Yesterday at judo, I tore or strained some intercostal muscles (the muscles that go between your ribs). I was trying to hold on to kesa gatame during a drill, and crunched down and tensed in a way that moved one of my ribs. I felt a pop and a lot of pain, then had trouble using muscles connected to the intercostals without pain.

I felt this was really freakish because I was the person doing the holding down, not the the person being pinned with weight on them. But it has happened to other people!

In randori (sparring), I generally do not try too hard to maintain kesa gatame and usually transition to tate shiho or yoko shiho gatame. Suffice to say, I will never be putting this much force into kesa gatame again, in any context, because the weakest link in the chain is apparently my weird ribs. They say to never force things (except if you’re in the Olympics), which I usually think of as being efficiency advice, but it’s also safety advice.

Intercostal injuries are not uncommon in grappling martial arts:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=intercostal+site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fjudo https://duckduckgo.com/?q=intercostal+site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fbjj https://duckduckgo.com/?q=intercostal+site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fwrestling

Anecdotes suggest rest is about the only thing to do about it.

One problem with bed rest is that you have to get in and out of bed in order to go to the bathroom, eat, check out your kid’s latest feat, let the cat into the room, and so forth. It turns out that the traditional ways to get in and out of bed put tension on your rib muscles, which will trigger pain. Many kinds of ab motion will move your intercostals.

So, I developed a couple of minimal pain ways to get in and out of bed. I’m sharing them mostly to get you thinking about ways you can develop your own techniques if you’ve also injured your intercostals. Because we have different bodies and different injuries, you shouldn’t do what I do.

Preconditions

• My intercostal injury is on the left side, near the bottom three ribs, mostly on the bits toward the center of the body.
• The rest of my body is fine. Hips and limbs have no problems. I’m able to move my hands over my head, rotate my hips, and do wall squats.
• I’m on ibuprofen.
• This wasn’t used in the first ten hours after the injury when movement pain was the worst. I did not get out of bed then.
• I have a partner to help me out if something goes really bad.

  Entering the bed

1. I get in a tabletop position next to the bed. My arms and legs support my weight and don’t let your torso bend. I sort of “hook” the side of the bed with my side.

2. I push with my legs to roll slowly onto the bed, staying parallel with the edge of the bed. Keeping my torso extended and unbent is the key to non-pain.

Update 2/19/2026: After getting into bed last night, I realized that the starting “tabletop position” is actually like just hunching over next to the bed. Then, I realized there’s a lot more to preparing to roll over that I did, but didn’t really think about. So, here’s the revised version.

I:

1. Hunch over next to the bed, with legs more or less straight and the top of my back higher than the bed.
2. Get my left knee on the bed.
3. Plant my right hand on the edge of the bed and plant my left shoulder and head on the bed.
4. Roll onto the bed so that I end up on my back. This can and should be done slowly.

Exiting the bed

• I use my legs to scoot my butt toward the edge of the bed.
• Once I’ve reached the edge of the bed, I use my arms to maneuver my torso (this involves gripping the fitted sheet) so that it’s roughly perpendicular to the length of the bed with my legs hanging off.
• I keep reaching with my feet until I feel the floor. I keep my body convex and slightly bridged out during this part. I make sure I don’t use my abs.
• I slowly slide down into a squat then stand up using pure leg power without disturbing my torso.

I take time between each step to breathe and make sure I’m stable. This is my chance to call for help if I need it. Whatever you do, this should be part of your process of non-pain movement discovery, I think.