Injury Prevention - The Wrong Strategy

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I moved away from using the term “injury prevention” years ago because:

1. everyone WILL get an injury, and
2. we can’t predict injury easily AND
3. there are probably six main reasons that injury risk is elevated so the best we can do is to identify those elements of an athletes athleticism and history that elevate their risk and in movement prep, mitigate that risk as much as possible.

From my article, Bulletproofing the volleyball knee

Big Bang for buck strategies force us to go for biggest risk reducers, like being warm, moving within a tolerance range and being robust enough to handle all sorts of challenges.

It doesn't matter what I used to say, but I used to say that the only people interested in injury prevention - I mean passionately and seriously interested in injury prevention - were physiotherapists who had discovered it might be possible, and researchers whose current and future livelihood hung on the possibility that they might be invited to do something and be paid to do something about injury prevention. That number is very small. 

So, that leaves everybody else. Everyone who is rightfully interested in what athletes, sporting and tactical, are really interested in - getting the job done, getting the win, or at the very least (and the very most ideally) staying in the game for the pure enjoyment of having fun and being competitive. So, when we focus on preventing something that a) probably can't be done, and b) if it can be done, is hard to know if it was related to what we did or not, then we are on a hiding to nothing. Better to prepare to perform and, WITHIN THAT PREPARATION TO PERFORM, find out what might reduce the likelihood of get in the game, stay in the game and win the game. If that is injury prevention, then we've named it wrong. It should be called.........preparing. Burn the bridges and train properly. Rehab properly. Step out of opinion and into objectively moving the needle of risk. 
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So if we say we work for injury prevention we are doomed to fail. If we say we include risk identification and lowering strategies we can be judged on systematic efforts to reduce risk and reduce severity when they do happen. In the process we improve the athletes resources to handle when they get injured - less time to rehabilitate when they do get injured. Prepare to perform and this will include risk identification, risk lowering and enhanced preparedness. 

When you get injured, you'll be better prepared to come out the other side. 
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