Prehab

3 minute read

This is basically injury prevention stuff. So the focus is on strengthening the things which tend to get injured, ie the muscles and connective tissue which take a lot of stress in weightlifting.
Some don't do this at all; it's not entirely necessary. Others just dedicate a time after their workout to do whatever they want, with no program for it as such. Or you can program it, or just program parts to work on each day. It's mostly up to personal preference; it doesn't matter a huge amount.


I like to think of it in terms of joints.
The wrist bone connects to the elbow bone.
The elbow bone connects to the shoulder bone.
The shoulder bone connects to the back bone (which branches off to the abs bone).
The back bone connects to the hip bone.
The hip bone connects to the knee bone.
The knee bone connects to the ankle bone.
And that's about it.
So we want to protect these joints/areas of our body from injury. Generally more muscle and stronger connective tissue reduces the chance of injury.

So on a joint by joint basis, what are some examples of what you could be doing?
    • Wrists: Wrist extensions and curls. Possibly grip work.
    • Elbow: Extensions and curls.
    • Shoulder: Bit more complicated. 3 parts of the deltoid, presses tend to neglect the lateral and posterior, which are important for shoulder health (you also have the traps which help to stabilise the joint). Lateral raises (done full ROM as seen in pic can also work traps well) and DB rows (done as in pic above also work traps well) or facepulls can address these. Then you have the rotator cuff stuff too.
    • Back: I'm thinking of upper back here, you want to get that strong as it's used a huge amount in weightlifting, it'll help you keep it tight when pulling/catching stuff. Rows and pullups are good for this.
    • Abs: Well, core. Lower back is addressed in hips. Here you want to work your front and side core bits, so things like leg raises and side bends.
    • Hip: Posterior chain stuff (as WL is hugely anterior chain dominant you'll want to do some stuff to prevent your posterior chain getting too behind), stuff like RDLs and reverse hypers are good for this.
    • Knee: This is already worked to hell with squats, but you could do some unilateral work too if you want (try and minimise imbalances, can be a good idea to do this on other prehab stuff too), such as bulgarian split squats or lunges.
    • Ankle: This never really gets injured, don't need to worry about it.

    So as an example of using this to make a sort of prehab program (to be done at the end of a workout):
    Wrists: ext/curl
    Elbows: ext/curl
    Shoulder: lateral raise/RC work
    Back: DB rows/pullups
    Abs: Leg raises/Side bends
    Hip: RDL/Reverse hypers
    Knee: not that necessary
    I haven't included presses here as often they're included in a general program. You could put them in as shoulder/elbow stuff though if you wanted to I guess.

    Shoulders have most attention as they're generally most likely to get injured, then back/abs/hip as these are the larger groups more generally useful to weightlifting, and finally wrists/elbows.
    So something like:
    Hips / shoulders, Back / shoulders, Core / Elbows or wrists, repeat
    So over 6 days you could get:
    • Reverse hypers / Lateral raises
    • Pullups / RC work
    • Leg raises / Elbow stuff
    • RDL / Lateral raises
    • DB rows / RC work
    • Side bends / Wrist stuff

    All of this should be quite light and done for fairly high repetitions (~10 or more) after the work which matters (classic lifts and their assistance). You don't want to work too hard on this stuff else it will interfere with your training, you're also working small muscles which could lead to an injury if you go too heavy.

    EDIT
    my current prehab stuff is quite simple
    Back/Shoulders/Pull
    Abs/Triceps/Pull/Press
    Back/Shoulders/Press
    Abs/Triceps/Pull
    Back/Shoulders/Pull/Press
    Abs/Triceps/Press
    Basically I alternate abs/triceps and back/shoulders, and press 4d/w and upper body pull 4d/w (after my main work; classic lifts and squats)
    I'll pick which specific movement to do mostly off what I feel like doing that day, for back I  do general whole posterior chain stuff.
    Then I throw in some biceps and wrist stuff 1d/w.
    None of this is done massively heavy. Just heavy enough for it to have some effect.

    Updated:

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