New to spinning, knee pain

[spin legs]

Hey Raindrop, How do you adjust the float on the clip on the bike? I have a very hard time clipping out. I noticed a lot of the participants do as well. These are new bikes.
spin legs

[Kathi]

How tall are you? Unless things have changed recently, spin bikes have a crank arm length of 172.5 mm. which is way to long for a short legged person.
At 5'1 I use a 165 mm crankarm length on my bikes. Anything longer kills my knees.

[spin legs]

Kathi,
What do short people do than? I am hearing "my knees hurt" more and more. I want to help these people if I can.
spin legs

[Kathi]

Do they eventually drop out of class? That's what I did. My solution was to use my bike on the trainer and forego spinning classes.

There are crank arms that are adjustable. Fit bikes that are used for bike fittings have them.

Maybe others who do spinning know of other solutions. Lowering the saddle does not help.

[han-grrl]

When setting up your bike

1) are you getting a nice extension in the leg at the bottom of the pedal stroke (knee relaxed at the bottom, not locked out)

2) When your foot is on the pedal at 3-9 Oclock, is the knee over the axle of the pedal? Check this with a plumb line.

3) Resistance - how much resistance are you using, does it feel like you are mashing the pedals. Are you adding too much when the instructors calls for it. What types of bikes are you using? The newer Schwinn bikes have this red lever so you press down on the break (instead of pulling up) and often the red lever and the resistance knob "lock" into each other, so you end up with A LOT more resistance than you mean to have. it means just giving it a jiggle to make sure the resistance knob is moving the way it should.

4) clipless vs baskets, do you feel the pain with one over the other?

Thats all i can think of...

let us know how it goes!

Hannah