I've been working on training several athletes, and I incorporated a bunch of prehab exercises to make them as indestructible as possible. I just thought I'd share them here. (I'm copying and pasting the version I wrote on my blog, if you're wondering why it's so "essay-ish".
Most of these are extremely simple exercises that can very easily be added to any one of your workouts. Unfortunately, a lot of athletes neglect these types of exercises simply because they train stability rather than helping you "bulk up". However, taking 10 extra minutes to work on these is much better than walking around with an ACL brace for months and emptying your bank account to pay for physiotherapy, right?
1) Reverse Hamstring Curls - ACL Injuries
Most athletes know, at least in passing, that ACL injuries can be one of the most devastating to a sports career. The anterior cruciate ligament is a major ligament in the knee that prevents hyperextension, and can thus be damaged via hyperextension. The most common cause of this is running and then stopping really short, causing the foot and lower leg to plant, but the rest of the body still continuing forward.
The reason why reverse hamstring curls can prevent this is because the "down phase" of the hamstrings that they work is the same action that the hamstrings have when stopping short like that.
Video:
2) One-legged Squats - MCL and LCL
Two other knee ligaments that suck to tear are the MCL and LCL (medial and lateral collateral ligaments) prevent your knee from bending left and right. To further increase the durability of these ligaments, you need to strengthen the muscles that run beside them and assist their functions. (Strengthen as in stability-wise, not through isolation.)
To do this, one-legged squats are the best thing, as they put you off balance and force those muscles to fire in order to stabilize you. You may not be very good at balancing or getting low enough, but you'll get better. In the meantime, stabilize yourself with a wall or half a chair behind you to sit back in. I recommend watching this video for progressions.
3) Standing Overhead Push Press - Everything in your shoulder
This is here for the sole reason that people go and wreck their own shoulders in the gym ALLL the time. I bet you've done it too. How often do you lie down on a bench and do bench press or chest press? Very? Yeah.
The thing with stabilizing your back and shoulder blades on a bench is that it removes your rotator cuff (essentially, your stabilizer muscles) from the equation and only trains the large muscles such as the deltoids. This creates a relative weakness in the rotator cuff muscles, resulting in a number of issues such as rotator cuff tendinitis and vulnerability to shoulder sprains and dislocations.
The solution is simply to stop doing stabilized pressing, or at least to decrease how much you're doing. Instead, substitute with standing, overhead push press, which is the same thing except standing and pushing the weight overhead. (Who knew?!) It doesn't work your chest as much, but you can still do other exercises to target that. (ie: Push ups or the occasional set of bench press.)
4) Plank, Side-Plank, and Bridge - Torso
This is important for everyone, athlete or not. The core muscles are vital to stabilizing the spine and protecting it from injury. (These muscles are also great to protect all that soft, squishy stuff sitting in your abdomen.) What more needs to be said? A strong core will prevent damaging movements and deformations from occurring in the spine. The plank, side-plank, and bridge will, thus, be important for increasing the static strength and stability of all the right muscles.
5) Turkish Get-up - Errrverythang
Finally, this is one that many, if not most, of you have ever done before. I'm sort of throwing it in as a bonus, since it's a bit of an advanced exercise. Typically, a Turkish get-up uses a kettlebell as the weight, and involves simply lying down with it in your hand and standing up with it. There's a technique, though, it's not that simple. I won't even begin to explain it. I've posted a video, but I would highly recommend asking a personal trainer or kettlebell instructor to teach it to you, as it can be rather complicated.
This exercise is good for virtually everything in your body. It targets stabilizers in every part of the body and works them to the extremes while also training them to synergistically work together as one unit. Once you can master this technique and perform it with a decent amount of weight, your body will essentially be bomb-proof. It might take a little while, though. I know plenty of guys who are bigger and stronger than myself who can barely do one of these with the gym's lightest kettlebell.
Video:
Most of these are extremely simple exercises that can very easily be added to any one of your workouts. Unfortunately, a lot of athletes neglect these types of exercises simply because they train stability rather than helping you "bulk up". However, taking 10 extra minutes to work on these is much better than walking around with an ACL brace for months and emptying your bank account to pay for physiotherapy, right?
1) Reverse Hamstring Curls - ACL Injuries
Most athletes know, at least in passing, that ACL injuries can be one of the most devastating to a sports career. The anterior cruciate ligament is a major ligament in the knee that prevents hyperextension, and can thus be damaged via hyperextension. The most common cause of this is running and then stopping really short, causing the foot and lower leg to plant, but the rest of the body still continuing forward.
The reason why reverse hamstring curls can prevent this is because the "down phase" of the hamstrings that they work is the same action that the hamstrings have when stopping short like that.
Video:
2) One-legged Squats - MCL and LCL
Two other knee ligaments that suck to tear are the MCL and LCL (medial and lateral collateral ligaments) prevent your knee from bending left and right. To further increase the durability of these ligaments, you need to strengthen the muscles that run beside them and assist their functions. (Strengthen as in stability-wise, not through isolation.)
To do this, one-legged squats are the best thing, as they put you off balance and force those muscles to fire in order to stabilize you. You may not be very good at balancing or getting low enough, but you'll get better. In the meantime, stabilize yourself with a wall or half a chair behind you to sit back in. I recommend watching this video for progressions.
3) Standing Overhead Push Press - Everything in your shoulder
This is here for the sole reason that people go and wreck their own shoulders in the gym ALLL the time. I bet you've done it too. How often do you lie down on a bench and do bench press or chest press? Very? Yeah.
The thing with stabilizing your back and shoulder blades on a bench is that it removes your rotator cuff (essentially, your stabilizer muscles) from the equation and only trains the large muscles such as the deltoids. This creates a relative weakness in the rotator cuff muscles, resulting in a number of issues such as rotator cuff tendinitis and vulnerability to shoulder sprains and dislocations.
The solution is simply to stop doing stabilized pressing, or at least to decrease how much you're doing. Instead, substitute with standing, overhead push press, which is the same thing except standing and pushing the weight overhead. (Who knew?!) It doesn't work your chest as much, but you can still do other exercises to target that. (ie: Push ups or the occasional set of bench press.)
4) Plank, Side-Plank, and Bridge - Torso
This is important for everyone, athlete or not. The core muscles are vital to stabilizing the spine and protecting it from injury. (These muscles are also great to protect all that soft, squishy stuff sitting in your abdomen.) What more needs to be said? A strong core will prevent damaging movements and deformations from occurring in the spine. The plank, side-plank, and bridge will, thus, be important for increasing the static strength and stability of all the right muscles.
5) Turkish Get-up - Errrverythang
Finally, this is one that many, if not most, of you have ever done before. I'm sort of throwing it in as a bonus, since it's a bit of an advanced exercise. Typically, a Turkish get-up uses a kettlebell as the weight, and involves simply lying down with it in your hand and standing up with it. There's a technique, though, it's not that simple. I won't even begin to explain it. I've posted a video, but I would highly recommend asking a personal trainer or kettlebell instructor to teach it to you, as it can be rather complicated.
This exercise is good for virtually everything in your body. It targets stabilizers in every part of the body and works them to the extremes while also training them to synergistically work together as one unit. Once you can master this technique and perform it with a decent amount of weight, your body will essentially be bomb-proof. It might take a little while, though. I know plenty of guys who are bigger and stronger than myself who can barely do one of these with the gym's lightest kettlebell.
Video: