Will Strength Training Prevent Injuries in an Athlete?

MAYBE – but read on.

First, this is not intended to tell someone about specifics around injury prevention and/or rehabilitation from a previous injury – for that, see your doctor or physical therapist.

Strength training will help an athlete produce more force and be more resilient toward repeated movement if done correctly. That way, when an athlete goes off to their sport, they can not only throw harder, jump higher, and run faster but also hold up to do those things many times.

That ability to do things repeatedly is where strength training may have benefits in the injury prevention realm. Think of the bucket of water analogy. The water running into the bucket is the stress of the sport being played, and the bucket is the athlete’s ability to handle that stress.

Strength training, among other things, can help to make that bucket bigger so that the water (stress) doesn’t overflow the bucket and cause problems.

Strength training can have many great benefits for an athlete – producing a lot of force and producing that force many times over without undue fatigue are just a few key benefits. Who wouldn’t want that for an athlete?