About 4 weeks ago I lowered my saddle cause a friend told me it was too high.
However, over the past 2 weeks I’ve began to experience a tight/crampy-ish feeling in my left glute while riding my bike. It seems hard to accurately describe, it just feels really weird.
It doesnt get a lot worse with increasing intensity. It does’spikes’ somewhat each left downstroke. I can feel the tightness whenever I sit down off the bike, and sometimes a little bit when walking, but I’m 101% sure the origin is the bike.
I’ve been tinkering a bit with saddle position, but nothing seems to work. I even tried raising the saddle back to its previous height.
Any ideas? Not even looking for a solution, although i wouldnt mind one, just looking for a ‘diagnosis’.
Many of the symptoms you are describing correspond with the onset of sciatica. I know, because I had similar symptoms last summer. Started with what I thought was a strain in my glute…didn’t prevernt me form performing on the bike, but I could feel it. It got progressively worse over the summer and then, after a bout of kidney stones, kept me off the bike for a couple of weeks.
Was diagnosed with severe disc compression between L5 / S1…did a round of PT and that seems to have sorted it out.
I also got a “kneeling chair” for my office to help with my posture while sitting, which helped alleviate some of the pressure on the compressed disc.
So I would definitely recommend going to see a back specialist (not a chiro) if the symptoms don’t alleviate. And ditto what @ChrisPodmore said - don’t take bike fit advice from buddies.
This is the most common thing any “friend” will tell you - saddle too high, saddle too low.
The reality is that in any bike fit you can’t really make one adjustment without adjusting the whole thing, and venturing to do that on your own without some knowledge is a fool’s errand.
Go get a proper fit, and the next time any friend tells you anything, ask them how they know, and what other adjustments to fore/aft position, stem length/angle, heel shims, Q-factor, etc. they’d recommend along with just the overly simplistic one they recommended. Usually you’ll get a blank stare, and they’ll get the message.
Here is my experience.
I was in the middle of a TT program. Long hard intervals. I woke up one morning with sore hips . It went away in a few hours. Hopped on the bike and did another set. No pain on the bike. The next day I had pain in the glutes. Over the next few days it got really bad. It was almost unbearable to sit on a toilet seat. I experienced some weird nerve pain in one leg. The orthopedic doctor suggested I get an mri to be sure I did not have anything going on with my lower back. It came off negative. We tried the happy pill 1 week blister pack. (Steroids). Helped but the pain came back. So now 2 weeks off the bike and not happy I can’t sit down . So back to the orthopedic doctor. The PA came in and after a chat and some poking around said he thinks I have glutenal tendinitis. Along with a very inflamed bursa sac. Drained some fluid and injected steroids in the bursa. 5000 bridges and months later. The pain was gone. I was told not to get on the bike while all this was going on. However I was not hearing very well that day. Managed to get in about 1/2 my training volume and slowly increase the intensity while this was going on.
Hope some of this helps.
