Inner Thigh Burn when cycling

Hello,

My inner Thigh burns on both leggs when im cycling. It burns at low effort also but not that much, but enough that is killing my mind. If i doo stronger efforts on flat or uphill they burn even stronger. Ofcourse others quad muscles burn when i do stronger efforts but what im trying to say is that this didnt happen previous years only my quads burned on strong efforts and few others but mainly quads. My inner thigh also burn if i go up the stairs after the training on the bike. Like muscles get sore but they cant heal fully till the next riding sessison. Im cycling cca 4 times a week wednesday, thursday, saturday and sunday. Monday and thuesday and friday are free days. I started cycling again 1 month ago.
Does anyone has any clue how to fix this? or how to make it abit better.

Thank you
Jure

Do you mean your groin/adductor? If so, thatā€™s very unusual! Probably there wonā€™t be many answers to this postā€¦not because we are ignoring you but because we donā€™t know! :smiley:

First thing I would try is reducing ā€˜q factorā€™ on your bike. In other words, reduce the distance between your feet when youā€™re pedaling.

If you mean your vastus medialis, I would say, ā€˜Welcome to the club!ā€™

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Yes, groin, adductor muscles. Im gonna upload an image. The area painted red is what i feel is bothering me. If anyone knows :smiley: but probably nobody knows :smiley: hehe. I cant reduce the Q factor not at the momentā€¦ IM FAT. i have also big leggs comapred to the average guy and i gained alot of weight compared to previous years.
If i think again it might be sartorious muscle but in that read zone that i painted.

Ok. I see what you are saying. Well, @sh4rkc, hereā€™s what I know from unrelated sports experienceā€¦there are two ways to deadlift, conventional (feet shoulder width apart, hands outside knees) and sumo (feet more than shoulder width apart, hands inside the knees). If you are used to deadlifting sumo and you try switching to sumo you will experience some equisite adductor/groin muscle soreness for a few weeks because sumo deadlift places relatively more strain on that muscle group.

Second point, way back in the day I worked out for a brief period of time with a very strong guy who had the nickname ā€˜the man with the iron groinā€™ because he competed with a very wide stance and upright posture when contesting the squat. I asked him to coach me up on the technique and Iā€™m able to report that squatting like that will indeed result in some pretty equisite muscle soreness for the first few week that you try it.

Which is why I say I suspect your ā€˜q-factorā€™ is too much. Or that you have a real ā€˜knees outā€™ pedaling style. Somehow you are shifting more of the load to your adductors. Itā€™s very unusual.

Are you sure you experience mascular pain and not something else? Did you change something with your bikefit ?Apart from gaining weight any other changes in your body/posture? hip impingement or a pinched nerv can cause a burning kind of pain in that region as well. Iā€™d make an appointment with a PT and until then either refrain from cycling or do only low intensity. good luck with your recovery

I dont think i have knees out. I kinda straight with the top bar frame, if you know what i mean. But maybe your right, dunno. Im gonna put some focus next time im on bike to see what is happening. But the problem is the same with the road bike and mountaing bike or spining bike.

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I get same issue at the beginning of rides when I a) lock out my suspension of my FS MTB to ride on the road, and b) when I (seldomly) ride my rigid Surly MTB. I always assumed that Iā€™m not used to the saddle being that high, since most of my riding is done with bodyweight sag in the shock, but locked out has no sag. It goes away after a couple miles for me.

Yes it feels muscles like they get fatigued, tierd. More i push more lactic acid they accumolate and more they hurt, burn. No, i didnt do anything with bike fit it was the same as always, plus i changed it now to more as it should be but its the same on roadbike, mountain bike or indoor trainer or spining bike.

Interesting, for me its not going anywere xD, more i push more i feel it. Maybe just weak muscless? i dont know.

Yeah, thatā€™s the other thing I should have mentioned. I have some weakness with lateral movement Iā€™m trying to fix (I get some burning pain on the inside of my knees where that same muscle attaches, also), and since this thread has me thinking about it, Iā€™m realizing I havenā€™t had this issue as much lately.

Iā€™ve been using a wobble balance board (round one), and doing bodyweight squats and walking sideways with a resistance band just above my knees.

It sounds like youā€™ve done too much, too soon, and arenā€™t recovering. Take some days off until you can go up and down the stairs without pain.

I personally find the stairs to be a great recovery metric.

Im also doing some exercises for core and glutes and my glutes and hamstrings are very weak. Gonna do some band exercises also for glutes. What you meantioned. Thank you for your answer.

I did take some days off but when the pain goes away on stairs its oky, till i get back on the bike, then its the same story :=). I break those muscles in half :P. dunno im gonna see in the upcoming months what is gonna happen.

Maybe itā€™s a bike fit issue? Is it the same bike as last time you rode pain free?

It seems logical though that you are over stressing those muscles in some way. Iā€™d try to figure out why.

@sh4rkc one more thing to think aboutā€¦there is some evidence in literature that parts of the adductor muscle group are more active during the pedal upstroke. So maybe your pedaling style emphasizes pulling up on the pedal ā€˜backā€™ stroke?

I wonder if you just road flat, no clip pedals would that change the sensations you experience?

Yes i am stressing those muscles but i dont know why and i dont know who to ask because noone knows :D. I asked the coach of Matej mohorič, one of the slovenian road champions. He said he never heard of something like that. That was few years ago. Now i im giving it another chance to make this right.

Yes if i lift the leg and hold it also burnā€™s. But it doesnt make difference if i am cliped or uncliped. The result is the same. Maybe i do some unconscious up pedal strokeing that i dont know about :slight_smile: hehe. Im gonna look for that. I checked if my knees are sticking out when im pedaling but they dont. They are straight at the bar. I even made custom shoe pads to correct the wiggle a week ago. But this problem is with me from the start, before the changes with bike fit and the custom pads.

I did a quick test on a spin bike and it looks that i am pulling up legs for some reason. i am gonna put more focus around this when im out on the road. Thank you the time, answers <3.