Will Strength Training Prevent Injuries?

You’ve probably experienced the frustration of having an injury. When it does happen, you may find yourself going to chiropractors, massage therapists and a host of other services with the hope of easing the pain.

Temporarily, these services may help, but how can you prevent injuries in the first place, so you can get back to being injury-free and not have to re-experience it?

Is consistent strength training the solution to never having to experience an injury again?

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Caveat

Unfortunately nothing can completely prevent injuries, they’re going to happen regardless of how much strength training you do and other preventative measures you may take.

However, strength training can drastically reduce your chances of getting injured and serve as an equally important activity when it comes to getting back to your best if you do get injured.

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How does strength training help?

Resilience

The idea is to build tissue (muscles, tendons, bones, ligaments) resilience.

As simply put by Ben Rosenblatt in “Sports Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation”, the purpose of injury prevention is to:

“Increase the stress a tissue can tolerate prior to failure”.

All this means is that to reduce your chances of injury, you have to prepare your body to handle more stress than it would encounter in your daily life or even in your recreational sporting league.

The best method for this? Strength Training

Strength Training is effective for building resilience as you slowly and safely challenge/stress your body during training sessions, which forces your body to respond, adapt and consequently be able to handle more stress over time.

When you have to perform a daily activity, such as moving your couch or lifting your baby out of a crib, your body is prepared and there is a significantly less chance of you randomly injuring yourself – thus you’re ultimately more resilient.

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Does the research support this?

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An article published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine analysed a number of different studies and concluded that:

“Strength training programmes reduced sports injuries by an average of 66% and were, with 95% certainty, able to more than halve the risk of sports injury.” (Lauersen et al., 2018)

There were consistent positive results!

If it’s this effective at reducing injuries in a chaotic and demanding sporting environment, you can count on the fact that it’ll be effective for the activities you participate in daily.

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But isn’t Strength Training dangerous?

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What’s also cool about this paper, is that over the four studies they analysed (which included an average of more than 8 months of a training program), there were no ‘adverse events’ among the 3991 individuals that took part in the studies! (Lauersen et al., 2018)

Research consistently shows that, not only is strength training is a very low risk activity, but the benefits vastly outweigh any minor risk.

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Already Injured?

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Without going into the numerous benefits of training while rehabbing with an injury, the same idea of building tissue resilience is essential for returning from an injury.

You may do a few sessions with the physio/physical therapist and feel completely better, but your tissues may still not be completely prepared for the stresses you will face. Re-injury becomes very easy if you’re not adequately prepared post-rehab.

Your training has to exceed the demands of your job, sport or daily activities!

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How to strength train to build this tissue resilience?

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The paper mentioned earlier had many different variations of programming among the different studies that were included.

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All of them had positive outcomes.

The focus should simply be on consistently performing your sessions.

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Relatively new to Strength Training and don’t know where to start?

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If you’re not ready to walk into a gym yet, and don’t really know where to start, then here's a great place to start (home friendly)

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• Perform this routine two to three times a week with adequate rest in between.
• Within the session, perform the following movements back-to-back with limited rest.
• Once you have performed each movement, rest for a few minutes and then repeat another one to two rounds.
• The goal of each exercise is to hold the position for as long as you can (challenge yourself).
• Record the times/reps you get on each exercise and try to beat it the next time you do the session.

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1. Single-Leg Standing

• Slightly bent-knee on the standing leg
• With the standing leg, actively push foot into the ground
• Hold for one minute each side
• Progression (on the right side of the video): Pass a heavy object from one hand to the other, pause for 3 seconds, and then pass it back.

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2. Bear Crawl Positions

• Position knees underneath hips and hands underneath shoulders
• Push through the ground with your hands so that you have a rounded upper back
• Lift knees a couple of inches off the ground
• Hold that position and focus on nice long exhales through the mouth (shoot for 5-10 long exhales)
• Progression (on the right): Load up one arm and lift the opposite foot off the ground at the same time. Hold up for a second or two, and then repeat on the other side. Perform as many good reps as you can.

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3. Push-Up Hold

• Descend down into the middle/end range of a push-up and hold for as long as possible.
• Progression (on the right): Stay on toes instead of knees.

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4. Lunge Hold

• Descend down into a lunge position as shown (getting as low as you can without letting your back knee rest on the ground).
• Push your front knee forward and try to load up that forward leg as much as possible (should start feeling a burn in thigh that's out in front)
• With your back foot, push the heel backwards so that you're getting a bit of a stretch through that back hip.
• Hold for as long as possible each side.

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5. Front Plank

• Get into a front plank position as shown.
• Actively pull your elbows towards your feet and you feet towards your elbows.
• Try to keep your hips from sinking down or rising up in the air.
• Hold for as long as possible.

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6. Side Planks

• Line up shoulders, hips, and knees.
• Keep the elbow on the floor directly underneath your shoulder.
• Raise hips into the air and hold for as long as possible.
• You can perform the knee on ground version (left) or the feet on ground version (right), whatever feels best!

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7. a) Hamstring Bridge

• Place feet on a foam roller with slightly bent knees (if you don't have a foam roller or something similar, see video below)
• Begin movement by pushing lower back down into the floor.
• From here, raise hips into the air slightly so that you feel some tension at the back of your legs.
• Hold this position for as long as possible.
• Progression (on the right): Pull one knee in towards you

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7. b) Hamstring Bridge With Chair (alternative if you don't have a foam roller or something similar)

• Same cues as the hamstring bridge (above)
• Pull your heel down and towards you on the chair
• Progression (on the right): Bridge up and down while in that position (perform as many reps as possible on both sides)

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8. Cross-Crawl Superman

• Lie face down on the floor as shown.
• Keep arms locked out straight ahead with your armpits next to your ears and thumbs pointing towards the sky.
• Lift opposite arm and opposite leg up into the air as high as you can without your head and torso completely coming off the ground.
• Squeeze and hold up in the air for a second before coming down to the starting position.
• Repeat opposite side.
• Perform as many reps as you can until you feel like your muscles are pretty fatigued.

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Have some experience in the gym and want to create your own routine?

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• In the context of injury prevention, shoot for 2-3 full body sessions a week with at least 2 sets per exercise.

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• Include a mixture of single-limb and double-limb movements

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• Include a mixture of big compound movements and smaller isolation ones

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• Program should be well-rounded in addressing different qualities (eg including a mixture of strength, balance, plyometrics and so on.)

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• It’s a great idea to incorporate different loads and different rep ranges throughout your program or even within individual training sessions. This includes heavy lifting in the 1-5 rep range, moderate weights in the 5-15 rep range, and very high repetition work in the 15+ rep range with lighter weights/bodyweight. Each loading and repetition range biases their own number of benefits for creating tissue (and mental) resiliency.

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• Exercises should be performed through their full range of motion (body permitting) and sessions should be mentally challenging where appropriate!

Wrapping it up

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Strength Training has been shown to be a very effective measure for reducing your chance of sustaining an injury (not to mention its role in bouncing back from an injury). If you want to be physically resilient and thrive through life’s physical demands, strength training is an essential part of the equation.‍

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“The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected”. - Marcus Aurelius

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References

Lauersen JB, Andersen TE, Andersen LB Strength training as superior, dose-dependent and safe prevention of acute and overuse sports injuries: a systematic review, qualitative analysis and meta-analysis, British Journal of  Sports Medicine 2018;52:1557-1563.

Joyce, David, and Daniel Lewindon. Sports Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation: Integrating Medicine and Science for Performance Solutions. Routledge, Taylor Et Francis Group, 2016.

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