Injuries In Athletes: Strength Training Is Not A Solution

Putting The Cart Before The Horse

Athletic performance tends to be associated with strength training. Coaches, trainers, and parents go to strength training because of an assumption that the athlete’s body is an empty canvas, and all he/she needs is to add strength to perform better. But strength is not an isolated quality. Strength depends on a well-coordinated body.

In order for strength to benefit an athlete’s performance, the athlete needs to be able to handle the strength. No matter how much strength you have, if your body cannot use the strength, the strength is useless, and in most cases, harmful.

99% of coaches, parents, athletes, and trainers believe that strength training is the key to the mint to perform well in sports. It is such a strong belief that all athletes are incorporating strength training plans in attempt to physically prepare themselves for their sport.

It doesn’t work. How do we know? Well, just look at the sports sector from a high level. In comparison to previous generations, athletes today are much weaker despite 5x the amount of sports-specific and strength training. Their bodies (and minds) are not as resilient, they are significantly more fragile, and therefore much more susceptible to injuries.

Strengthening Specialization

We regularly see well-intentioned sports performance trainers using strength and conditioning programming to supplement sport-specific training for athletes of all ages.

Functional movements, also known as functional fitness or functional strength training, is increasing in popularity among sports performance centres and athletic trainers.

While training with this type of movement is a step in the right direction, away from using strength machines, functional training still does not address the root issue behind modern athlete weakness. Why? Because functional strength training is still just strength training.

Developing strength without enhancing athleticism is just like adding a Ferrari engine to a 1990 pick-up truck - increasing engine capacity and adding enhancements to the structure without making the structure itself efficient and prepared to handle the upgrades will rapidly degrade the vehicle.

Unfortunately, even with a functional movement approach, most programming at strength and conditioning facilities is actually strengthening specialization.

How? Most athletes lack basic coordination, basic ranges of motion, and natural movement patterns - highlighting disability within the body.

By working on any kind of strength training without first correcting these fundamental physical imbalances, the strength training will only reinforce the disability. Therefore, the existing movement patterns, and structural weaknesses that result from poor quality of movement over time, are strengthened.

In an ideal world there would be no need for any type of specific training other than practicing the athlete’s sport of choice. Animals don’t stretch or strength train, yet they’re able to display natural athleticism, effortlessly.

But, the effects of technology and other social-culture influences impair many aspects of natural movement development from an early age, creating the need for intelligent training practices that counter modern lifestyles, which weaken the resilience of the body.

Athletes Are Training Themselves Out Of Athleticism

Most training has become unrealistic (and uninspiring). Exercises and drills are typically performed in highly predictable scenarios, with little challenge to coordination or problem-solving abilities.

Training in such a way decreases natural athleticism over time, unless an athlete intentionally expands on their own athletic potential outside of sports performance training regimes.

Confined, isolated strength is of little use for an athlete who doesn’t know how to use it. Sport, like life, is not predictable.

In a sport like basketball, for example, a lot of prospective players are broken by the time they get to the college level, and some even before that.

Unless you’re built to be able to tolerate a high degree of variability through the body, the demands of sport will physically break you down.

Sports performance training needs to primarily focus on improving inherent qualities of athleticism.

How To Enhance Athleticism Through Sports Performance Training?

How do you cultivate a body that doesn’t become a liability or hold back your performance? Of course, you must train. But you do not have an unlimited amount of time and energy to work on core strength, explosive strength, speed, stretching, injury prevention exercises, and so on.

So HOW should you train? That is the important question.

Athletic training should systematically expose an athlete to enough diversity, irregularity, and unrehearsed challenges to provoke higher levels of whole body coordination, quicker reflexes, and most importantly an enhanced ability to learn on the fly.

In other words, prioritize how the athlete moves first before you add complexity, power, strength, and speed. This is the best way to train.

By focusing on training how an athlete moves, the athlete will learn how to use their body all together for every task/action/objective - and be able to better handle unscripted competitive game situations that demand high levels of versatility, variability, and creativity.

These three qualities underscore performance and athleticism. Training this way is essentially paying attention to and observing how you move, learning your competitive advantage, and capitalizing on your strengths in a way that most athletes cannot.

By knowing yourself well, you can reach your athletic potential and peak creativity on the playing field.

Increasing The Margin For Error

Many athletes get injured because their body cannot handle variability (and therefore, have very little margin for error).

Increase in variability = increase in margin for error = increase resilience = decrease risk of injury

In sports performance training, there are two commonly proposed solutions to imbalances and weaknesses: increase range of motion, and increase strength. Here’s why they don’t work:

1. Increase range of motion

   Increasing range of motion will only expand the boundary of a person’s capability. It is only beneficial if you are prepared enough to handle the expansion. Increasing range without adequate coordination is worse than less range of motion with better coordination.

2. Strength

   Increasing strength without proper coordination or before increasing coordination/spinal health/leg integrity is bad because..

Solely focussing on strength and mobility might get you stronger, and more range of motion/mobility, but without connectivity and fine-tuning how well everything works together, you won’t be able to coordinate the sum of the parts and produce a result - the result? The athlete will hit a wall.

Training to improve how well the structure works as a whole, increases fluidity, decreases friction, and increases efficiency.

The Myth Of The Overuse Injury

There’s no overuse injury. There’s just injury from underuse and misuse. 

Don’t let a healthcare practitioner try to tell you an injury is from overuse. Injuries only happen from misuse or underuse of something.

Most of the time, where there is a “overuse” diagnosis, you have a part of the body that is compensating for something else. E.g. maybe your knees are sore because when you jump and land, your entire body is structurally imbalanced and you aren’t able to absorb the landing properly.

So your knees eat most of the stress, and over time get injured. So the problem is not the knee - the knee is just suffering the brunt of a deeper issue. Another area that commonly eats stress is the lower back.

Takeaway: addressing mobility and strength weaknesses throughout your body will totally reduce the need to compensate. If you play a sport and have nagging pain somewhere like your back, knees, hips - this is your body telling you something isn’t coordinating properly. So fix it!

Conclusion

To push the boundaries of his or her athletic potential, an athlete needs to address they move within their current range of capability. Only when quality of movement is improved and a high level of athleticism can be demonstrated, then it is appropriate to expand the athlete’s capability through strength and power training. It’s like math - learn how to use a basic calculator first before learning a graphing calculator.

Athletic Engineering is about innovating training while acknowledging ancient practices that are proven to be effective at keeping the body in peak condition.

Training should be inspiring yet congruent with the natural process of biological development.

We place a heavy emphasis on proper coordination training to serve and a basis for power and strength, self-learning/problem solving, and using daily practices/rituals that keep the body balanced so the joints stay healthy and resilient.