All of us have heard of rehabilitation or ‘rehab’. Rehabilitation from injury is well-known and well-understood within sport and exercise. However, prehabilitation or ‘prehab’ is less well understood and not applied as frequently as it should be – especially given the wealth of benefits it provides.
Many of us struggle to implement prehab into our routines, either because we’re not sure how, or because we feel we can’t justify the time it takes. Plus it’s not as exciting as more intense and challenging exercise! However, well designed prehab can be performed within existing sessions (ie as a warm up to a gym session) and therefore doesn’t need to be the star of the show and doesn’t necessarily have to add to the length of the existing session. Many of us simply don’t understand what prehab really is and therefore don’t give it the attention it deserves. We’ve outlined below some of the key details so that you can better understand the value of prehab and how it may be used to help improve your performance and keep you going for longer:
- The key goal of prehab is to optimise physical capacity by improving musculoskeletal function, stability and resilience to injury.
- Prehab differs from rehab in that it is proactive and preventative, with the intent being to reduce the risk of injury. Prehab is protective. Whereas rehab is ‘reactive’ and used to recover once an injury has occurred.
- Prehab is a method that’s used in multiple settings, not just in sport. It plays a significant role in pre-surgery procedures such as joint replacement therapy, to promote faster recovery following surgery. The military also utilises prehab training as part of their preparation for the demands of operations and to help improve the operational longevity of soldiers.
- Research into the effectiveness of prehab within sports programmes has grown – largely supporting its use in both adult and youth athletes. The approach identifies your key areas at risk of a sport-specific injury, followed by the use of conditioning exercises that may help reduce your predisposition to injury.
- In order to access personalised and relevant prehab, you will usually need to complete some form of preparticipation screening to understand your physical health, lifestyle and exercise requirements – this ensures your prehab is specific to the demands of your sport / lifestyle and to your own medical history.
- Prehab has been shown to reduce both the prevalence of injury and the duration of injury treatment times. Tailored prevention programmes should therefore be a core component of all exercise routines.
If you’re looking for an easy way to implement science based prehab into your routine, we can help.
