What are Prehabilitation Exercises?

Prehabilitation, or “preventative rehabilitation”, is the process of increasing an individual’s stamina, strength, range of motion and functional capacity through individualised exercises to proactively prevent pain and injury. The most effective prehabilitation exercise programs are tailored to the individual and are based around their typical daily activity load. Prehabilitation exercises should be designed around the physical demands of work tasks, home activities and sport/recreation.

What does a Prehabilitation Exercise program involve?

A typical program involves individualised, tailored exercises focused on improving:

  • Aerobic endurance
  • Muscle strength
  • Core stability
  • Flexibility
  • Balance

Here are a few examples of the types of prehabilitation exercises you may have come across:

  • Resistance Training

  • Pilates and yoga

  • High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

  • Low Intensity Steady State (LISS) Training

Overall, these exercises aim to increase your functional capacity.

What is Functional Capacity?

Functional capacity is the ability for an individual to meet the functional demands associated with their work, home and extracurricular tasks.

There are a number of factors that may influence personal capacity on any given day. This can include: 

  • Being at the start or end of your shift
  • Monday morning after a big weekend
  • Your quality and duration of sleep the night prior (7-8 hours is a good target for most adults)
  • Your diet the day prior (aim for at least 5 serves of vegetables, 2 serves of fruit)
  • Your exercise regime last week (150 minutes moderate intensity is recommended)
  • Your experience with completing the work tasks previously

Why should you do Prehabilitation Exercises?

Prehabilitation exercises are invaluable at the work, worker and workplace level. Let’s talk through 5 key reasons why.

1. Increase individual functional capacity and enhance capabilities

An individually prescribed prehabilitation exercise program is designed to increase the limits of an individual’s load bearing and stress capacity, increasing physical performance and their overall capacity to meet and exceed the demands of their work roles. Strength and conditioning prehabilitation exercises help improve a worker’s range of motion and mobility, increase their efficiency and performance, and reduce fatigue and chance of injury. The work and workplace benefits directly from healthy and strong staff.

2. Decrease risk of pain and injury

In the same way that someone’s capacity is not always the same day in and day out, often the physical demands of their workload can fluctuate. Like accountants around the end of the financial year, or retail workers in the December Christmas rush, every industry experiences natural fluctuations in mental & physical demand. The same is true for home and recreational life – pre-season football training differs greatly from game season and off season, as does the demand of school terms vs. school holidays.

By having their physical capacity exceed the physical demands of their workload (whether it be for home, work or sports/recreation activities), an individual creates a buffer to protect themselves from elevated injury risk. 

Employ Health uses a capacity rating system to classify physical demands of work tasks. This ranges from office/sedentary work through to very heavy work (you can find out more about job capacity matching services here). Let’s compare Angie and Bella, who are in medium capacity roles and lead similar lives.

ANGIE:

  • Mother of 2
  • Enjoys social netball on Sundays
  • Works as a packer in a factory Monday – Friday (‘Medium’ capacity role)
  • Completed 8 week program of individualised Prehabilitation exercises, taking her capacity from ‘Medium’ to ‘Heavy’

BELLA:

  • Mother of 2
  • Enjoys social netball on Sundays
  • Works as a packer in a similar factory Monday – Friday (‘Medium’ capacity role)
  • Achieved ‘Medium’ capacity rating and has not participated in any prehabilitation exercises.

Thanks to completing eight weeks of prehabilitation exercises, Angie exceeds the physical demands of her role, while Bella meets the demands of hers. On any given typical day, both Angie and Bella are suitably matched to their roles and therefore have low risk of pain or injury. Now, imagine it’s the Monday following a weekend-long netball tournament, which was physically exhausting. Angie and Bella’s personal physical capacity is likely decreased. Due to Angie having exceeded the capacity demands of her role, she has more wiggle room in terms of physical performance, when compared to Bella who may now be at risk of her personal physical capacity being beneath the safe requirement for her medium rated tasks.

A similar effect happens when personal capacity is unaffected, but there is a spike in the physical demands of the role. For example, when the automatic box maker jams, and the workers need to hand-make each cardboard box that day. Or, when another member of staff calls in sick and the rest of the team’s workload increases to cover their work.

The same principles apply when considering an ageing workforce. By increasing an individual’s physical capacity through prehabilitation exercises and exceeding work demands, risks associated with age-related physical capacity declines can be prevented. This preventative approach is not only invaluable in the workplace, but in relation to home/recreational circumstances, too.

3. Improved health outcomes

Improved health metrics are a well known outcome of exercising – some helpful information detailing recommendations and benefits can be found here. Prehabilitation exercises can be used prior to a known stressor on the body, such as before surgery, radiotherapy, etc.; there are a number of studies which have demonstrated improved post-surgical outcomes when prehabilitation preceded the operation.

4. Increased productivity

There is strong evidence that suggests exercise improves concentration, stress management and levels of engagement, which naturally leads to greater productivity. Furthermore, lower absenteeism from injury directly enhances job performance and productivity. By lowering risk of injury with prehabilitation exercises, there are lower incidences of lost time injuries and WorkCover claims.

5. Financial indicators

Increased capacity of staff and decreased risk of injury has significant positive financial benefits for individuals and businesses. Decreased rates of absenteeism and lost time injuries increases efficiency and lowers WorkCover insurance premiums. From a personal perspective, preventing injury and illness related absent days also directly benefits an individual’s financial security. Prehabilitation exercises are a great way to improve both of these financial indicators.

I would love my employees to participate in Prehabilitation. Where to from here?

To jump in and get onboard with proactive prehabilitation exercise programs, look no further than Employ Health. Read more about prehabilitation, strength and conditioning, health and wellness, or contact us directly.

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