Ward Off Injuries with the Top Prehab Exercises for Athletes

Prepare your body to handle the demands of your sport so you can catch injuries before they happen and make more sustainable progress. Learn the top prehab exercises for athletes in climbing, running, cycling, swimming, skiing, soccer, golf, and tennis. 

Injuries hurt. And I’m not just talking about physically.

Yes, injuries cause a good amount of pain that follows athletes around for days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years. That pain, in conjunction with whatever damage the injury imparts on the body, butts in on your best-laid plans for training and performing at the level you know you’re capable of underneath it all. 

But the worst hurt goes deeper than the skin. Any athlete who takes their sport seriously enough to get hurt doing it is there for more than just kicks and giggles. We’re in it for the way we can express ourselves through movement, prove ourselves in the face of hard things, and challenge our preconceived notions about what’s possible. That’s the overarching passion that spells the real difference between being an athlete and just going out for some exercise. 

So it goes that injuries don’t just take us out of the game. They steal a source of joy, relief, and confidence. The toll cuts deep. Ask any athlete what they’d do to avoid the existential crisis that injuries trigger and they’re bound to say “anything”. 

As soon as they recover, though, those intentions go out the window and they’re back to feeling invincible. They conveniently forget the depth of their former desperation just in time to make the same mistakes again. Only then does the pain (physical and emotional) send them reeling with regret. 

There’s a way out of the injury cycle, however.

While it’s impossible to eliminate all chance of injury, it’s entirely possible to reduce the risk of overuse injuries related to muscular imbalance and lack of targeted strength. No matter your sport, there are prehab exercises that can tackle the injuries you’re likely to face doing what you love. Stop them before they start with this roundup of some of the most common prehab routines among high-performing athletes across the board (and don’t forget to pregame your prehab with a dose of Supercharged Collagen while you’re at it). 

Climbing

While we’re all inclined to jump to fingers as the most injurious part of a climber’s body, shoulders probably bear more of the brunt on a regular basis. The rotator cuff plays a role in almost every climbing move, no matter the type of hold or plane of motion. Pulling, pressing, and stabilizing all put the rotator cuff under tension. The near-constant stress leads to inflammation and excess friction that makes almost any move debilitatingly painful. 

Strengthen the rotator cuff ahead of time to withstand the strain. Grab a pair of light dumbbells (nothing too heavy; we’re aiming for endurance over pure strength here) and hold them out in front of you with arms bent at a 90-degree angle and elbows out to the side. Keep the upper arms stable while rotating the forearms up from horizontal to perpendicular. Bring them back down into the same horizontal plane as your upper arms. That’s one rep. Repeat for three sets of 15-20 reps. 

Running

There’s a reason that Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome more commonly goes by “Runner’s Knee”. Excess pressure on the kneecap and the surrounding cartilage comes from repetitive bending of the joint, a.k.a. a runner’s stride! The large muscles in your upper leg are more than capable of absorbing the pressure and friction all that bending creates…but weakness in these areas transfers the load to the much more vulnerable knee instead. 

So, while it might seem counterintuitive, knee pain usually has little to do with the actual knee. The actual origin point lies higher up the leg. Use a resistance band to strengthen the hips, glutes, and outer quads so they can pull the weight they’re supposed to—and give your poor knee a break. Start with some simple clamshells. Wrap the resistance band around your quads right above the knees. Lie on your side with your legs together and knees bent. Keep the ankles glued together while lifting the top leg up against the resistance band. Hold and squeeze, then lower back down to meet the other leg. Repeat for three sets of 15-20 reps on each side. 

Biking

Cycling and mountain biking involve their fair share of repetitive motion injuries too, but back pain tends to cause more frustration than anything else. The low-impact nature of biking means that training sessions often go on for hours at a time since that’s one less burden on the joints. The posterior chain, however, doesn’t always take well to being hunched over the handlebars for that long. 

Nothing targets the low back better than deadlifts. Using a barbell or kettlebell, grab the weight with shoulders positioned over the weight, butt back, and feet hip distance apart. Lift the weight from the ground to a standing position. Maintain a neutral spine with a flat back and neck, and straight arms as your legs go from slightly bent to straight. Start with a low weight until you perfect your form, then work up to the highest weight that you can manage in a controlled manner for three sets of five to eight reps. 

Swimming

Similarly, to climbers, swimmers rely heavily on the shoulders to propel their movement through the water. Swimming, however, requires even more rotational movement of the shoulder joint. Pulling through water also adds extra resistance that the shoulders have to fight against. The combination puts the joint at risk of impingement where the tendon meets the shoulder blade. 

Prepare the shoulder muscles for both rotation and resistance. Scapular push-ups zone in on the upper back to strengthen the muscles around the shoulder blade. Start in a straight-arm plank position, or the top of a regular pushup. Here’s the trick: keep your arms straight the entire time. Let just the shoulder blades sink down, then push back up while your elbows stay locked in place. Try to squeeze the shoulder blades together as you sink toward the ground, then push them up and apart at the top. It might not seem like such a tiny movement would have any effect, but you’ll change your tune pretty quick as the burn creeps up along your spine. 

Skiing

Flying down the mountain on two sticks that sometimes seem to each have a mind of their own makes ACL injuries the most common ailment among skiers. Twisting, turning, and poor body positioning all expose the anterior cruciate ligament to high amounts of pressure as it fights to keep the tibia and femur in proper alignment from its position in the center of the knee. Leaning forward so that the quad can absorb more of that pressure takes the onus off of the ACL.

Look no further than the notorious wall sit. Make sure you’re wearing sticky shoes to keep from sliding across the floor, then put your back flat against a wall with your legs bent in front of you at a 90-degree angle. Think about making a table with your legs so you could balance a full plate of dinner on your quads. Hold that position for as long as you can, but ideally for three sets of at least one minute. Make it harder by adding time and/or lifting each leg one at a time. 

Soccer

With all the bounding, darting, and sprinting that happens hundreds of times over the course of a single game, it’s no wonder that soccer players worry most about twisted ankles. Leaps of faith don’t always land well, and that’s not something that you can control in the midst of a high stakes chase after the ball. You need to be able to withstand unpredictable impact with the ground. That, and it takes a sturdy ankle to power a strong kick. 

Balance exercises brace the ankles for lopsided landings and 360-degree passes. Start with a deceivingly simple single-leg balance challenge. Stand on one leg for three sets of 20 seconds, increasing the difficulty by adding time and/or standing on a bosu ball instead of solid ground. Once you’ve got that down pat, add in a dynamic element by kicking the floating leg out in an array of angles while the standing leg fights to maintain stability. .  

Golf

Elbow injuries are so common in golf that the name’s built right in. Golfer’s Elbow, or medial epicondylitis, involves inflammation of the flexor tendon that runs to the inside of the elbow joint. Repetitively flexing the wrist toward the body, a pretty crucial component of any swing, provokes the pain.

Focus on the forearm muscles to balance out the forces required to pull the wrist in. Strength here helps transfer the stress from the ill-suited tendon to the much more robust flexor muscles. Grip exercises do exactly that. Take a tennis ball and squeeze it for 15 reps. Follow that up with a longer squeeze for as long as you can hold it. Finish up with not just squeezing but crushing the ball for 15 more reps. You’ll be more pumped than a climber at the last bolt of their project. 

Tennis

Tennis players struggle with the exact opposite: Tennis Elbow, or lateral epicondylitis, on the outside of the elbow joint rather than the inside. Pain here often stems from the backhand stroke as it aggravates the tendon. Isometric holds address weak extensor muscles on the top of the forearm so that they take on their fair share of the work. 

Hold a light dumbbell in your hand with the palm facing down and the back half of your forearm supported on a surface. Keep the forearm stable while flexing the wrist up toward your face. Sustain that position for three sets of 15-20 seconds. Even stationary, you’ll feel the extensors light up all the way from wrist to elbow!