Prehab is the term used for exercises that prevent injuries. Instead of getting injured and then having a physical therapist tell you to do the exercises, you do them ahead of time and avoid injury. It's pretty much the same exercises for rehab and prehab.
Many sports have frequent overuse injuries and now their coaches are advising athletes to do the prehab exercises. These are different exercises than the ones that coaches prescribe for conditioning. They aren't meant to make you faster or stronger at your sport. They are meant to keep you from getting injured.
Paddlers often get shoulder injuries from overuse with the rotator cuff muscles. That is often because of a muscle imbalance when we develop one set of muscles, but don't really develop the other muscles. Doing exercises with small, light weights or elastic bands that exercise the rotator cuff muscles in other ways are good preventitive exercises to do.
Also, core and abdominal exercises are good to do to strengthen the core so you are less likely to get injured, such as a back injury. Planks and other body weight exercises help develop the core and abdominal muscles.
Daniele Molmenti did a video on the ICF website, which can be found here:
http://canoeicf.com/icf/Aboutoursport/Canoe-Slalom/Canoe-Slalom-Development-Program.html
Scroll down the page to see his video about the backpack workout that he does without weights, just bodyweight exercises and elastic bands, so he can exercise when he is on the road. Many of the exercises he demonstrates are prehab exercises, designed to keep the athlete from getting injured. It's a mixed workout without some strength and plyometric moves, core exercises, and core exercises. There is also a document attached- "weights don't lie- slalom is adaptation" that you can open to find out more about Daniele Molmenti and how he trains.
It's important that you differentiate between prehab exercises designed to keep you healthy and exercises designed to make you faster, stronger and more powerful. You should be doing both, but not confusing the two. You will be disappointed if you think that doing lots of planks and shoulder exercises will make you faster in your boat. Do both, but if you had to choose between the two, I would go with the prehab exercises because they will keep you healthy and keep you on the water.
There are other You Tube videos that show rotator cuff exercises. Lots of athletes in other sports also have shoulder problems. Doing the rotator cuff and core exercises are good ways to prevent injuries in paddlers. I recommend getting a short prehab routine of core and rotator cuff exercises to do frequently- daily, if possible, in order to avoid injury.
Here is the link to the ICF website with the Daniele Molmenti video and interview:
http://canoeicf.com/icf/Aboutoursport/Canoe-Slalom/Canoe-Slalom-Development-Program.html
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