I can as it does not hurt so much if I take a ibuprofen/paracetamol but I do not know if I should. Thing is it hurts most at night and I know you are meant to rest but the sun is out and it can’t be that bad as it only takes 2 pills to sort it out all day.

Read Wikipedia on Ibuprofen; it’s got some worrying side-effects.

It will be absolutely fine if you don’t crash!!

Don’t do it if it hurts and take it gently. Been there done that. Suggest you avoid difficult and really rough stuff for a week or two.

Whenever I’ve done my ribs I’ve been told to carry on as normal and exercise as usual. I would advise you speak to your Dr but I’m sure current thinking is to carry on within the bounds of what you can manage pain wise.

My GP encouraged me to keep moving but once I felt able to ride again I did stick to road for a bit – the thought of falling off onto the bad ribs made me feel a bit queasy.

i went snowboarding for a week, a week after breaking two ribs.

it seemed like a good idea until I crashed heavily on an icy piste. that was a whole world of pain….

There is no way I could have rode anything for at least 2 weeks as the pain was quite bad for me. It hurt to breath let alone any exertion. After that I spent another 2 weeks off the bike just to be sensible and for a few more weeks just rode my hardtail on the road. I still get twinges in my ribs now though 6 months on, so maybe I was just an unfortunate case.

I had two cracked ribs.

Listen to your body. Are you bike-obsessional?

Worsecase scenario, you fall onto your cracked ribs.

Plus – you breathe in and out, why take lots of painkillers and feel uncomfortable. Give it a few weeks.

Got a bit of a bad tummy and Paracetamol seems just as good so might go with that. I was not sure how these things healed though as it hurts each time I cough.

Does your muscle spasm? Mine were really bad, If I was laid still every so often the muscles would spasm and I couldn’t move that great.

You don’t sound too bad but if you have a JRA fall maybe you’d end up like mine was..

Don’t if it hurts too much
Don’t fall off
Don’t let anyone make you laugh (that’s what made my ribs hurt the most whilst they were healing!)

Some other threads here on this if you want more info..

I did mine on day one of a 3 day point to point lakes trip. Rode the next 2 days to the finish riding very carefully (walked anything technical). Was painful sometimes but no worse than it would have been being landrovered out and all the hassle of getting me and other half 300 miles back home etc.

After that I gave it a few days and then rode on it carefully. Actually, riding was far less painful than lying down or sneezing. You’d be amazed how carefully you can ride with the thought “punctured lung!” constantly idling in the back of your brain 🙂

I have broke my ribs twice in the past 9 months, the first time I had a week off but the last time I was out in a couple of days. Sleeping is the worst as I can only normally get to sleep on my front. Just don’t ride anything silly, stay away from the black runs and don’t do any jumps or drops. If it hurts ease off.

I blame overwide bars. I was really enjoying powering through big wide turns and on the flat. Unfortunately the wide bars seemed to loose a lot of finesse on the technical spiky rock bits and I lost control. I decided to ditch the wider bars for that bike after that!

Wide bars are a Gods-end tbh. They’ve saved me a few times with the extra balance/leverage. Keep with them.

Hora utlising his wide bar earlier….

I can only guess as to where gods end is. I don’t think I want to know

It depends on the stem and the rest of the bike though. I have bars just as wide on two other bikes and they are great but not the Prophet for some reason. Do not want to get a shorter stem.

Wide bars and a long (+70mm) stem arn’t going to be the best combination but like Hora says I think they come into their own when the going gets rough.

it depends I am riding currently with bruised ribs after a stack
Not done much off roading for fear of crashing [ injury risk not fear]
Main problem is I still cannot take a full breath without pain so not really pushing it

I did nto ride initially and if you need pain killers to do it I would say no

You can. I did – in fact I went for quite a long hilly run the day after I injured mine. Was taking ibuprofen at the time and it really wasn’t all that uncomfortable. Then a week or so later it started hurting a bit more and I rested a bit, but not that much. That was in February – having hit the same place again in March and then strained something there in April it still hurts getting out of bed now – though at least it generally doesn’t hurt too much when actually lying down. I’m wondering if it’s ever actually going to get better.