Jacob Heart Fractured First Rib During Quarterfinals; Will Have Surgery to REMOVE It!

Jacob Heart competed at the 2023 Semifinals. This year, Heart finished 45th in the North America East Quarterfinals, just five spots shy of a qualifying spot. Most people probably aren’t following Heart on Instagram, he shared that he broke his first rib during Workout #4, the one with ascending clean and jerks.

At the time, Heart thought it would take a little longer to rebuild for the 2025 CrossFit Games season. Little did he know that six months later he would be going into surgery because of it.

Whoop

“I basically had a non-union break of my first rib,” Heart told The Barbell Spin. “This caused a ton of nerve aggravation and somewhat shockingly the safest thing to do is to remove it.”

In speaking with Heart, he said the rib just wasn’t healing over the past six months and doctors have said surgery is the best path forward.

Surgery is recommended because right now his first rib is moving around and bumping into nerves, causing significant pain. So that’s the path Heart is going down.First Rib diagram

The first rib is the top most rib and is the most curved and usually the shortest of all ribs. Apparently fractures of the first rib are rare because of how it sits behind the clavicle and surrounded by the shoulder girdle and muscle.

However, Heart wasn’t so fortunate.

The surgery is called first rib resection and is generally done for thoracic outlet syndrome. This is where there is compression of the nerves or blood vessels in the space between a person’s first rib, collarbone and back muscles.

YouTube video

Heart has been told rehab will take between 2-4 months, just in time for the 2025 CrossFit Open.

If the name Jacob Heart sounds familiar, it’s because he was caught up in some 2024 TYR Wodapalooza Miami drama. Heart finished in 22nd place in the online qualifier, two spots outside the Elite cutoff. However, after several athletes declined their invite, Arturo Torres was invited.

The problem was that Torres finished 24th, two spots behind Heart. Heart reached out to organizers of TYR Wodapalooza and it was realized that they accidentally bypassed Heart when extending invitations.

TYR Wodapalooza ended up extending an invite to both Heart and Torres.

YouTube video

Trending Articles