Injury prehab

Skill SkillMedev/skills/skills/injury-prehab

The open Skill Me catalog — every hosted skill as a portable, MIT-licensed SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add SkillMedev/skills --skill injury-prehab

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4 stars4 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

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Designs targeted prehab routines - sets, reps, and weekly placement - that build resilience at the four most common failure zones: shoulders, knees, lower back, and hips, matched to the user's training program. Use when someone says "my shoulders feel beat up from bench", "how do I bulletproof my knees for running", "prevent lower back tweaks from deadlifts", or is starting a new training block. General movement guidance for injury PREVENTION, not medical advice or physical therapy - existing injuries and pain go to a licensed physio. Do NOT use for a general desk-worker flexibility routine - use mobility-routine instead; for the main resistance program itself, use strength-training-plan; for conditioning, use fitness-program.

SKILL.md

7.4 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Injury Prehab

Most training injuries announce themselves weeks in advance - a cranky shoulder, a knee that aches on stairs - and the cheap fix is targeted resilience work done before failure, not rehab after it. This skill programs that work for the four zones where lifters and runners actually break: shoulders, knees, lower back, and hips. It prevents; it does not treat. Anything that already hurts belongs with a physiotherapist.

Operating procedure

Step 1: Gather inputs

Collect: the current training program (lifting split, running volume, sport) so prehab can attach to it; training days per week; the zones that feel tight, weak, or historically troublesome; any current pain or past injury (past injury means bias volume to that zone; current pain means stop - see Escalation); available equipment (bands cover 90% of prehab); and minutes willing to spend (default 10-15 before sessions). If the user cannot name a weak zone, treat all four as guesses and start with the balanced circuit.

Step 2: Screen before programming

Sharp pain, radiating pain, numbness or tingling, joint swelling or locking, or night pain disqualify a zone from prehab programming - those are physio referrals, not exercise-selection problems. Prehab loads are light, but loading an undiagnosed injury still makes it worse.

Step 3: Select the zone menus

Shoulders (the rotator cuff is the most common failure point): band or cable external rotation 3×15 at light load, face pulls 3×15-20, YTW raises 2×10-12, plus serratus anterior work (wall slides, scapular push-up plus) to protect mechanics under load. Run 2-3 days per week, ideally before pressing sessions. Structural rule: keep pulling volume equal to or greater than pressing volume across the week - chronic pressing dominance is how impingement develops.
Knees (most knee trouble originates in weak glutes and hips, not the knee): glute bridges or hip thrusts 3×15-20, lateral band walks 2×15 per side, terminal knee extensions with a band 3×15 per side; Spanish squats or sissy squats at slow tempo for the VMO; single-leg work (split squats, step-ups) to expose and correct side-to-side asymmetry - a rep or load gap above ~10% between sides is a flag to train the weak side first.
Lower back (needs stability, not mobility - core endurance is the target): the McGill Big Three - curl-up (lumbar stays neutral; this is not a crunch), side plank, bird dog - 3 sets of 8-10 reps with 10-second holds, progressing to timed sets. Pair with hip flexor mobility (couch stretch, 90/90) because tight hip flexors load the lumbar spine directly. Rule: no heavy spinal flexion under fatigue.
Hips (need both strength and range): Copenhagen plank for adductors, banded clamshells, single-leg RDL; mobility via 90/90 (internal and external rotation), deep squat holds with thoracic rotation, and hip flexor stretch with a posterior pelvic tilt. Five minutes daily on hips has outsized returns for lower-body longevity.

Step 4: Place it in the week

Default: 10-15 minutes before each training session, targeting the zones being trained that day (shoulder work before pressing, knee/hip work before squats or runs). On non-training days: a 10-minute full-body circuit touching all four zones. Consistency over intensity - light, frequent work outperforms occasional heavy corrective sessions.

Step 5: Progress conservatively

Prehab progresses by reps and holds first, load second. When all prescribed reps are clean, add reps or 5 seconds to holds before adding band tension or weight. Apply the 10% rule to the overall program the prehab supports: total training load (mileage, tonnage) should rise no more than about 10% per week - most "sudden" injuries are load spikes, and no prehab circuit survives a 40% mileage jump.

Step 6: Reassess at 4 weeks

Retest the flagged zones (asymmetry, tightness, how the shoulder feels after pressing). Improved: keep the doses. Unchanged: add one weekly session for that zone. Worse or newly painful: stop and refer.

Worked artifact

Example: lifter on an upper/lower 4-day split, history of shoulder crankiness, desk job.

PREHAB WEEK - attaches to existing upper/lower split (10-15 min pre-session)

Mon (upper): band ext. rotation 3x15 / face pulls 3x15 / wall slides 2x10
Tue (lower): glute bridge 3x15 / lateral band walk 2x15ea / 90-90 60s ea
Wed (off):   full-body circuit 10 min: bird dog 3x8 (10s holds), side plank
             3x20s ea, clamshells 2x15ea, couch stretch 60s ea
Thu (upper): face pulls 3x20 / YTW 2x10 / scap push-up plus 2x12
Fri (lower): TKE 3x15ea / Copenhagen plank 3x15s ea / deep squat hold 2x45s
Weekend:     hips 5 min daily (90-90 + hip flexor stretch, posterior tilt)
Rule checks: pulling >= pressing volume  |  weekly load +<=10%  |  any sharp
pain -> stop, physio

Deliverable

Produce a weekly prehab schedule containing: exercises with sets, reps, and holds per zone, placement relative to the user's actual training days, the pulling-vs-pressing volume check, the 10% load-progression cap, the 4-week reassessment plan, and the written stop-and-refer rule.

Do NOT

Do not program prehab for a zone that currently hurts - prevention work on an active injury delays diagnosis and worsens outcomes.
Do not turn prehab into a second workout; heavy corrective sessions defeat the light-and-frequent mechanism that makes it work.
Do not stretch the lower back to fix lower-back tightness - the lumbar spine needs endurance and stability; the mobility work belongs at the hips.
Do not skip single-leg work; bilateral lifts hide the asymmetries that cause injuries.
Do not let this replace the main program or a flexibility practice - strength-training-plan owns the program, mobility-routine owns desk-worker flexibility.

Quality bar

The plan ships when: every zone has named exercises with sets/reps/holds, the schedule attaches to the user's real training days rather than floating free, pulling-vs-pressing balance is checked for shoulder work, progression is reps-and-holds-first with the 10% weekly load cap stated, and the stop-and-refer rule is written into the plan itself.

Escalation

This is general wellness education, not medical advice - a licensed physiotherapist or sports medicine physician owns anything that hurts. Refer immediately (do not program around it) for: sharp or radiating pain, numbness or tingling into a limb, joint swelling, locking, or giving way, night pain or pain at rest, pain following a specific traumatic event, or any pain persisting beyond 2 weeks of activity modification. Route neighbors: mobility-routine for general desk-worker stiffness without a training context, strength-training-plan for the main lifting program, zone-2-cardio-plan for aerobic volume the 10% rule also governs.