Training with broken ribs

Hey folks,

I had my first fairly serious crash on saturday after riding through a puddle-hidden pothole. Resulted in 4 broken ribs on one side.

Since then I have done two endurance and one sweet spot (antelope -4) rides and it has felt surprisingly ok. Twisting and lifting is seriously painful right now but on the turbo keeping tall and straight it seems fine.

Wondered if others have had similar experiences and wanted to check that provided I cant feel much pain, I’m good to carry on with sweetspot high volume.

Thanks for any advice :+1:

Talk to your doctor?

Seems like training SSBHV on days old broken ribs isn’t a great idea.

Cracked my ribs twice before, advice from the doc on both occasions was that if it didn’t hurt too much then go for it. Very similar experience to you, could do sub threshold stuff with no real problem within a few days.

Not a professional medical opinion, just N=1!

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Had a few cracks to my ribs but never fully broken. Don’t know how you can do sweet spot after that! If it was me I’d probably do as much as I can without the pain being too bad.
In my experience, it doesn’t really start to hurt until after about a week. Day 7/8-14/15 have been the most painful.

But I´d talk to a doctor or physio before doing anything that gets your breathing going. Broken ribs can be sharp and lungs do not like sharp objects poking them…

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Has any doctor stated that training with a broken rib can delay healing? For example, would the body reallocate some of the resources for the training instead of fixing its broken rib?

Broke my rib last year and I was never told that. I was riding z2 gravel the next day. I’ve always been told let pain be your guide. You are healing though, so I’d focus on nutrition, recovery and sleep.

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