Injury prevention lowers your risk; it does not remove it. Contact, collisions and bad luck cannot be trained away. What can change is your capacity, so research on structured strength and neuromuscular programs shows meaningful reductions in injury rates across several sports. A good program also means that when something does happen, you tend to be better prepared for rehabilitation.

Small, single changes are safer than big, combined ones. Many practitioners work from roughly a 10 per cent weekly increase in volume as a starting reference point, then adjust it based on how you respond. What matters more is consistency: two or three steady weeks followed by an easier week usually beats a sharp spike, then a forced break.

Your physiotherapist focuses on diagnosis, hands-on treatment and rehabilitating specific injuries or joints. Your exercise physiologist focuses on building capacity through longer-term, structured exercise programs, often alongside health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. Many prevention plans use both: physiotherapy to sort out the problem area, exercise physiology to build and maintain the strength that keeps it settled.

Yes. Tissue repair and adaptation happen mostly during rest, so short sleep and under-fuelling leave you starting each session less recovered than you should be. Studies in athletes link low sleep and low energy availability with higher injury rates. If your training load is climbing, your food and sleep need to climb with it rather than stay flat.

Around the time training becomes regular and structured, often in the early high school years. Growing athletes carry particular risks: growth plates are still developing, limb length changes quickly, and training loads can jump when they join representative teams. Programs at this age focus on movement quality, landing and running mechanics and light, well-supervised strength work rather than heavy lifting.

Usually less than people expect. Most programs run 20 to 30 minutes, two to three times a week, and much of it can be folded into the warm-up you already do before training or games. Once the initial build phase is done, a smaller maintenance dose holds the benefit. Your practitioner designs it around the time you will actually give it, because the program you do beats the perfect one you skip.