All Things Bikes and Tacos! (...and every vehicle imaginable)

I love my Gates belt drive, 4 years of shredding single track with zero maintenance, just hose it off occasionally and good to go.

 

haha yes, that is me. and while I do enjoy most IPAs, they are not my favorite beer, yes, I know... blasphemy to cyclists. lol

 

I hate IPAs, not to say I hate you since I compared you to an IPA haha. You got that “I know craft beers” look about you lol

 

I get that, Comes with the beard territory. lol Its not entirely inaccurate, but I'm no beer snob. The best beer is the one in your hand.

 

Except bud light. Yuck.

1. Free beer
2. Cold beer
3. Good beer

that’s my rankings lol

 

First ride of the year with was with my son!! Gonna be a good year!!

 

even bud light has its place. really only for drinking games though. I guess I am a snob when it comes to anything below bud/coors/miller light. But i guess at that point you're talking more malt liquor than beer.

 

Same.... Have never skied before. Lots of snowboarding throughout high school
Knees are pretty clapped out already haha

It's tough to justify the rentals and lift ticket cost to yard sale my everything going down the bunny slope.... I'm halfway decent at ice skating from playing hockey all these years. So I'd like to think some edge work would carry over?

Speaking of full faces UPS just dropped off this bad boy. Was looking at the Leatt enduro 4.0 ended up just cheaping out on this oneal.. It's only my head

Not big on the white but should be okay once some stickers get installed.

 

How is putting "more stress on your knees" not a "bad" thing for someone with knee problems? Honest question...

For some context, I'm also an avid skier and boarder (20+ days a year on each). I have bad knees as well. I've always felt like I should stick to just boarding but I enjoy skiing too much. I'd love for you to explain why the knee stress of skiing isn't bad so that I can regurgitate that to my wife and parents when they give me a hard time.

 

I'm curious on what you meant as well. I remember years back when I was younger after my first knee op the doc told me Trampolines were a no no for basically rest of my life. I haven't really tested him on it only because of the constant dealing with injuries on my other knee :/

 

I'm not a PT, but I am a doctor! of genetics Anyway, here's my take as someone who has done both sports my whole life...

If you set up your snowboard properly, then the only stress on your knees is from holding an athletic stance all day to absorb bumps as you ride. There's probably a bit of stress from pushing with one leg in the lift line as well. I spent a lot of time messing with the binding angles to make sure my knees feel good. I'd also recommend setting up some cant on your bindings so that your feet are aligned properly with your knees.

On the other hand, skiing is constantly stressing your knees for a number of reasons. There's the obvious fear of falling and the binding not releasing properly. However, even if you don't fall, each ski is being pushed around as you ski and that causes constant little twists. A good skier mostly combats this with muscle (I assume it's muscle), but there's just no way to completely avoid those little twists. No matter how good I get at skiing, my knees are often still sore at the end of a long day of skiing.

 

I may look into that addition to bindings. Meant to multi quote @DarthPow as well on his statement about neither being "bad". And I Agree with you on strain on the front leg when walking around in lift lines/skating. Unfortunately I learned to longboard regular which puts my weak leg in front. And I have a ton of hours on longboards so learning goody would be a long process.

 

stress on a body part isn't necessarily bad. in fact, stress is what makes your body stronger. Too much stress in the "wrong" directions, or over time, without the time to recover and adapt to the stress, is bad. It's a shame your doctors told you not to participate in activities you enjoy, and didn't work with you and a PT or something to get you to be able to do what you enjoy in a safer way.

the problem people have with most activities, is that they have some kind of movement or strength impairment/imbalance, that over time, leads to pain or degeneration. This applies to literally activity from walking to skiing. these issues aren't apparent, until they create pain. and there's no formula for what patterns will or won't create pain in any given individual. You kind of just have to do your best to move in a way that's most comfortable for you, and if pain starts to creep in, see a PT about it to assess what you may be doing "sub-obtimally" for your specific body.

as for why skiing place more stress on your knees than snowboarding, a lot of it is because skiing creates much more lateral forces through your entire body, and the knee isn't super well designed to handle high lateral forces by itself. (this is not including knee injuries during a fall or something). Lateral control of the knee comes from the hip and core, and most people's hips and cores are not as strong as they should be. You should be fatigued by the end of the day of skiing, but you should not be in pain. That indicates something is wrong for you. a large body of evidence has shown that strength training the core and legs greatly reduces the incidence of chronic pain, and even the chances of injury or acute trauma while skiing.

As for knee injuries, skiing is more likely to cause a knee injury in a fall for several reasons, your ankle is strapped into what is essentially a cast, so theres no movement there. second, the length of the ski puts a lot of torque on your knee if you fall, which is why the binding is supposed to release in a fall, but it doesn't always do that. plus since the skis are independent, theres much more motion in the knees and hips in different planes, compared to snowboarding, which only allows a lot of motion in one bodily plane (with minor motion in the other planes, but no where the freedom of motion you have with skis).

Sorry for the rambling wall of text, I hope that (mostly) made sense. If anyone is confused, I'll gladly try to elaborate and explain to the best of my ability.

 

That's a very cool ride.........mine is hooked to Alfine 8spd rr hub and has Alfine generator hub up front running head and tail lights as well as a connector that will charge fon or other devices. Scott SubSpeed 10. The shimano hydros are better than any other discs or my many bikes. Love taking off with a helmet and flip flops and a water bottle for 25-30 mile pleasure cruises. bluetooth speaker playing from fon. Epic casual fun..............It took over a lot more of my riding than I thought it would, so easy to just bail out the door on it vs all the prep and travel to get to trails from house.......not a replacement for that fun by any means tho!

 

also just realized I missed the first part of your question. If you already have knee problems, then yea, putting extra stress on them is probably "bad." but if you were to train and strengthen in the right ways, you could probably ski (at least to some degree, maybe you wont be X-gaming, or Freeriding) without injuring your knee further.

 

dammit, I meant to quote @SenatorBlutarsky in that post.

 

On a 180 note from the commuter bike.........hoping this will be coming to my stable soon.



2015 Rocky Mountain Altitude 799 MSL...............

 

Reach is a standing measurement, but doesn't tell you much about how the bike will fit seated. I still think ETT is important for that. But yes seat post length sizing is certainly dead.

Surprising at 6' you find yourself between M and L. But yeah, I can compare to what I have and like, but the fact that I like and am used to my current bike doesn't mean I wouldn't have liked the large better than the medium. Really the answer is to ride both sizes, but with covid and inventory issues it's not really possible for the most part.

 

I LOVE older Surly's...!! and that bike definitely has some mojo...

 

I have to agree with your statement. I have recently discovered in an MRI that I likely have arthritis (marrow edema?) developing in my right knee but for some reason my knee does not hurt at all this year when skiing. I attribute it to deadlifts and lunges to compensate for my once poorly developed muscles in my leg. I also stop skiing when my muscles begin to get fatigued and I start to regress into poor skiing technique. I also have a decent pair of bindings (Look Pivot 12s) that I attribute to saving my ass when I wipe out. They allow for much more movement and good rotation than other bindings I have used.