Preparing your body for surgery
Prehabilitation builds your fitness, strength and breathing reserve before an operation. The better prepared your body is, the lower your risk of complications — and the faster and smoother your recovery tends to be.
Think of the weeks before surgery as a window of opportunity. By improving your aerobic fitness, muscle strength and breathing in advance, we help protect against post-operative chest complications, support a quicker return to your normal activities, and give you an active role in your own recovery.
What your programme involves
Understanding your fitness, lung function and risk factors to focus the programme where it matters most.
Building cardiovascular fitness and stamina to better tolerate the demands of surgery.
Resistance work plus inspiratory muscle and breathing exercises to protect the lungs afterwards.
Knowing what to expect, how to prepare, and the breathing techniques to use immediately after your operation.
Who it's for
Prehabilitation is valuable before major surgery, particularly when fitness or breathing is already reduced.
Chest & heart surgery
Lung, cardiac and other thoracic procedures where breathing reserve matters most.
Abdominal surgery
Major abdominal operations with a higher risk of post-operative chest complications.
Reduced fitness
Anyone facing surgery with existing heart or lung disease, frailty or low activity levels.
Prehabilitation should never delay urgent surgery. Even a short programme can help — get in touch as soon as a procedure is being planned so we can make the most of the time available.
How long a programme runs
How much time you have before surgery decides the shape of the programme. With four to six weeks we can usually build a graded exercise programme and see measurable change in strength and exercise tolerance. With two weeks the focus narrows to the things that matter most on the ward — breathing technique, getting in and out of bed, and walking — which still make a difference to the first days after your operation.
Most people attend once or twice a week and are given a short daily programme to do at home between appointments. The home work is the part that does most of the lifting; the appointments exist to set it, correct it and progress it.
You do not need a referral to start, though if your surgeon or GP has already written to us it helps us begin in the right place. With your consent we will write back to them with your baseline measures and what the programme is targeting, so your preparation is visible to the team performing the operation rather than running in parallel to it.
What improvement looks like
We measure where you start so that you can see what changes. Depending on your condition that may be a walk test, a sit-to-stand count, strength measures, or your own rating of breathlessness during a task you find hard. Repeating the same measures before surgery shows whether the programme is working, and gives your surgical team an objective picture of your fitness.
Results vary, and being fitter beforehand is not a guarantee about recovery afterwards. What we can say is that people who go into an operation stronger, and who already know their breathing and mobility exercises, tend to find the first week afterwards less bewildering — because none of it is new.
Other services
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Guided recovery after cardiac, thoracic and major abdominal surgery.
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A thorough cardiorespiratory assessment to build your individualised plan.
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Structured, supervised exercise to build capacity, strength and quality of life.
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