Tingling nerves and pissed-off piriformis to no pain

Several years ago I started riding both on the road and at the velodrome in Carson, California.

I got fitted by a reputable fitter (don’t all these testimonials start like this?) and he gathered that my left leg was shorted than my right. He put 2mm shims under the cleat. Things seemed fine until after about a year when the number of miles and the difficulty of rides started to increase.
I developed minor Meralgia paresthetica in my left leg. I say minor because there wasn’t a lot of pain, just the occasional sharp needle jab, but a lot of weird tingling, and an alternation of feeling wet, cold and hot. There was also some lower back pain on the right lumbar side, which I had gotten rid of years ago through yoga, but its return signaled to me that my pelvis was tilting.

I took out the shims and started riding, paying attention to the pelvis. After awhile I started to have deep buttock pain on the left side and excessive pain on the outside of the left foot, and what felt like tingling of the sciatic nerve down the back of the leg. The good news is that the paresthetica and lower back pain went away.

I realized that I could actually feel the inside of my left heel lifting up when I rode up hills or pushed hard. So I ordered myself some heel wedges, G8 insoles and ran through the tests from Steve Hogg’s website. I ended up with three wedges on the left, one on the right, and, along with certain things that seem crazy like backbends (back bends done right: keeping the outside of the feet parallel and pressing the inner heels to the ground will work the gluteus not the piriformis) and adductor stretching, except for a minor tingle now and then, I swear I have NO PAIN anywhere and am riding faster and stronger than ever. By the way, I’m a 50 year old female 🙂

Turns out what I have is weak adductor/weak gluteus on the left side, which causes my foot to rotate out (I often put weight on the outside of my left foot). The shims helped with the weak gluteus but it tilted my pelvis. The buttock pain was from over-using the piriformis on climbing hills. The pissed-off piriformis was irritating the sciatica.

Hurrah! I’m not saying it was easy figuring all this out, but boy was it worth it. It might have been easier to fly to Australia, but as everyone says, injuries always tell you something interesting about your body.

G’day Angie,

Good for you. You’ve gained a valuable insight into how your body works and I applaud the effort and thinking that has gone into you solving your problem. I, and no doubt many other bike fitters, gain a similar satisfaction when a client with tricky issues reports all is well.  We all have more performance improvement potential to be unlocked by improving how we function than we’ll ever gain by spending money on go fast bike parts. Fortunately for the bike industry, most find it easier to just spend money on equipment than they do divining how their own body’s work.

Well done and congratulations.