Being Injured (Popped Ribs) SUCKS!

I've been training BJJ for just over four years now and I've had my fair share of injuries.  I have managed to do the following:

• Hyper-extended thumbs
• Strained groin (borderline hernia)
• Dislocated pinky toe
• Torn MCL
• Fractured orbital
• "Popped" ribs

The popped rib incident happened a week ago from last Monday.  This occurred while trying to escape side mount against a larger rolling partner.  It was definitely not something that happens very often.  In fact I have only popped one rib a while back (again with a larger rolling partner) but it wasn't that bad and healed up in a couple to few weeks.  Well this latest incident involved three popping sounds.  The feeling of having this occur just takes your breath away and hurts like HELL.  I would equate it to getting hit in the ribs with a sledgehammer.  It sucked pretty bad but I've managed to stay on the mats and focus mostly on drilling.  I'd be lying though if I said I've not pushed it a bit too much (errant bumps) and simply trying to roll "light" with larger people....just not a very good recipe for getting healthy.  I got a terrible reminder this morning rolling light with one of the black belts at our gym.  That feeling should last at least a few weeks and remind me not to push it.  I think the biggest problem is twisting the upper body while bearing weight or load from other people.  Unfortunately a large part of my game is playing from various guards and that just isn't a viable option with any sort of resistance.  Should be a good time to get in a ridiculous amount of reps drilling.  

So moving forward I'm going to follow my own advice.

• Stop being a dumb-dumb and train around the injury
• Stop pushing it and let it heal

If you made it this far, here's a really cool match between Caio Terra and one of his friends (co-instructors) Osvaldo Augusto Queixnho from last year.