Heels hitting the cranks - solutions?

[OakLeaf]

Work on strengthening your hip rotators, and on foot strength and flexibility so you're weighting four corners equally inside your shoes? Have you worked with a PT since your surgery?

[ny biker]

Work on strengthening your hip rotators, and on foot strength and flexibility so you're weighting four corners equally inside your shoes? Have you worked with a PT since your surgery?

I don't understand what weighting four corners means.

I worked a with a PT for many months after the surgery. I worked with another PT when the knee pain first surfaced, which was probably 5-7 years ago, I don't remember exactly. The knee rarely hurt after that, until recently when I tried to keep my heel from hitting the crank by changing the angle of my foot relative to the pedal.

[OakLeaf]

I don't understand what weighting four corners means.

The parts of your feet that are ideally the most weightbearing are the first and fifth metatarsal heads, and each side of the heel. The three arches in the foot - medial, lateral and transverse (metatarsal) are there to absorb shock and position the feet around whatever we're walking/running/standing on. A lot of times, especially when we don't spend any time barefoot on uneven surfaces, we let our feet go "splat" with nothing really supporting or aligning our bodies below the ankle. That leads to all kinds of problems further up the chain.

This is all stuff I learned the hard way. They put me in foot orthotics when I was six years old rather than try to find shoes that fit my flippers. I've come a long way in the past few years, but there's 40 years of weakness and rigidity to undo, and it's taking time. If you had bones fused during your surgery there may be a limit to how much your feet can do, and you may need to rely on orthotics to some extent, that's why I asked about PT.

[ny biker]

The parts of your feet that are ideally the most weightbearing are the first and fifth metatarsal heads, and each side of the heel. The three arches in the foot - medial, lateral and transverse (metatarsal) are there to absorb shock and position the feet around whatever we're walking/running/standing on. A lot of times, especially when we don't spend any time barefoot on uneven surfaces, we let our feet go "splat" with nothing really supporting or aligning our bodies below the ankle. That leads to all kinds of problems further up the chain.

This is all stuff I learned the hard way. They put me in foot orthotics when I was six years old rather than try to find shoes that fit my flippers. I've come a long way in the past few years, but there's 40 years of weakness and rigidity to undo, and it's taking time. If you had bones fused during your surgery there may be a limit to how much your feet can do, and you may need to rely on orthotics to some extent, that's why I asked about PT.

They cut my heel off with a battery-operated saw and moved it about 1/4 inch to take pressure off the torn tendon, thus changing the angle of my foot relative to my leg.

The original PT focused on recovery from the surgery. The second PT, prompted by the knee pain, focused on keeping my knee at the correct angle over my foot when bending my knee.

[indysteel]

They cut my heel off with a battery-operated saw and moved it about 1/4 inch to take pressure off the torn tendon, thus changing the angle of my foot relative to my leg.

Wow! That's both amazing and kind of nuts!

[OakLeaf]

Oh, yikes. Were you prescribed orthotics? It seems like you'd need something in your shoes to take the place of what they cut off your heel?

[ny biker]

They moved the bone and then reattached it with a giant screw. I don't wear orthotics. The arch on my right foot is flatter than the one on the left, and if you're paying attention you'll see that my right calf muscles are smaller than my left calf muscles. Otherwise you don't really notice it. For several years after the surgery I had to make sure to wear shoes with good arch support, but now even that is not very important.

When I was planning the surgery, and I asked the doctor questions about what he was going to do, he was reluctant to tell me all the details because he thought it would freak me out. I was oddly okay with it.

I was reading more on q-factor. My current bike has a compact double and my old bike had a triple, and I was okay riding the old bike, so maybe moving my feet apart by a few more millimeters won't cause problems after all. In fact the reason I switched from SPDs to Speedplays was because my knee bothered me a bit when I first got the bike with the compact double.