Do we need prehab? 'Therapy' before injury.

Here's something that seems to be a bit contentious in the Sports Physio world, or at least with one that I have met. This Physio seems to think that colleagues would follow the same belief that trying to predict someone's chance of injury and "addressing problems before they even exist" has the potential to in itself cause a problem.

What was being referred to is the connection that quite rightly exists between the muscles/structures and the control systems in and under conscious or subconscious control. There is the possibility that through the knowledge that one has an existing issue which has the potential to cause injury or excessive wear and tear over time that the issue could be worsened or another one arise in its place.

So is a Body MOT, a prehab intervention to do just this necessarily a bad thing? Well this Sports Physio certainly thought so and wouldn't like to align business with mine to help individuals avoid injury or aid recovery with added prevention of future recurrence. I wouldn't like to suggest that as the role of a sports physio is primarily to aid recovery of injury after it has occurred and that as many injuries are of an overuse intrinsic biomechanical nature that their prevention in the first place could well affect business therefore being counter productive.

Actually I would love to say that. There are a number of activities that a person probably shouldn't do if they wish to avoid injury and move forwards in their goals. Knowing what those may be isn't an exact science at all. The question when thinking about exercise or activities: Does this person have a tolerance to support this activity?

How would we know the answer to this? Practically, a survey would start to reveal answers that could be interpreted by a professional with experience. The most basic example could be: This person wants to run 5km, Have they run before and if so have they run this distance before? That's pretty basic so to improve the accuracy of this one would go further. Some professionals would just need to view the person running to give a reasoned answer. Another way, and it's just a tool like all the others is to perform a biomechanical analysis.

Much research that now exists and the work that is being undertaken by many, does suggest that (as has always been the case) 'prevention is better than cure' and that a great degree of prevention is possible through specifically targeted pre-habilitation. It only takes a certain amount of common sense to know this but non-the-less the researchers are out there doing their thing to bring the science in and seeing supporting results.