Do your feet go numb while cycling? If so then this podcast is for you! Peter popped us an email to find out what the possible causes could be for his feet going numb on his bicycle. Brad Brown asked our cycling coach Devlin Eyden for his input on this fairly common problem on this edition of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling Podcast.

Transcript

Brad Brown:        This is the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast, it’s great to be back with you once again, I’m Brad Brown and we’ve got our cycling coach, Devlin Eyden with us. Devlin, this is an interesting question, it comes through from Peter and Peter was asking about numb feet. He says he’s struggling with his feet going numb on the bike and he’s not quite sure what could be causing it. Is it something that happens quite often and what are the causes of it?

Devlin Eyden:       We do tend to find this happen a lot in cyclists and there could be a couple of things actually leading towards it. My first suggestion when looking at numb feet is one, making sure that your shoe size is correct. As opposed to a running shoe, for instance, that you want a little bit of movement of the foot in the shoe, a cycling shoe you want to have a snug fit, you want something a little bit tighter. In saying that, you don’t want something too tight and restricting blood flow in the foot.

You need a snug fit in the shoe, but make sure that your shoe is not too tight and in conjunction with the shoe, if you’re wearing very thick socks, if you are, make sure that your shoe can accommodate for that.

Are you cycling shoes rigid?

Second thing is making sure that the cycling shoe that you’re riding in has got a good, rigid sole. If you’ve got too much flex in the sole of the shoe, it allows for more foot fatigue over a period of time, which could also be leading towards the numb foot sensation.

Then, going back to more the setup on the bike side of things, make sure that your cleat placement is correct. Your cleat placement could lead towards numb feet and then later on, transfer into knee and hip problems as well and pain on the bike.

Just making sure, if for instance you’ve got a pair of shoes that you’re not necessarily going to change any time soon, just make sure that the Velcro or the ratchet tightening system on the bike is not necessarily too tight and you can release a little bit of the pressure.

In terms of how to correct it and how to treat it without necessarily buying new shoes as well, is get someone to actually check the setup, have a look to see that you have a decent arch support in the shoe as well and also again, something that allows a little bit of blood flow through to the foot the whole time so that you don’t get that numb or tingling sensation.

BB:           Brilliant, Devlin than you very much and a good bike setup will go a long way to make sure that all of that’s right as well. You talk about the knee, it could transfer into hip pains, but make sure you’re set up 100% on the bike and that could alleviate some of the problems too. Excellent stuff Devlin, thanks so much for your time here on the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast. We’re back again in just a couple of days’ time. Don’t forget, if you do enjoy these podcasts, we’d love it if you left us a review or a rating on iTunes, it just helps us get in front of more people.

Obviously that’s one of the ways that iTunes ranks and rates these podcasts is by reviews and ratings, so if you have got some value out of this, please do take just a couple of seconds, it literally takes two minutes and you’d be helping us out massively. Thank you very much for that, we’re back again in just a couple of days’ time. Until then, it’s cheers.