The Prehab Guys

The Future of Healthcare

The Prehab Guys

Optimizing movement and performance, physical therapist's Michael Lau, Craig Lindell and Arash Maghsoocdi post videos on social media to help millions of people. Their videos are meant to help people become more knowledgeable about how to take care of their body. Their videos include how to perform exercises correctly, how to foam roll s certain muscle optimally and how to stretch a certain muscle effectively.

Michael Lau going through exercises for our volunteer patient's tight shoulders and traps

Craig Lindell says that prehab is the future of health care. Lindell, Michael Lau and Arash Rex Maghsoodi are physical therapists, business partners and friends. Their specialty is preventive rehabilitation and they aim to help people with form, muscular aches and joint pain through social media. They call themselves The Prehab Guys.

There’s a chance we have already helped more people online than we might in our careers.”

 “[Prehab is] addressing the things that you can address in people based on their sports, their movement, their habits before it becomes an injury,” Lau said.

While in the physical therapy doctorate program at the University of Southern California, The Prehab Guys got started in January 2016 while they were on a Christmas cruise. They decided to post videos on Instagram due to the false information circulating around social media. They wanted to correctly guide people on how to correctly perform exercises, how to loosen up a muscle appropriately or how to strengthen a muscle effectively.

“We wanted to make a push for this preventative medicine and really give education to the normal person that doesn’t really understand their biomechanics and empower them and give them the tools that we know,” Maghsoodi said.

Lau agrees. “What we are trying to do with The Prehab Guys is to educate people. A lot of it is just learning… the correct way to do things and incorrect way to do things. We’ll make the biggest difference in people’s day to day lives,” Lau said.

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Today, they have close to 200,000 followers on Instagram and many more on Facebook and Twitter. Their videos reach close to 150,000 people each day, and they find that the most satisfactory part of The Prehab Guys.

“There’s a chance we have already helped more people online than we might in our careers,” Lindell said.

Hip Mobility

One of their social media followers, Katy Anderson, says, “The Prehab Guys offer accurate, relevant and concise tutorials. I trust them as a resource and direct many of my clients to follow their Instagram/ website or I send my clients specific videos.” She is an owner of a clinic that specializes in improving athletic performance and correct posture through massage.

Their posts include how to properly stretch shoulder muscles, exercises to for knee pain and how to improve hip mobility. Most of their posts include research or an educated explanation of why those stretches and exercises will benefit.

 “We’re trying to bring as much science as we can into everything that we talk about to have some type of backing,” Maghsoodi said.

World's Greatest Stretch

Their posts focus on amateur and professional athletes, as well as people who have a hard time rolling out of bed, standing or sitting for a period of time or walking without pain. But they hope one day their prehab will be accessible to kids participating in sports for their first time.

The Prehab Guys say in youth sports, there is more emphasis on the sport itself and not about strength conditioning. To throw a football down the field, swing a bat better or jump higher, they encourage young athletes to focus on building their bodies to do those motions effectively to refrain from injury in the future.

“By the time they’re an adolescent, teenager, they might have skipped five-six years of prime movement training when they’re developing and they’ve just skipped that stage. So, it needs to start day zero,” Lau said.

Maghsoodi adds, “It’s actually sometimes harder to train an [adult] athlete... Sometimes you have to take 5 steps back, start at square one and then build them back up and start this better movement pattern then strengthen them from there. Versus if we just started at square one, had them have that good movement pattern and then build them on that platform. It would be easier.”

The Prehab Guys say prehab could be the future for promoting longevity in an athlete’s playing career and preventing any injuries from occurring. It’s about a proactive approach, not a reactive approach.

“It’s not about strength. It’s about moving your body in an optimal way, especially when it comes to youth sports,” Erin M. Hayden, PT, DPT, OCS says.

Each of them works full-time in physical therapy clinics and does Prehab Guys on the side. Their future goal is to open up a clinic together after they learn from physical therapists who have been practicing for many years. For now, they will continue to post on social media to affect the lives of many around the world.

“They’re awesome friends, more importantly, awesome business partners,” Lindell said.And every day, just trying to keep myself in check, I’m thinking of what those guys are doing, how hard they’re working, and I’m always competing with them because that’s just how we are going to better our business.”

The Prehab Guys

Craig Lindell and Arash Rex Maghsoodi going through their upcoming shoulder program.

Why The Prehab Guys got into Physical Therapy

“They’re awesome friends, more importantly, awesome business partners."
“Prehab is the future of healthcare,” Lindell said.