“PREHAB” DRILLS AREN’T THE KEY TO REDUCING INJURY RISK IN TRAINING

No matter where you look, whether that’s in the gym or on social media, you are bound to see tons of people doing “prehab” type drills, which are usually low-load movements with an emphasis placed on stability, balance, using the “smaller stabilizer” muscles, and coordination

Examples of these prehab type drills include things like exercises on unstable surfaces, direct rotator cuff and glute med exercises, and Turkish get-ups. But the question is, do these types of drills ACTUALLY reduce our injury risk?

Unfortunately, the answer is probably no. Most lifting-related injuries are non-traumatic injuries that happen as a result of a mismatch between our recovery capabilities and the stress that we’re placing on our bodies during training. If you suddenly and dramatically increase how much training you’re doing, or if you are just doing too much in your training for too long, you increase your injury risk.

The overall stress placed on our bodies during training is the result of how much weight we’re lifting, how much volume (ie sets and reps) we’re doing in a given timeframe, and (although to a lesser degree) the frequency with which we’re training.

These low level “prehab” drills don’t really do anything to modify these factors, and therefore they probably don’t actually reduce our injury risk. There can be a case, albeit a small one, that argues that these prehab style drills might increase our chronic workload over time, which would help us avoid those situations in which we have a sudden increase in workload, but this argument is probably a weak one.

Instead of focusing on adding these types of drills to our training to reduce our injury risk, what we should do instead is evaluate our current training demands, and see if we need to change something about our training load, volume, and frequency in order to reduce our injury risk.

That being said, sometimes when we’re dealing with an injury these types of drills can be helpful to start to reintroduce load to an injured body part, but they should largely be utilized sparingly, and in the beginning phases of dealing with an injury. Once that phase is passed, the goal should be reintroducing the movements that are typical of your normal training and building up from there.

If you need help dealing with an injury, email me at thebarbelldoc@gmail.com, or call me at 860-817-4612 to set up a free consult.