should i quit??

pug1982

hi

i started cycling about 2 years ago. i have always played other sports - rugby and football mainly, but got a real buzz when on the bike, and so slowly started to switch.
last year i took part in a couple of timetrials and 3 sportives, but i also carried on playing rugby and football. i have been so torn between all 3. i have tried to combine them but, simply put, whilst you can combine football and rugby, cycling doesnt mix with them.
i have ended up being unable to bike since june and have missed the entire preseason with both my football and rugby team because i strained knee ligaments.

i hope to be over my knee injury by the end of august, but my question is what should i do? i mean i love all 3 sports so much. if i quit cycling i will always regret it i fear, yet i cant see how i can play rugby and football if i continue cycling, and i love those too. :?
i did think about just biking occasional for a leisurely ride, but i have a competitive nature and i couldnt do that. if i bike i want to bike to win, just like when i play any other sport.

i know most people will say only i can decide, but i guess im coming on here in the hope that someone will have a miracle cure / way of combining all 3????
or some powerful words of motivation to help me decide.

cheers

sam_m

I think the answer with any injury is careful rehabilitation over a long period of time - you need patience.

I would think that cycling should help more than the other sports, as (providing you go carefully) the joint will be bearing much less weight than it would with you running on it.

As frustrating as it is, you've gotta learn to take it easy at first.

Cleat Eastwood

why not combine all 3 (Football, Rugger, Cycling) and try Footbuggering.

Splottboy

My injury was over 2 yrs ago, still recovering from other niggles.

Contact sports gone now, cycling - Mtb/Road ok...

Just have to adjust mentally to a "new" way.

Anonymous

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

why not combine all 3 (Football, Rugger, Cycling) and try Footbuggering.

Heh heh.

Personally I would look long term. Football and Rugby often lead to serious impact injuries to ligaments, knees etc, unless you crash or have a badly fitted bike then you don't get these with cycling.

With cycling you see people racing into their 70s, you don't see that with football or rugby!

You can look at this in two ways, give up the footbugger and concentrate on the cycling to become competitive long term and avoid serious damage from football or rugby.

Or

Continue and enjoy the football and rugby whilst you are young and competitive with the knowledge that one day you will have to give them up and also may injure yourself to the point where all sports are a no-no.

anto164

i was thinking along the same lines of NapD..

But then again, it's not just the sports you'd lose out on, it's the social side of it too! I can imagine that a couple of orange cordials get drunk after rugby, and probably the same for footy too.

Weejie54

Well, you didn't expect to get an unbiased opinion on here, did you?

Why not take up triathlon if you want to combine three sports?

Or why not join a cycling club, tackle a fellow rider to the ground, run off with his helmet (hotly pursued by his mates) and when one of the other riders tries to tackle you, lie on the ground as if you are dying and scream "penalty!"?

Rich Hcp

The other sports will cause impact injuries, knees, hips etc, whereas the cycling won't.

The only impact being if you hit the deck!

It sounds to me, and I am no expert in this, that you've picked up football and rugby injuries and there is a high risk you'll pick up injuries quickly after you start on the winter field sport.

Ligament damage takes a long time to fully recover, with a heightened danger of it happening again. You're going to have to learn to slow down at some point!

If you've missed pretraining (whatebver that is, I thought you had to train before anyway) then you won't be in the squad at least for the foreseeable. Then its worth getting just generally fit, cycling is a good way to start this. Then see about getting back in to the footy or rugby squads.

You really need to be careful in avoiding more injuries, have you thought about coaching? Still involved, still competitive and still cycling as well.

Its your choices in the end, but I think to need to listen to your body, and think long term

Good luck

stephenballantyne

How do you manage to combine rubgy and football and play competitively? I know that during my days as a rugby player I never, ever felt like playing a football match the following day / week!

I'd try to find some way of combining one of the winter sports (and let's be honest, this should be rugby, rather than football) with cycling, which is essentially a summer sport, unless you like freezing your gnads off (as many of the nutters on here do ).

Admittedly things get awkward in Spring and Autumn when the pre-season training periods overlap with the end of the other season, but I reckon this can be managed. Just get in a few rides in the evenings in Spring as the nights draw out and start running again towards the end of Summer. Hopefully you'll maintain enough base fitness to ease the transition each time.

Alternatively,extending the debate above, play the impact sports now while your body will take it, safe in the knowledge that you can pick up cycling in later years (assuming you've still got working knees).

Good luck.

redvision

i know exactly what youre going through.

i have played football since i was 3, but a few years ago i started cycling for fitness. last spring i bought myself a carbon bike and decided to bike instead of playing football.
this basically lasted until september when i realised i was missing not just the beautiful game, but also the banter and social life which goes with it. i decided to try and do both and all was going well until december, when i broke 3 metatarsals thanks to imo the latest tackle in history.

anyway, i was off the bike and football field for 2 months, but was able to train again in feb. however, within a few weeks i had a new injury - hamstring/back. to start with there was no problems on the bike, it was just when sprinting in football i had a really strange pain in the hamstrings when sprinting, yet i could sprint. the physio put this down to sciatic trouble.
anyway, then when i was on the bike i started getting lower back ache (had my lbs check the size of bike, my position etc and everything is right for me).
to cut a long story short, after seeing several drs, physios and specialists, i am waiting for an op on my lower back - an injury apparently caused by trying to do both cycling and football - and in the meantime cannot do either :x

my advice to you is pick one. i think you may get away with rugby and cycling (unless you take conversions). thing with football is its all about short sharp sprints, and of course, kicking. you need a very different type of muscles (football you need long hamstrings whilst cycling actually shortens the hamstrings).

a good point mentioned by stephenballantyne is why not play impact sports now in the knowledge that by the time youre in your mid 30s yourl be close to retiring from playing them, and then take up cycling.

good luck

sparkins1972

I came to cycling via football, rugby and cricket. when i was 29, I had had 3 knee ops and had just broken both arms in a freak football accident. After a year off to get myself well fixed, I realised the knee problems weren't going away (may cartillage knee cartillage had completely disintegrated and my surgeon recommended taking up cycling as a means to strengthen up all of the supporting areas around the knee. This has enabled me to carry on playing cricket, which is really my first sporting love - however a young son has meant that disappearing from 11am until 9pm on a Saturday to play cricket is getting harder to justify so i am moving more towards cycling as I can nip out early on a weekend and be back to spend the day with him.

TwistedSpirit

sparkins1972 wrote:

and had just broken both arms in a freak football accident.

I can only presume you were playing against Millwall...

Anonymous

sparkins1972 wrote:

had just broken both arms in a freak football accident.

You must expand on this or I will somehow arrange for you to be banned from the forum. Such teasers are not permitted.

sparkins1972

To cut a long story short I was playing a league game down in London - I played at centre half next to a right full back with an aversion to heading the ball, so every time the keeper kicked it long I used to run around behind him and head it. On this particular occasion I ranaround behind him and was back pedalling like mad to get there. Unbeknown to me a half pissed spectator had decided to run onto the field to head it too, so just as I jumped to head it he ran full speed into the back of me as I was in mid air, i flipped backwards, put both arms out behind me and heard a huge crack as landed and rolled backwards onto my front. As I was laying there I couldn't feel my hands and for a terrible minute or so I thought I had broken my neck. Eventually one of my team mates rolled me over and I looked down and saw both arms hanging at right angles halfway up the forearms. I was obviosly in shock and apparently asked for some cold water and said 'i can run it off!' I somehow persuaded my team mates and ref that I was OK to walk out to the main road and hail a taxi so someone hung my kit bag around my neck and let me go. As I left the bloke who had taken me out offered me a swig on his bottle of vodka out of a brown paper bag. it was one of the few times in my life where I have refused a drink!

The next couple of months were pretty trying, not so much for me but for my fiance at the time, who had to take month off work to effectively wipe my censored and clean my bits on a daily basis. I quite liked it, but I think for her, it was the moment that the spark went out of the relationship - she is now my ex wife! I will always remember the first time she came in to wipe my bum, she had a peg on her nose and Marigold gloves on!

Happy days

Anonymous

:shock:

a340driver

This is the best end of thread evar!

I concur with the idea that while you still enjoy the contact sports and haven't badgered your knees (or both arms) yet then carry on. I've got a mate playing rugby into his 60's. The key apparently is ibuprofen. But he's very tough, feels no pain and has been very, very lucky.

You might bin rugby for cycling and get hit by a pillock on acid driving a sandpaper BMW the next day, ending up with no skin and no knees anyway.

Do loads of sports and enjoy them all!

huuregeil

+1 to all the comments about keeping up the contact sports while you're young. Cycling can come later (or, at least, in the summer months!). I knocked footie on the head a couple of years ago after a string of relatively minor injuries and the feeling that, past 30, every knock was taking a little bit longer to recover from. If you stop football/rugby now, you won't go back and may regret this - make the most of it while you can! Cycling is something you can do, and also do competitively, till quite late in life. Coaching can also be extremely rewarding and is something I've done a bit of - this does entail some time commitment, but is another way of combining your sports and is something worth thinking about, if not now then a little later.

sparkins1972

Totally agree with all that - having increased my level of cycling since I stopped playing my knees haven't felt better since I was about 20. I did consider starting veterans rugby this year which I could never have considered at the time I retired. I only wish I had replaced road running with cycling when I was about 21 so that I could have extended my football and rugby careers. You are a long time retired.

Pross

I'd have thought it far easier to combined cycling with either rugby or football. I don't know how you manage to play both of those. I've cycled and played rugby and they work well together, the cycling keeps you fit through summer ready for the rugby season and the rugby helps give a bit of general fitness for the cycling season although it can be tough doing a Sunday ride after a hard match on the Saturday (and a hard night in the clubhouse ).

keef66

My knees are knackered now; there's too little meniscal cartilage left to risk any kind of twisting or impact, so I have given up the footy and taken to the bike. My knees feel at their best when I'm getting 3 or 4 rides a week in.

My Orthopod says the next op will be total knee replacements. At last, some Ti upgrades!

Butterd2

1) Ditch the wendyball (you know you should)
2) Keep playing rugby, you cant go back to it later. The decision when to stop will quite often be taken out of your hands anyway but if not slowly ease out of it by dropping down to social rugby for a few seasons.
3) Cycle in the summer upping the time spent on it as the rugby tails off.

rake

sell your bike and pack it in.