Best Bikes For Rehabilitation

Choosing a Bike

April 02, 2019

"Hey guys, Dustin here. CEO of Sixthreezero. I wanted to talk to you today about the three best bikes for rehab. Or the three best bikes if you've had surgery. Basically, the best bikes, if you've had an injury and you're coming back from it, what's the best bike to ride that will be easy on your body but will help you rehabilitate. So there are lots of different bikes out there, let's get right into it.
So we get a lot of people actually leaving reviews on our products on Amazon, in particular, EVRYjourney. People that maybe have had knee surgery, reconstructive knee surgery or back surgery, have had knee injuries or things of that nature. A lot of people comment, "These have been great for me. They've been easy on my back, easy on my knees", things like that. So let's talk about what categories of bikes are the best if you're rehabbing.
So this might be an obvious one and it doesn't necessarily pertain to us. But I'll say number one bike for rehab, stationary bike. Now, it sounds kind of funny. I don't like stationary bikes because, obviously, I want to be outside riding in the beautiful weather.
But, number one bikes going to be a stationary bike and I would say specifically a recumbent stationary bike. Recumbent's going to basically mean you're sitting and your feet are more out in front of versus an upright bike where your feet and your legs are more directly below your hips. So, if balancing on a bike is not an option for you, stationary bike's great. Get your blood circulating, get your body moving. Just get blood back into the extremities that maybe you injured or had surgery on. Once you get past that, then you can move outside and work your way up to balancing on a bike again.
So, moving on from a stationary bike. If you can graduate from that and your injury's recovered enough, next option I would move to would be a tricycle. Again, if you feel fully comfortable after injury balancing, you can skip the tricycle to the next two options we're going to talk about. But, if you still want to be outside, but again, you're not quite ready to be in control of the balance of the bike, a tricycle is a great option.
So what this is going to do is it's going to alleviate the stress of you having to balance on the bike. It's got three wheels, so it's going to be simple. All you really have to do is apply some pressure to the pedals. There are different speed options available for tricycles. So if you get something with a few gears, maybe a seven-speed, it's going to be fairly simple to pedal in gear one. That would be my recommendation is obviously start with less resistance. So if you can get something with speeds that has a really simple first gear, that would be great if you're rehabbing, come off an injury and kind of work your way up as your muscles rebuild the strength that you lost during the time in which you were injured or had surgery or laid up on the couch. Whatever it may be.
Now, obviously, tricycle's may not be the most glamorous bike. But there are some options out there that look great. They can be really fun to ride because of how easy they are.
So if you can graduate from a tricycle, I would say the next best option would be a recumbent bike. So, as I said, like the stationary recumbent bike, there are also recumbent bikes to be ridden outside. Recumbent bikes are great because you're sitting down and your feet are out in front of your body, so it's a very relaxed riding position. The on and off could potentially be easier than a fully upright bike. Now, I say that because some recumbent bikes are set pretty low to the ground. So if you had a knee issue and you can't bend super low, make sure you look for a recumbent that's a little bit off the ground so you don't have to bend too low.
There's a lot of options out there that exist in the recumbent bike world that are high or that are low. So if you had a knee injury, find something where you're not bending too low in a recumbent bike. But, once you're on a recumbent bike, it's going to be really, really comfortable. It's going to take a lot of tension off your body, your back, your knees, your hips, things like that. So if you're just getting back into biking, you've been injured for a long time, recumbent bikes are great and very, very comfortable. Also, the handlebars will be very relaxed on your shoulders.
I also believe there may be some recumbents out there that have three wheels. So this could be a good option, actually, like a tricycle. If you don't want to be sitting upright like on a trike, you want to be down on a recumbent with three wheels, those exist too.
Now, recumbents, in general, are a little bit harder to find. It might be something you have to do some internet research for and probably have to have it shipped to you. If you're lucky enough, there might be some bike shops in your area that actually carry them in store. But I would say tricycles and recumbents are probably two of the more difficult bikes to actually find in the store.
Now, if you've built up your leg strength enough or whatever extremity strength that was injured, back up and you feel pretty confident. But you've still decided that you're not ready to go to the biking level you once were or you just want it to be leisurely and still casual. I would say the last best option is something called forward pedaling and forward pedaling with a step-through design would be the best.
So this is something like our Sixthreezero EVRYjourney. There are other bikes like the Electra Townie. Basically, these are upright bikes except the pedals have been shifted forward about four inches. What this does is it does two things. Number one, it allows the rider to put the seat height low enough to the ground so when you're stopped, your feet can go flat on the ground. But, when you start riding, you can still get proper leg extension because of the forward pedaling, or the pedals being moved forward.
The other thing that this does is it takes pressure off your hips and your knees because you're not pedaling straight down, you're pedaling a little bit out in front. So, it's not going to be quite as relaxed as a recumbent, but it's still going to give you kind of a hybrid between that recumbent and that upright riding position.
Now, again, I'd like to also precursor I'm not a doctor. The things I'm saying today are not necessarily approved by a medical board. These are just things I'm saying that have been spoken back to us from our customers. So in particular, I would say read the reviews on any bike that you're looking at. You can probably see other people commenting around what their condition was and why they chose a certain bike. Or check out bike forums. There's a lot of bike forums out there that talk about what bike was good for them, if they had back surgery, if they had knee surgery, things like that.
The EVRYjourney from Sixthreezero on Amazon particularly has lots of reviews from people that are coming off injuries, that had knee surgery, that had back surgery and found that bike to be really, really great for them when they wanted to get back into cycling. Still, be easy on their body, but allow them to get out and do exercise.
So, my 4 bikes for rehab, again, to review are the stationary bike, a stationary bike that's recumbent, recumbent bike, tricycle, and the step-through forward pedaling bike.
So if you have a bike that's particularity been good for you during rehab, whether it was knee surgery, back surgery. Please, comment below and tell us what injury did you have and what bike did you choose to get back into cycling. It'd be great to hear and also to share with other people.
If you have any other questions or want to reach us directly, please email us theteam@sixthreezero.com or reach us by phone (310) 982-2877 and check out our bikes. You can browse the top navigation of our website and go ahead and enter your height and weight in our body fit calculator. It's going to tell you which bikes are fit for your body because, at Sixthreezero, our goal is to find the perfect fit for your body."