'Prehab' will pay off

It is interesting to see more and more medical insurance companies developing business relationships with gyms - Nuffield Health/Cannons, BUPA/Fitness First and AXA PPP/LA Fitness spring to mind here.

It's evidence of the growing importance of a subject close to my heart: "prehabilitation", or prehab for short.

Prehab is a preventative maintenance approach to keeping fit which is designed to keep us stronger, healthier and functionally active for longer.

As part of an ageing and pretty inactive population, many people are prime candidates for expensive and lengthy medical care in the future - which the insurance companies are going to have to shell out for. So anything they can do to keep us healthier and reduce those costs is clearly good business.

And they're not alone in this approach. In professional football, top players represent huge investments for their clubs. At £50 million a go, the cost of keeping a Fernando Torres fit is nothing compared with the risk of having him injured and unable to play for even a few games. So on that basis, prehab is a really effective way to make sure a club gets maximum value from its assets.

Obviously, for the insurance companies and sport professionals, it's a financially driven approach. But that doesn't make the underlying principle any less relevant for the rest of us. And it doesn't take a Premiership pay cheque to put it into practice either.

Even relatively small investments in our health and fitness will pay dividends - just the occasional session with a properly qualified trainer is a great way of keeping exercise habits and techniques on track, as well as identifying and correcting potential problems. Similarly, a few visits to a good physio or osteopath can stop small niggles turning into bigger problems.
The truth is, it takes a lot less time, money and effort (not to mention pain and frustration) to keep our bodies in reasonable shape than it does to fix them when they break down. Having been on both sides of that particular fence, trust me on
this one.

David Higgins is co-founder of TenPilates tenpilates.com