Knee Pain and Cycling Performance

Summary

We are investigating how mild to moderate experimental knee pain affects neurological, cardiovascular, metabolic, and psychological responses during cycling. You will be required to attend the Human Performance Lab for a total of 12 sessions. In the first session, you will perform a maximal cycling test to determine your aerobic fitness. In 7 of these sessions, electrical stimulation of the knee will be used to simulate moderate knee pain. We do this so we can study how knee pain and fatigue impact performance so we can help people suffering from knee pain stay active and improve their quality of life.

During these sessions, aside from cycling, we will measure you breathing rate, heart rate, and blood lactate (via fingerprick). We will measure your pain threshold using a handheld pressure device. We will also stimulate your femoral nerve and motor cortex to examine your neural pathways. Finally, we will track your movement using markers and 3D motion capture cameras. All of these measures are non-invasive (aside from the lactate measure, which is very minimally invasive) and will cause no or very minimal discomfort.