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Recumbent Crank Length Calculator

Typically bikes come with 175mm cranks, but many recumbent riders feel their riding is optimized with shorter cranks. What is the best
crank length for you? This calculator may help.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what knee angle feels good to you. In general for recumbent bikes a maximum knee angle
of around 90 degree is best ergonomically. Less than 80 degrees may hurt your knees. More than 90 degrees may be less than
optimum from a power standpoint. Exactly what angle feels good for you is a function of how strong your knees joints are, as angles
below 90 degrees can stress your knees more.

Instructions:
To find out what is optimal for you, just whip out your tape rule and make some measurements (in centimeters). For the "A"
measurement, just measure from the side of your hip where you think your hip-joint is, to the side of your knee where it flexes. The "B"
measurement is from the side of your knee where it flexes to the ball of your foot (dashed red line in drawing below).

A & B measurements in centimeters

Hip to Knee "A": 50 cm

Knee to pedal "B": 60 cm

Calculate
Crank Length Min Knee Angle Comfort Zone
145 94 Circus Bike
150 92 High BB
155 91 High BB
160 89 High BB
165 88 High BB
170 86 Med BB
175 85 Med BB
180 84 Low BB Hip to knee and knee to pedal measurements
185 82 Low BB
190 81 Low BB
Enter your measurements and vary the crank length until your knee
angle is around 85 degrees.

Note that in general people feel more comfortable with shorter cranks on higher BB bikes, and longer cranks on lower BB bikes, so for
a Tour Easy maybe go for 82 degrees and on a low or high racer maybe go for 89 degrees.

I'm tall, and my hip to knee + knee to pedal = 112cm. Through experimentation, 165mm are the shortest cranks that feel good for me,
and this is reflected in this calculator, as 165mm gets me to 89 degrees. A shorter person with an 80 cm total hip to pedal length would
need to go to 145mm cranks just to keep the knee angle greater than 80 degrees.

For traditional upright bikes a knee angle of greater than 80 degree is recommended, which explains why all upright bikes come with
175mm cranks.

An article by James Martin PHD notes that human power output remains relatively consistent usingh a wide range of rank lengths.

Though good results have been reported for crank lengths down to 110mm, crank RPMs need to be higher for shorter cranks to
produce the same power as longer cranks, so there is a diminishing return at the point where you can't crank any faster. Your mileage
may vary...

This program uses the law of cosines to calculate the knee angle given three sides of a triangle:

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