Why Your Pedals Might Be Causing Your Knee Pain

By Nick Stevovich, Founder & CEO, Nikola Innovation

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If you've ever climbed off the bike with aching knees, you're not alone. And if you've been told the fix is a better bike fit, more stretching, or simply riding less — you've been given the same advice that millions of cyclists get every year. Advice that treats the symptom while ignoring the root cause.

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I've been there myself. Years of riding, years of managing discomfort, and a nagging question I couldn't shake: why does a sport built around efficiency ask our joints to do something so mechanically inefficient?

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The answer, it turns out, is in the pedals.

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The Biomechanics of Going in Circles

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Every pedal stroke on a traditional bike pedal follows the same rigid circular path. Your foot is locked in, your knee traces the same arc, and the same muscles and tendons absorb the same forces — over and over. On a typical ride, your knees go through that identical motion somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 times per hour.

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That kind of repetition would raise red flags in any other discipline. In physical therapy, in ergonomics, in workplace safety — repetitive motion through a fixed path is one of the most well-understood causes of overuse injury. But in cycling, we've accepted it as normal. The pedal stroke hasn't fundamentally changed in over a century.

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Here's what's happening inside the joint. During the downstroke, the quadriceps fire hard, pulling the kneecap (patella) against the groove of the femur. In a rigid circular pedal stroke, that load concentrates on the same contact point, revolution after revolution. The cartilage under the kneecap doesn't get a chance to redistribute pressure. Tendons and ligaments absorb forces at the same angle every time. The iliotibial band, which runs along the outside of the thigh and crosses the knee joint, gets pulled tight across the same bony ridge thousands of times per ride.

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It's not that cycling is inherently bad for your knees. It's that the fixed circular motion of traditional pedals creates concentrated stress patterns that the human body was never designed to handle at that volume.

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The Numbers Are Staggering

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The scale of cycling knee pain is something the industry doesn't talk about enough. Over 13 million riders in the United States experience patellofemoral pain — that dull, grinding ache behind or around the kneecap that gets worse on climbs and stairs. It's the most common overuse injury in cycling, and for many riders, it's the reason they eventually ride less or stop altogether.

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IT band syndrome affects another 12 million riders. That sharp pain on the outside of the knee, the one that starts around mile 30 and makes you dread every pedal stroke for the rest of the ride — that's the IT band getting aggravated by the same repetitive loading pattern.

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These aren't fringe complaints. Between knee, hip, and IT band issues, overuse injuries affect a significant portion of the active cycling population. And the solutions most riders are given — bike fitting, cleat adjustment, foam rolling, anti-inflammatories, rest — all work around the problem. They try to minimize the damage of a motion pattern that is, by design, mechanically repetitive.

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None of them address the motion itself.

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Working Around the Problem vs. Working on It

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Let me be clear: bike fitting matters. Cleat position matters. Stretching and strength work matter. These are all valuable tools, and I'd never tell a cyclist to skip them.

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But here's the distinction that changed my thinking. All of those interventions accept the rigid circular pedal stroke as a given. They optimize your body's position relative to a fixed motion. They help you survive the circle better.

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What none of them do is question whether the circle itself is the problem.

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Think about it this way. If your running shoes forced your foot to land in exactly the same spot with exactly the same angle on every stride, you'd develop injuries fast — and nobody would tell you the fix was a better insole. They'd tell you the shoe was wrong.

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Traditional pedals do exactly that. They lock your foot into a fixed plane and force your joints through a single, unchanging path. The most common cycling knee pain solutions are really just workarounds for a design problem that's been baked into the pedal for over 100 years.

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What Happens When You Change the Motion

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This was the question that launched Nikola Innovation. Not \"how do we make a lighter pedal\" or \"how do we get more aero.\" But: what happens to joint stress when you give the pedal stroke some room to breathe?

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The answer is Flow Motion — a patented system that introduces controlled float and elliptical movement into the pedal stroke. Instead of locking your foot into a rigid circular path, Flow Motion allows micro-adjustments within each revolution. Your knee isn't forced through the same arc every time. Load distributes across more muscle groups. The concentrated hotspots that drive patellofemoral pain and IT band irritation start to dissipate.

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It's a subtle change in how the pedal moves, but a significant change in what your joints experience over the course of a ride.

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We didn't just theorize about this. We tested it. Across three universities — Cleveland State, Alleghany General Hospital, and Gonzaga University — more than 2,000 cyclists were put through rigorous biomechanical testing on pedals with Flow Motion. The results showed measurable reduction in joint stress at the knee and hip, along with up to 7% greater peak power and 2% improved efficiency. Over 70% of tested riders saw measurable improvement.

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The data told us something the cycling industry had been missing: you can reduce joint stress and improve performance at the same time. They aren't trade-offs. They're connected. When your joints aren't fighting a rigid path, your muscles work more efficiently. When load distributes more naturally, your body produces more power with less strain.

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A Different Kind of Pedal

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The NI Flow is the first pedal built with Flow Motion. It's a road clipless pedal — stainless steel, Look KEO 3-bolt compatible, weight-competitive with the pedals you're already riding. From the outside, it looks like a premium road pedal. From the inside, it's a fundamentally different approach to how your foot interfaces with the bike.

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I built this for riders like me. Riders who love the sport but are tired of managing pain. Riders who've tried every workaround and are ready for something that addresses the actual cause. And riders who aren't willing to sacrifice performance to get there.

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If cycling knee pain has been part of your riding life — or if you're looking for pedals for knee pain that go beyond the usual advice — I'd encourage you to take a closer look at what we're building.

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Learn more about the NI Flow