Nope his chain rings really are 50-48-28. It's really difficult for him to make that jump to the smallest chainring when he has run out of low gears on the 48t ring.

I'm going to talk to him about the shorter crank arms and see if he thinks it would help. If we are Changing out the crank anyway and it would keep him able to ride longer we may as well make the switch to shorter crank arms ms at the same time.