Workout of the Day:
Box Jump for Max Height
and then,
Teams of two perform as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
5 Pull-Ups
10 Broad Jumps (6′/5′)
20 Kettlebell Swings
While one partner works for a max number of rounds, the other must complete a 400 meter run. Upon returning from the 400 meter run, they will pick up where their partner left off to knock out as many rounds as possible, while their partners run.
Rhonda and Jackie know how to prehab!
Prehab – What It Is, and Why You Need It
Written by Mark Riebel
You need to do some Prehab!
Most everybody is familiar with rehab, a program that’s prescribed for you by a doctor or trainer to come back from an injury and continue your old activities. But what if those old activities just injure you all over again? It could be some type of form issue, but that’s what we coaches are there to correct so you’re not moving in a way that would injure you. Many times the culprit is some sort of strength imbalance or mobility deficiency, and that’s where prehab comes into play. If rehab builds you up from a previous injury, then prehab is the set of exercises and mobility/stability work you do to give you some extra insurance against getting injured in the first place or hurting yourself again.
Prehab (sometimes called ‘corrective exercise,’ though not nearly as sexy-sounding) usually consists of working some of the specific muscles around a joint to help stabilize it if it has too much mobility, lengthening and mobilizing tissues around a joint that has restricted mobility, or correcting muscle imbalances that may lead to injury or reduced performance. For example, let’s say an athlete has extremely limited dorsiflexion of her feet (ability for her feet to move or stretch upward towards her head) and reduced flexion ability in her knees. When she squats, the only way for her to keep balance, especially if there’s a weight on her back, is to lean very far forward at the bottom. This can put a ton of stress on the low back, and just make it harder in general to complete the squat due to reduced muscular recruitment and odd mechanics. If this is a decent description of you and your squat, some work on ankle and knee mobility may help to correct it.
So how should you know if you’re a good candidate for prehab? If you’re a member of our gym, you’re a good candidate; i.e. everybody is a good candidate for it. I do prehab of some sort before or after every one of my workouts, and chances are you do as well. All of those scapular pull-ups, wall slides and foam rolling that we do before and after the WOD and during our warm-ups fall under the general umbrella of prehab. That’s our coaches’ dirty little secret—you think we’re just warming you up or cooling you down, but really we’re making you better, stronger athletes and helping to keep you out of the doctor’s office.
If you’d like some more advice on what kinds of prehab could benefit you, talk to one of our coaches about scheduling a 30 or 60 minute session and we can show you more than you probably want to know about how to keep yourself strong and healthy.
I’ll follow this post with a few others that will show you some specific exercises that everyone should incorporate to some degree in their training. But it’s up to you to spend the time putting this to good use.
Tags: Prehab
Hey, Mark, wall slides rule! Question on your glute bridge comment from yesterday: should a beginner to weighted bridges shoot for a 1 to 1 correlation between the bridge and the DL regarding loading?
It seems like there’s a difference, if in no other way, in the angle of resistance. By that I mean in the DL the weight is hanging in front of the hips at full extension with the load distributed through the shoulder girdle and assisted by the skeleton at full extension, but on a bridge the weight is pressing nearly straight down through the hips with much less supporting skeletal structure or distribution through any other joints.
Definitely 50 pounds on the bridge versus 300 on the DL seems too light on the bridge. What might be a good ratio to begin with and then work toward for a beginner to weighted bridges like me?
Pat,
I wouldn’t go with a 1:1 correlation between bridges and DLs to begin with, only because you’re learning the movement and they have the unfortunate side effect of the bar digging into your hips a little. If you wrap the bar with a towel or have one of those foam pads that go around the bar it will certainly help.
Once you’ve done it a few times and are familiar with it, you can most definitely work up to or beyond your DL numbers. My DL is only 385 for 3 and when doing glute bridges I think I did sets of 275 for 10 or so. Bret Contreras, a T Nation contributor who advocates glute bridges, has clients that do 405 for 5, so the potential to place significant load on the bar is there. The movement is just another way to train hip extension, so it can aid in your other lifts.
Hope this helps.
This post could not have been more timely! I had a session with Calvin yesterday, and let’s just say that the boy knows his stuff.
After buggering up my lower back last Friday, I finally decided to get some help for my back and chronic hip soreness. Calvin did some of his fancy stretching/torture moves on me (SPUMONI!) and lo and behold, I could squat at a decent depth without pain. I had no idea that I had tight quads and calves, and that those problems could screw up my back and hips.
I now have an even better repertoire of stretches for pre- and post-workout to help my flexibility issues. Thank you so much, Calvin!
“Hey! That’s a picture of you and me at the gym! We’re doing squats!”
Cool Mark, thanks! I’ve been reading Contreras’ stuff recently. Very interesting and I look forward to putting your advice and his to work.
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