Exercise Rehabilitation
ledbury
Prehab - Rehab
Prehab: What Is It And How To Do It
Ah, to be injury-free!
It’s no longer the quest of athlete’s to stay injury free. In an ever changing world and working environments, we all need to stay injury free.
Obviously, no one wants to get injured.
What’s the best way to avoid injury?
You could avoid sports and physical activity at all costs and sit at home, but then you’d mostly just be avoiding life. And, even if you do avoid physical activity and stay at home, you could still get injured simply by moving a chair or by sitting all day. Preventing an injury is always easier said than done. But, lucky for us, science has proven that with the right exercises done the right way you can prevent most non-acute injuries and even lower your risk for some acute injuries. As well as stopping those aches and pains that creep in from just doing your job.
Call it functional training, targeted strengthening or, the new buzzword in the athletic and fitness communities – prehab.
Essentially, prehab is doing targeted strengthening exercises usually done in rehab before you even end up in rehab. Preparing your body for whats coming next. It is making sure you’re doing every movement correctly, paying special attention to the muscles being worked. Really, this is what you should be doing already. Yet, we don’t, which is why we’ve now come up with the fancy new term for doing exercises correctly – prehab.
Rehab Turned Prehab
Hopefully, you haven’t been to physical therapy, and we hope you never have to because that would mean I did my job in keeping you injury-free. Yet, if you’ve ever been to physical therapy or nursed an injury then you probably know exactly what I’m talking about when I say rehab exercises.
These are the exercises that are targeted specifically for the problem area/individual – the muscles that were too weak or poor range of movement to function properly, resulting in an injury. These are your balance exercises, your squats, your planks and pushups. The bodies basic movement patterns. In addition, however, prehab also includes stretching and warming up as well as cooling down/self care.
Really, this should already be built into/part of your overall training. You shouldn’t have to necessarily spend extra time on prehab exercises and routines. In order for prehab to work in preventing injuries, you need to be:
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Doing exercises properly
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Maintaining good posture
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Warming up, cooling down and stretching
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Recovering properly
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Working muscles that are weak
This is prehab, but you should already be doing these things as part of a well-balanced training program that is tailored to your individual needs. Prehab, along with a good training routine, should include core strengthening, coordination and stabilisation/balance exercises. It should also include range of motion (ROM) and mobility drills that are focused on your weak areas.
Prehab can also include sports-specific exercises that an athletic trainer or physical therapist can determine. These exercises are also targeted to each person’s individual weaknesses. This is a form version of prehab that requires periodic evaluation and assessment to make sure it’s addressing the person’s needs.
Prehab Injury Prevention
So what does prehab actually prevent?
It can prevent or lower your risk of any number of injuries. However, the biggest offenders of stress-induced injuries and pain are often the ankles, knees, shoulders, and back. The reason for this is mostly due to improper training, improper movement, and bad posture. Prehab works to fix all these weaknesses before they lead to injury. For example.
Knee pain? Focus on strengthening your hips.
Back pain? Strengthen your core.
Shoulder pain? Work on your range of motion.
Specific and targeted exercises for weakness is the main focus of prehab, and according to studies it works. Researchers found that prehab reduced the need for rehabilitation of knee and hip replacement surgery patients by 73%. This was just for surgery patients, so imagine it’s effectiveness for those athletes and people who are looking to prevent injury.
Prehab does this by targeting and fixing muscle imbalances and bad posture that can lead to any number of stress-induced injuries.
At the center of prehab is a focus on enhancing core function, ROM and mobility; something that helps to mitigate the muscle imbalances and postural deviations that increase one’s risk of injury when external loads - whether it be equipment used while working out in the gym or things we encounter in everyday life - are applied to movements.
When you work prehab into training, it targets those muscle imbalances that cause dysfunctions in the body, leading to injury.
Many think that prehab is only good for athletes. Edge Fitness and Therapies has been implementing prehab for all its clients for the last decade. I think it’s foundational to any ones training and fitness goals. Especially for those that sit for long periods of the day or are inactive for most of the week and then are active at the weekends.
Along with those sit for long hours at the desk or that weekend warrior.
If you want to be injury-free, try prehab as part of your training regime. The best treatment for an injury is to prevent it.
Prehab Injury Prevention
Rehabilitation through our injury clinic is the process of regaining full normal function following an injury or operation. And aims to restore overall strength and mobility of the affected body site.
This is achieved through many stages that you are guided through. Such as assessment, various treatments, the application of specific rehabilitation exercises along with re assessments at every stage of your recovery.