Right behind Knee Popliteal pain

I have zero medical expertise. I read your post because I am keenly interested in the symptoms of any serious cycling injuries and the name of your injury certainly caught my eye. FWIW, I found the following article in PubMed. I don't know how relevant the case is because the guy was 85. But, it might be interesting background reading.
ncbi.nlm.nih.govquery.fcgiOpen ↗

What is popliteal pain? I had very bad pain from the leftmost tendon behind my left knee, which I've finally been able to rid myself of.

Yojimbo_ said:

What is popliteal pain? I had very bad pain from the leftmost tendon behind my left knee, which I've finally been able to rid myself of.

how did you rid yourself of it and how did it feel when it hurt? it might have been a ligament. google "popliteal muscle" or just poplitial and you should get pictures and anotomy of the muscle and tendon and nerve.

please reply thanks in advance

As to the type of pain, it usually started about 40 km or so into a ride, and became progressively worse. It was not a mild discomfort, it was real pain. It would extend from where this tendon attached to the bone below my knee, and continued upwards into my hamstrings. Walking would hurt afterwards, and I couldn't ride for a few days until the pain subsided, although it never went away.

Once, it became so bad during a ride that I had to ride back using my right leg only, and I couldn't walk for about 10 minutes once I got back to my car.

So how did I fix it? Well, after asking lots of people to no avail, I eventually figured it out myself (at least I think I did, so far this year I don't have the problem).

I first had my setup checked out by some knowledgeable folks to get the seat height and forward/backward positioning about right (I later made small adjustments). When this didn't fix my problem, I decided it was caused by the interaction of my cleats and my pedals. My setup forced my feet to be "straight" - by that I mean my toe points directly forward and heel points directly back. Trouble is, that's not how I'm built. I have lots of out-turn on my left foot, and forcing it to be "straight" placed it in an unnatural position. I assumed the repetitive motion of thousands of rotations in an unnatural position eventually resulted in damage.

To compensate, I first tried one of these things:

harriscyclery.netitemdetails.cfmOpen ↗

I was looking to move my left foot further from the pedal, so my toe could point outwards without the heel hitting the crank (my cleats have lots of float). As it turned out, I didn't like this kneesaver thing because my foot was too far out. So instead I just moved my cleat to the right as much as I could, and I put a couple of washers between the pedal and the crank. Now when I pedal, my left foot isn't "straight" anymore, but angled in a way that is more consistent with natural positioning. So far so good, no pain anymore.

Hope this helps with your problem. Good Luck.

Yojimbo_ said:

As to the type of pain, it usually started about 40 km or so into a ride, and became progressively worse. It was not a mild discomfort, it was real pain. It would extend from where this tendon attached to the bone below my knee, and continued upwards into my hamstrings. Walking would hurt afterwards, and I couldn't ride for a few days until the pain subsided, although it never went away.

Once, it became so bad during a ride that I had to ride back using my right leg only, and I couldn't walk for about 10 minutes once I got back to my car.

So how did I fix it? Well, after asking lots of people to no avail, I eventually figured it out myself (at least I think I did, so far this year I don't have the problem).

I first had my setup checked out by some knowledgeable folks to get the seat height and forward/backward positioning about right (I later made small adjustments). When this didn't fix my problem, I decided it was caused by the interaction of my cleats and my pedals. My setup forced my feet to be "straight" - by that I mean my toe points directly forward and heel points directly back. Trouble is, that's not how I'm built. I have lots of out-turn on my left foot, and forcing it to be "straight" placed it in an unnatural position. I assumed the repetitive motion of thousands of rotations in an unnatural position eventually resulted in damage.

To compensate, I first tried one of these things:

harriscyclery.netitemdetails.cfmOpen ↗

I was looking to move my left foot further from the pedal, so my toe could point outwards without the heel hitting the crank (my cleats have lots of float). As it turned out, I didn't like this kneesaver thing because my foot was too far out. So instead I just moved my cleat to the right as much as I could, and I put a couple of washers between the pedal and the crank. Now when I pedal, my left foot isn't "straight" anymore, but angled in a way that is more consistent with natural positioning. So far so good, no pain anymore.

Hope this helps with your problem. Good Luck.

i wish it was that easy for me. right now i have been about 1 month and one week off the bike. prollonged walking sucks for as the popliteal pain goings down the leg, rather up the leg as in your condition. it goes down into my heel and is sucking right now

how long before your pain totally subsided? and did you have to take some extended amount of time off the bike

I took an unplanned extended break from riding because of a badly broken leg I suffered during a fall when I hit a patch of oil on the road. After I could walk again normally (close to a year later), I became a couch potato and sat around getting fat for a couple more years. At the end of last summer, I finally had enough and started cycling again to lose weight.

The layoff helped my tendon quite a bit I think, but I strongly advise against following this treatment regime.

And, I've lost over 20 pounds and am now down to 167lbs (I'm 5'11"😉. I've got a few more pounds to go and a few more km/hr to gain (actually, quite a few km/hr because I'm not exactly the fastest thing on the road).