Strength Training Reduces Sports Injury Risk by 66%. Here's What That Means for Your Rehab

If there was a drug that reduced your risk of sports injury by two thirds with no serious side effects, every athlete would be taking it.

There isn't such a drug. But there is strength training — and the evidence for it is more robust than any pharmaceutical intervention in sports medicine.

The Research

A systematic review and meta-analysis by Lauersen and colleagues, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, analysed data from 7,738 athletes across multiple studies.

This covered both acute and overuse injuries. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine confirmed a 30% reduction in injury relative risk in contact sport athletes — rugby, football, and similar sports — and demonstrated a dose-response relationship: a 10% increase in training volume was associated with a 4.3 percentage point reduction in injury risk.

These effects are larger than those seen for stretching, proprioceptive training, or any other single intervention studied.

Why Strength Training Works

The Clinical Implication

In most physio clinics, strength training is something patients do on the way out of rehab — once the pain has gone, they might be told to "keep doing your exercises" or "join a gym."

At House of Rehab, strength training is not an afterthought. It's the foundation of the rehabilitation programme from early stages onwards. This doesn't mean loading injured tissue inappropriately. It means progressive, targeted resistance training — adapted to where the patient is in their recovery — is the central tool we use to restore and build capacity.

For injury prevention, the implication is equally clear: if you're an athlete who keeps sustaining injuries and you're not regularly strength training, you're working against the evidence.

The ACC Connection

Many injuries sustained during sport or activity qualify for ACC cover in New Zealand. If you've been injured, we can lodge that claim at your first appointment and design a strength-based rehabilitation programme around your specific deficits.

We use VALD ForceDecks to measure strength, limb symmetry, and power — so we know exactly what deficits we're building from, and we can track progress objectively throughout.