After doing a relatively hard workout on Thursday. I noticed a bump in my groin. It was confirmed by my primary care doctor as inguinal hernia. I had one before but it wasn’t nearly as apparent. At the time I wasn’t cycling. The doctor said cycling is fine. But I got in my head today when doing a sweet spot workout and bailed halfway through the last interval. Nothing hurts.
Anyone have one before? ChatGPT says cycling is ok as well. But looking for any other confirmation.
It’s mentally frustrating as my left hand is finally starting to get back to about 75% strength from surgery in October for two broken bones from a mtb crash. So I was starting to think I’d be returning to mountain biking.
While you can cycle and run there is a risk of making it worse. Every once in a while I’d feel a slight pull then ‘warmth’ that was from tearing it a little more. It doesn’t go away and has to be repaired. It’s about a four week recovery until you will feel comfortable on the bike again. Winter is the perfect time to get it done.
General Surgeon here. It is usually fine to train as per normal up until your repair, provided that training causes no severe pain. If the bulge comes back, the first thing to see is if you can “push it back in”. If you can, you’re fine. The big complication of an inguinal hernia is incarceration and/or strangulation of intestine in the hernia. You would know that if the bulge became rock hard, could not be reduced even laying down and relaxing, and if you begin having nausea and/or vomiting. That’s a “go to the ER immediately” problem. Fortunately, in healthy men with smaller hernias, the risk is usually < 1% per year.
Point being, if it hurts, stop doing it. Get it fixed when you can. Recovery would be 2 weeks of no SBR, then light workouts at 50% of time/intensity for 2 additional weeks. Then slowly increase time/duration as tolerated.
I discovered one while recovering from a broken scapula. My buddy was a surgical PA and suggested just dealing with it then since it would be more minor than later. Think I rode inside when the incision was healed and outside after 10 days (from surgery) with no issue at all.
I swam, biked, ran, lifted, golfed, skied, with an inguinal hernia for 22yrs. Can’t really explain why I waited so long to fix it, but it rarely got in the way of anything I wanted to do.
Repair was easy. Recovery couple weeks. Almost 5yrs ago. Other than a slight tug, twinge, it hasn’t ever interfered with anything.