What do people think about the hip protection options?
I looked into this after I broke my hip mtbing.
The bolts they’d put in stuck out fromt he bone quite a bit and I kept trapping the muscles between the bolt heads and hard external objects like trees and the edges of tables. It hurt.
The conclusion I reached was that the hip protection would likely stop penetrating injuries and protect an existing ‘soft spot’ in a low speed/impact accident but that the sort of energy needed to cause the injury I had would be beyond the kits ability to deal with. This was 10 years ago so protection levels offered will have changed since.
I had the bolts out after 2 years and I’ve not worried about it since.
One piece of advice I would give to anyone who breaks a bone in a ‘well you wouldn’t; have thought you could have broken that falling off there’ type incident is to get a bone density scan.
Road cycling is known to contribute to low bone density (not sure if there’s been studies on MTB’s) – I had the bone density of a 70 year old man (I was 35 at the time) which probably was the reason for the break int he first place. Get it diagnosed and get treatment.