Thank you Steve!

Hi Steve,
I was browsing your site and came across this page for the first time. Publicly expounding on my experience with you is the least I can do as you have reawakened in me the simple joy of cycling
For anyone reading this, here is my story. I’ve been cycling for nearly 20 years and fell heavily on a wet road 5 years ago with most of the impact taken by my right hip. A haematoma developed that extended from the bottom of my rib cage to my right knee. This kept me from cycling for 6 – 8 weeks.
When I returned to the bike I developed nagging left knee pain, though never while walking; only while cycling. My first career was as a physiotherapist, so I attempted to self diagnose and treat without success. I sought help from a well known physiotherapist who trains and teaches physiotherapists in bike fitting.
The diagnosis was that the source of my left knee pain was a poorly functioning right hip with no ability to internally rotate. This led to me twisting forward on the right side of my seat to protect my right knee but caused my left knee to move in a figure 8 pattern causing pain.
The obvious solution was to fix my right hip. A MRI was clear ( no bony lesions or labral tears ) and I was given an exercise program to restore hip rotation. I performed all of the exercises conscientiously for 3 months as well as attending twice weeky physiotherapy sessions without improvement.
By now I was desperate to get back on my bike and the solution implemented was to twist my seat off centre so that it pointed to the left, fit a 25 mm spacer between the left pedal and the left crank and a 5 mm build up under my left shoe cleat.
Which worked! I was so happy to have a pain free left knee – until I started to experience right side saddle sores, a painful right tricep and chronic trigger points in my upper right trapezius.
In desperation I searched the net and found that all bike fitting roads lead to this site. I started reading and found cogent information that made immediate sense. With repressed excitement I found that Steve works in the ACT and emailed him the bare bones description of my situation. He replied in detail saying that the solution would be to restore a normal range of movement in the right hip which he felt would be simple.
My thoughts were “After the amount of therapy my hip’s undergone, he’s kidding himself. But he offers a money back guarantee so what have I got to lose?” and made a booking.
While I now work in a related field, I’m trained physiotherapist and am a product of that training who looks at functional problems in a particular way. Steve looks at things from a completely different perspective. Concisely, his view is that much of what are termed biomechanical problems have a root cause in communication deficits between the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system. He gave me a series of sensible explanations of why these occur and how they are maintained – which made sense – but could he fix my hip?
After a lengthy assessement during which he described my feet as “not very shitty” (which I’m led to believe is high praise!), he started on my hip. By now I was enjoying the intellectual interplay and asked how confident he was that he could fix it?
“As close to 100% as one can get without giving an unequivocal yes”
He suggested he time the fix and I joked that he would need a calendar, not a stopwatch. I was wrong. Including diagnostic assessment his stop watch showed 2 minutes 38 seconds when he demonstrated to me that I now had the same approximately 50 degree range of internal rotation on the right hip as I had on the left. And this is after years of almost 0 degree range!!
He then straightened my seat, removed the large pedal spacer and the build up from under my shoe. I’m writing this 4 months after the session and have no pain or restriction on the bike at all. From the bottom of my heart THANK YOU! The techniques you have developed make you a genius and I hope your work attracts attention outside of bike fitting as it has clinical applications well beyond.

My warmest regards,
Penny J.

a VERY satisfied customer.

G’day Penny,

I’m happy that you got the result you were seeking. I know your dysfunctional hip gave you a lot of compensatory grief but in the scheme of things, you were an easy fix. If things ever change, let me know. Best wishes on your future cycling.