hsea17

What am I doing wrong? I tried a Shimano SM-20 Cleat spacer (2mm) under my right bicycle shoe which I got from the local bicycle dealer due to some hip pain and a lifelong right leg being about 4-5mm shorter than the left leg but after a test ride I ended instead up with iliotibial pain and shinbone soreness. My thinking was hat a shorter distance to the pedal with the spacer under the shoe should in best case relive some hip/lateral knee pain but instead as said I get Itb pain/ lateral shinbone pain and don't understand the connection because usually if I drop the seat the short leg doing fine but then my left leg with good knee get cramped and overall I lose power sitting to low.
Any tips welcome.
hsea17

Carbonfiberboy 

The spacer really doesn't do anything good. I went through the same thing. Firstly, did you have your individual leg bone lengths measured by a orthopedist? If so, which bone(s) were different? If not, maybe your legs are the same and the difference is somewhere else.

The issue is that while the shim decreases your pedal distance at BDC, it raises it higher at TDC. 2mm isn't much, but that extra bit of raising the foot higher would affect both your hip and shin muscles.

I was advised that my legs were the same length, but my pelvis was tilted. I took the shim off, which didn't make the issue go away, but at least wasn't attempting to fix the wrong thing.

You could try setting the seat height using the heel-on-pedal method, first with one leg, then the other. If the two come out different, split it. Then you're only 2mm off with both legs and most folks might not even notice that.

And in any case, being a tiny bit off like that shouldn't cause any problems at all! I see people riding around with their saddles an inch too high or too low and amazingly they do fine. One can get used to anything. Or even better, be in good enough shape by doing full range of motion strength work and crosstraining that there's no such thing as a bad fit. My favorite bike fit advice is concentrate on getting fit first, then worry about the fine points of bike fit.

hsea17

Thank you for replying. You are of course right. Btw, pedal spacer is removed, don't want to do thing worse. Many moons ago I had a Physical Therapist who happen to live in same city as me and had in addition to working with the athletic National team also a private clinic so he was considered to be good. He checked. both LLD and pelvic tilt and never said that pelvic tilt was the problem but come to the conclusion that the leg length difference was 4-5mm. Some few months later I had a x-ray in a public hospital where the conclusion was even smaller LLD and honestly I don't remember the exact mm they concluded with anymore but remember that their sentiment was "that difference was normal and nothing to worry about etc.,. but little did they know about my training regime that time. I also have been to a orthopedist once but he concluded with that its the toe of the foot who contact the pedal so no help in eventually special insoles etc.,. To make a long story short. I get older so do both my hips and knees so I guess that not exactly help. When coming to heel on pedal the right leg have to stretch more than the left and I have always used to have the cleat on right shoe 2-3 mm more forward than on the left. There are one thing I not have tried and that is if the Q-factor come into play here and if it could be worth to widen the stance with some spacer thing between the pedal axel and crank!
hsea17