Shoulder protection

Nope. But then I broke my arm on Saturday at the Golfie, (Wolverine ) just below the shoulder.

Not sure about armour but definitely getting an emergency satellite tracker thingy when I'm riding again, no phone signal there, that was a long, painful walk out. If it had been raining/cold/broken leg....

If those two Irish guys who found me on the fire road at the bottom are on here thanks again!!!

Still recovering from a very broken CB (8months ago) I've seen this mentioned on a couple of threads, and there doesn't seem to be any really good options. My understanding is the CB is a crumple zone, it's supposed to break, and reduce impact on your shoulder bone, as that is real mess if broken

PS: I've just started riding again offroad, and am just being mindful, and not being stupid. I'd been riding 20+ years previously without breaking anything, so wrapping up in bubble wrap due to one incident, does seem slight overkill. That's said I do worry.. so will check for other ppl suggestions

Does Armour protection actually work. The reason i ask is that in a fall i would assume the main impact would come from putting your arm out and absorbing the impact that way. Leading to injuries.

Maybe a better injury prevention would be to strengthen the shoulder areas. 

I wouldn't want to offer any advice in this area but after a few injuries i do spend a fair bit of time of strength and mobility, especially as i get older. I feel this approach fair outweighs other ways of staying injury free.

Just my thoughts 🙂

i think it would be difficult to protect your collar bone for reasons highlighted above, i believe it's meant to be a point of failure or sacrificial part as it were. 

if its just for your shoulder, i use a G-form pro-x padded shirt. it's effectively a compression shirt with g-forms version of D3O (smart-flex) on the shoulders, so soft fairly thin padding that hardens on impact. lightweight and not particularly warm, although the compression material could wick better

i only use it as i had a fairly bad separation of the AC joint years ago, so there various lump that stick out of the shoulder that would be a bugger to heal / repair should i fracture or break them. i've gone over the front a few times and landed on my bad shoulder and it seems to of done the trick

Going to the gym & building big delts is like built in padding. 

I agree with going to the gym, for some reason since Christmas I've lost a bit of mobility in my shoulder so I've dug out my resistance bands and started doing the exercises again. 

As I said, I think it's more a security blanket thing and I probably need to wean myself of it. Maybe I should ride some more mellow trails for a while and get used to not wearing it.  

Anyway thanks for all the comments

Muscle is the best armour for things like that. Go build some ‘hurting bombs’, ‘get yoked’, etc. Functional fitness (CrossFit-style training) and mobility work will do more than armour for your shoulder. 

Wrists and collar bones break easier than the shoulder blades as those are a right bugger to heal. 

collar bones break because you land on your arm and the weight of your body going over snaps it.

covering yourself in soft D30, hard plastic or sci-fi bulletproof armour is not going to prevent this.

not broken my collarbone but have come close. I went over the bars on a slow steep bit, hands out in front, legs above and behind me like a scorpion, bike still clipped to my feet, all in slow motion... could feel the pressure/pain in my shoulder, and then luckily the cleats released, bike went over me and down the hill, without the added weight of the bike pulling me over that was enough to save me.

Asbrook, armour definitely has its place but this winter i started not wearing any at all. Except a helmet obviously. Mainly because kneepads didn't fit under my trousers. a ride or 2 later and i forgot the feeling of wearing pads. I like the freedom now. Takes a wee mindshift to be honest but im a fair bit happier not wearing any. 

when i did my AC joint, the doctor said no point wearing shoulder protection. as it wont make a difference

I’ve no advice to offer as I’ve not broken my collarbone, have done my jaw in three places but after a few weeks I stopped wearing a full face helmet because the possible one time benefit wasn’t enough to justify the sweat fest. 

I mostly replied because I want to point out how amusing I find it that we’re suggesting there was any thought to the design of the body and the collarbone being a fail zone. If so I have some bug reports to submit for the state of some of our design flaws, the menopause is probably quite high on many women’s bug list. 

GC my partner is an ex-NHS nurse now working in medical rehabilitation, and that is how the professionals describe it. What I found amazing was I didn't need a collar bone to move my arm/shoulder, I had assumed it would be completely immobilized or at least very painful (it hasn't been)

Posted by: GolfChick

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I mostly replied because I want to point out how amusing I find it that we’re suggesting there was any thought to the design of the body and the collarbone being a fail zone. 

I've used the collarbone as an argument against intelligent design before!

Posted by: andrewh

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definitely getting an emergency satellite tracker thingy when I'm riding again, no phone signal there, that was a long, painful walk out. If it had been raining/cold/broken leg....

@andrewh

My solution to riding solo midweek when there's not many folks about is to try not to think about stuff like that...

TBF as long as I stick to the more popular trails there's normal someone else riding them. Eventually.🤞

I did once have an "incident" on Wolf Of Wall Street while on my own in the middle of the week and was glad no one else rode the trail for a while after me.

It was bad enough having to drag myself out of the mangled mess of bike and body without anyone else being there to  help take the piss.

Hope you make a speedy and full recovery.