally, if someone like this athlete were to work on that ankle flexibility/pedalling technique: that would require shortening the seatpost to allow him room to evert his ankle joint. How much reduction from 145 degrees have folks used for this sort of adaption work?
Was this athlete’s knee tracking in towards the top tube? Do you use a laser level/line to see this? A common adaption will be subtalar joint “collaspe” when pushing down, even if external varus wedges are employed. We have seen this in video analysis as well. Doesn’t seem to be a problem for most cyclists though, but if a triathlete with PT tendonitis, I suppose this would not be desirable
Are you talking about ankle in / eversion or Dorsi and plantar flexion?
Are they pointing the bottom of their foot inward toward the bike or are they “up on their toes”?
I was in a bit of a rush trying to get that question out before heading out for a meeting. I was talking about ankle in / eversion on one and plantar flexion on another. After re-reading my post, I realize I didn’t complete one thought before referring to the other. Gotta stop letting my 9-5 job getting in the way of me posting a well articulated question.
Earlier ramble distilled down to two simpler questions:
WHAT potential injuries can one obviate by identifying in / eversion on a cyclist who is asymptomatic? The literature I’ve seen out there have been mainly geared toward running but I’ve also read that the cause of ITBS in cyclists can be linked to ankle eversion.
To answer rroof’s question, I saw a slight drop toward the down tube on the woman that had this ankle inversion…she almost had this figure 8 motion of her knee going on during her pedal stroke. This was observed using some video analysis software and just putting up a yellow line and watching the knee tracking. I don’t have two cameras so I couldn’t really observe her ankle from the rear while tracking her knee in the front.
Second question: related to xtrpickles point: Yes, the guy I was observing has some serious plantar flexion going on. ~120 degrees. Is plantar flexion a technique issue or a flexibility issue? If it’s flexibility, is it worth addressing as it seems like that would lead to some other potential injuries.