bad knees and motorcycles

[danaeris]

I rode on angelbob's motorcycle to S&P tonight.

Partway through the night, my knees began to ache like they never have before. It was incredibly painful.

I'm wondering if anyone out there with a knee injury has had knee pain in conjunction with motorcycle use, or if the timing was purely coincidental.

Comments

[princeofwands.livejournal.com]

Not too uncommon. I've only noticed it on rides as short as yours this evening would have been on the most aggressive of seating positions. But I've experienced it. It's not particularly surprising to experience. On the plus side, your body should get used to the position fairly quickly with a little repetition.

[randicus.livejournal.com]

There are two factors that I can think of that would explain it.

1. The way you were sitting. Especially if you're not use to riding a motorcycle. When I first started riding that happened to me. But after a few times your body gets use to it and it doesn't hurt anymore. I think it might be the muscles that your using building up.

2. Another thing is if the bike was a small one. Smaller than 750cc's. Smaller bikes vibrate a lot more and the farther you go the more noticeable on your body it is. I once rode a 400 on a 60 mile trip. My whole body was tingling when I was done and my lower back and tail bone hurt! It was about an hour before I recovered. The next time I took a 900 on the same trip and it didn't bother me at all.

Those are the two things that come to mind from what you've written.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I was having back pain when riding pillion recently, and it stopped once I changes my position from hands grasping each other with my arms around the rider's waist and started holding his sides with my hands. Improved my posture incredibly.

As for vibrations, here is a place where type of engine counts as much as cc's. An inline four is fairly obviously going to be a lot smoother than a big single. But a V-twin will be smoother than a parallel twin, especially a 360-degree parallel. That might not be the case for Harleys though, due to their odd stroke pattern.

questioner, you might try shifting the position of your feet on the pegs. An inch forwards or backwards can make a huge difference. Also, you might want to post this in the motorcycles community.

[auros]

I've always thought they should make some kind of harness with handles that a motorcycle driver can wear over hir protective gear, for the passenger to grab onto. :-)

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Turns out that you don't really need to hold on to the driver at all - your center of gravity follows the bike's center of gravity, and with the driver in the way wind is pretty minimal on the upper part of your body (and the lower part is already holding on to the bike itself). It's more as a security blanket than anything else - if things get to the point where you can't stay on without holding on, chances are you're already screwed.

There are riding jackets that have exhaust vents in the back, with leather overlapping the vents so you're still fully protected. You could hold on to the leather covering the vents, one hand on each side. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good picture of it with a quick google search. But if you really want to have something to grab on to, find someone with a Goldwing. We're talking fully adjustable arm rests with cupholders here ;P.

[aberrantvirtue.livejournal.com]

I've only ever had it happen once, when riding behind Adam, and I still blame that on how I was sitting. I think you'll be able to find a) a comfy seating position, and b) it goes away with any sort of repetition fairly quickly.

[coffeekitty.livejournal.com]

the first time i ever rode pillion on a motorcycle, my knees gave out from under me as soon as i dismounted after the ride. owww. but in my experience, the problem is self-correcting fairly quickly with continued riding. you might want to try reaching round the driver and bracing yourself against the tank when riding pillion so that you don't get so much forward momentum during braking (if you can reach). i can't reach, being small, so i've learned to concentrate on doing something of a pelvic tilt during braking to put my centre of gravity in a position i can more easily deal with - analagous in a way to the aikido "keep weight underside" advice.
fortunately, this is pretty much a non-issue for the pilot :-D