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Long static stretches before training briefly weaken strength and power, and stretching does not prevent soreness or reliably cut injury. Save static stretching for after, or for flexibility itself.
A jog and a few stretches has thin evidence for cutting injuries. Structured programmes that add strength and balance work — like the FIFA 11+ — cut football injuries by roughly a third in trials.
Training light loads with a limb cuff grows muscle about as well as heavy lifting, trials show. For maximal strength the evidence is mixed, and heavy weights may still edge it.
A meta-analysis of 8,459 athletes found programmes with the exercise cut hamstring injuries by about half. In elite football, where the injury keeps rising, most squads leave it out.
A Swedish study of 10,693 ACL reconstructions in registered football players found no link between graft type and revision surgery. Age and playing level mattered far more.
In a meta-analysis of 25 randomised trials and 26,610 participants, stretching produced no reduction in sports injuries. Strength training cut them to under a third — on a much smaller evidence base.
A stepped-wedge trial across 165 women's and girls' Australian football teams shows how far implementation support moves uptake — and how much larger a trial would need to be to prove it prevents injuries.
Games missed to rest or load management rose 125% over nine NBA seasons while serious injuries rose 43% — and players who sat out for rest showed no significant reduction in subsequent injury risk.
The 2026 tournament ran on tiered pitch counts and mandatory rest days meant to protect arms — but clubs still layered on their own limits, and some want the whole event moved.
Three BJSM reviews underpinning the FAIR consensus pooled 1.5 million participants and 108 concussion studies. Women and girls were 2.4% of the lower-limb evidence base.