Anyone out there ever hear of this while biking? My doctor thinks something might be up with my fabella when I bike. It hurts about 5 minutes into a ride, to the point where I cannot bike anymore. The pain is not resistance related, meaning I can take all resistence off the spinner or put my bike into an easier gear and it still kills!!! Funny thing is that I can run just fine.
Anyone out there have info on this?
Fabella? Are you sure this isn’t “patella?” If so, then you most likely need to raise the saddle. Or address a muscular imbalance in the quads.
Found it. I really have no clue. I’m thinking it’s a tendon pulling on the femur, and until you address the tightness issue, you’ll have the pain. Possibly a compartment syndrome. Can’t your doc give you any more info?
The doctor I’m going to is hesitant to say it’s anything with the fabella. I don’t have any tightness issues in my hamstrings. In fact I would say that I"m really quite flexible. I’m having a bone scan done next tuesday but was hoping that someone else out here had heard of something. I guess it’s very rare. I’m going to the 3rd best ortho hospital in the nation and the guy I’m seeing is one of the top doctors there. He’s only seen 3 cases of what he speculates I might have in 35 years.
The fabella is a sesamoid bone - a bone within the substance of a tendon like the patella - within the upper end of the gastroc muscles. It has a cartilage surface which glides on the back of the femoral condyle. you can get arthritis here, and there are a bunch of ligaments called the posterolateral corner which are in part attached to the fabella which can be hurt.
As you say, this an extremely rare diagnosis; I’m not sure I can think of an explanation why it would hurt cycling but not running given that it’s in your calf muscles. With an unusual diagnosis, two opinions might be in order.
Deke
Hi,
I’ve been working with triathletes for several years, mostly teaching people how to self treat the muscles that are causing pain. To treat yourself for knee pain you need to work on the quadricep muscles.
The quadriceps all merge at the knee, with the tendon going over the patella (knee cap) and inserting into the top of the tibia bone of the lower leg. When the muscles are tight they pull the patella up and can cause several different problems including knee pain and also causing your lower leg to go out of alignment and therefore causing a lot of lower leg problems.
Another thing that is important to treat is a muscle called the psoas (pronounded “so-as”) which originates on the lumbar vertebre and passes on the inside of the pelvis, finally inserting onto the top of your thigh bone. when the muscle normally contracts you bend over (ie: go into the aerodynamic position). The muscle goes into a major spasm when you cycle for hours, keeping the muscle in the contracted position. Eventually it shortens and now you can’t stand up straight without a great deal of low back pain. Plus the tight muscle will rotate your pelvis forward and down, so you get a laundry list of complaints from the mid back to the ankles! This includes your knees. It’s too long to explain here but you can read more at: www.julstro.com and go to the section called “Muscles and Pain”. It will also give you a really good stretch for the psoas.
When the psoas is contracted it will cause your quads to go into a spasm, and put pressure onto your patella (drawing it up). Think about it in this way, if you sewed your pants leg to your kneecap, and then pulled your pants up as hard as you could, you’d feel the strain at the knee, not at the waist. That’s what’s happening with the muscles and the patella.
The treatment is really easy. Just take a length of dowel (clothes pole) and (wear long pants for this) put the dowel at the top of your leg, where you bend at the trunk. Then use pressure and push (don’t roll) the dowel down your leg. Do this to the outside (usually an especially tender area) of the thigh, then the middle and finally the inside. The odds are you will find a major spasm about midway down your thigh, toward the outside of your leg. You will probably find another major spasm directly above your kneecap, about 2-3" above the patella.
You need to press out these spasms, and the tension will be released from your knee.
This treatment has helped 100’s of athletes, I hope it will help you to resolve your problem.
Wishing you well,
Julie Donnelly