Nuthin. Deal with it. There's *nothing* you can do about it except wait. On the plus side, you can do all the exercising you can tolerate - you should be back on the bike pretty quickly but running may take a while, depending on your pain threshold. Don't know about swimming - Richard Blaine Don't Swim.

With me the pain is typically worst a week after the crash, at which point sleeping becomes a serious challenge. It gets better from there and is usually gone by two weeks. Having said that: I must be getting old, because I busted my ribs this winter and it took *forever* to fix itself; they were still tender 6-7 weeks later.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Sorry to hear about your crash.Hopefully the good news will be that if you've only bruised your ribs you should be OK again pretty quickly, a matter of days.

If they are broken then that's a whole different thing.. But this depends on where they are broken and the severity etc. lots of variables. I'm a bit of an armchair expert on this subject as i broke mine 7 weeks ago and I've since spent a lot of time sulking and reading websites about "How quickly do ribs heal" and "why do my ribs still f******g hurt after a month?".

My N=1 is that broken ribs are very very painful. It hurts when you sneeze, laugh, sigh, cough, sit down, stand up, lie down in bed!! and anything and everything is a painful experience. After 2 or 3 weeks i was back on the trainer doing Zone 2 only. 7 weeks in now and i still can't run or swim and my cycling is limited to anything under FTP, which has dropped by 20W at least.

I reckon it'll be another 2 weeks before i can swim and about the same before i can hit some power on the bike again. It's completely buggered up my whole season!

The plus side is that I've caught up on a lot of movies and reading and hanging out with the family. And I've got out of a lot of chores and DIY: "Sorry love I can't - broken ribs".

Thanks for the quick responses. I doubt anything is broken. I can take a relatively deep breath without wrenching pain. I can also press the area without a lot of pain. At least no more pain then I would expect from a bruise. If it wasn't for the road rash on unshaved legs I would have gotten a decent nights rest last night. Getting in and out of a chair is an adventure, and basic movements like walking are painful right now. Then again its been less then 24 hours since I crashed.
After two knee surgeries and more meniscus damage on both knees I'm no longer running. TT and gravel racing is about all I can handle anymore.
And of course being 59 years old means heal time is extended.

I've bruised my ribs a few times and there isn't much you can do besides letting time heal them. I would ice and use Traumeel cream which seemed to help speed up the recovery. Usually after a week or two I was able to get out cycling on my mountain bike, but running and swimming took a lot longer.

Best of Luck for a Speedy Recovery!

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Member of the Litespeed Factory Team
www.litespeed.com

Years ago i fell off my MTB going over a jump and elbowed myself in one of my lower ribs and bruised it. The next day i was pressing on it to feel the extent of the bruising and "see if it was broken". I pressed hard, then really hard and then "SNAP!" then it was broken. That f******g hurt for sure. I was younger then, it was a lower rib and this was pre-middle-aged-triathlon-wannabe days so it wasn't half as debilitating as the current ones..

Just be aware things might get worse before they get better. Depending on how hard of a hit you took you will have localized swelling which helps dissipate any pressure place directly on the bruised area. As this swelling goes away you will often get more acute/point source pain on the bruised ribs.

The good news is you won't do additional damage by riding on a trainer. The bad news is that it will hurt and you will need to stake some time off running and/or swimming.

As others have said, only thing you can really do is just let them heal. I broke 3rd and 4th left posterior ribs years ago and simple things you take for granted like sneezing, coughing, sleeping comfortably etc can be very uncomfortable.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

I figured I'd have swelling but I can't feel any. I'm regularly on Zwift and luckily my road bike has been sitting on the trainer for a week, so I figure a few zone 1 or 2 workouts might help. Hopefully I won't lose to much fitness, but my first TT was supposed to be a week from Sunday and now that's out. My first "A" race was supposed to be the third week of June and I'm afraid that's in doubt if I can't do any on road zone 4 work.

Recently bruised my ribs on the MTB, I found that I could ride my Mtb with it's wide bars and my tt bike just fine, riding my road bike was way too painful especially from standing starts.
I took a huge inhale the next morning and felt some cracking... I was 4 weeks in my recovery when I yanked a sock off and heard some popping and had pain again. I'm nearing my end of recovery but I'm very careful with my left arm/side.
Be careful and patient

Unless there's some other reason you need to take off the bike, I'm not sure why you couldn't keep riding.

I've had rib issues- bruissed or maybe worse, and I've also popped them out of place and had to have a chiropractor put it back in place.

None of which interfered with my ability to do road races and crits. Just had to breathe a little different (ie, not too deeply) and pay special attention to back mobility as it tends to tense up around an injury a bit.

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-Physiojoe
Instagram: @thephysiojoe
Cycling coach, Elite racer on Wooster Bikewerks p/b Wootown Bagels

A few years ago I had a minor motorcycle accident. My hand and ribs hurt so I went to the Urgent Care to get them checked out. I had a small crack in my hand (boxer's fracture) but the ribs appeared fine. No treatment for anything. The ribs were sore and I just took it easy. About two weeks after the accident, I was lying in bed and rolled over. CRACK, CRACK,CRACK. Must have been hairline fractures that the xrays didn't pick up. After that, I had 6 weeks of all the fun cracked ribs are reported to be.

My only concern about riding soon again outside is if I need to engage my core to avoid potholes, gravel, other riders etc I wouldn't be able to react quick enough to avoid another crash. I'm thinking about jumping on Zwift for a little Z2 spin to see how I feel. Then go from there.
Just came back from my local health food store with some Arniflora gel and Arnica Montana pills. Hopefully I can speed up the recovery a little.

I am dealing with bruised ribs now. Was at mile 7 of the Fargo Marathon and running at a good pace when at an aid station, another runner stepped right in front of me an I went down hard. I jumped back up and ran the race. It wasn’t until that night I realized how much they hurt. I immediately swam the next day and it hurt. Almost two weeks and the still hurt but manageable to run, bike and swim. I notice they hurt more in the am.

Bruised ribs and broken shoulder+ clavicle. No idea when I can return, but doc did me permission to ride a recumbent on the trainer. That is my recovery plan until I can return to swimming and running and 'real' biking.

My experience with bruised and broken ribs is that the amount of pain depends on the location and the involved rib(s). I've had bruises that hurt worse than breaks, and vice-versa. Seems to kind of depend on how much the break/bruise MOVES with activation.

See a doctor, make sure its not broken, follow their advice.

If its only bruised you will most likely be given the, "do what you want to pain tolerance" instructions. If its broken...probably a different story.

In the end...do what your doctor tells you, not what you read on the internet.

Its been a little over 48 hours since I crashed and the pain has definitely lessened since yesterday. I have to believe if the ribs were broken it would be a lot worse then it is. Going to get on the trainer today to see what I can do in a controlled environment.

Update. Got out on the TT bike for 35 miles Saturday, and a metric century Sunday. All was well, or so I thought until a sneeze Monday morning. Felt like I was hit in the ribs by a baseball bat. Feels like a four day setback. In a lot of pain sitting in the office today.