Quote Originally Posted by Michael Wolf View Post
This is the key insight. It's very hard to prove with convincing data that strength training directly led to less injury, better stats, etc... You could probably do it with a large enough data set over a long enough period of time, but that's basically impossible to get, especially with any kind of reasonable standard to what the "strength training" entailed and how progress was measured. In the absence of good theory and good data, I don't like to make absolute knowledge claims, but falling back to good theory and the small amount of good data that comes from it makes a stronger case than anything else I see out there.
I think the stronger claim is that strength training makes you better at handling injuries. While a stronger body is going to be harder to kill, accidents can still of course happen, injuries can still follow. But an injured person in training will be able to deal with the injury far better, and better every time with experience. A weak injured body can quite effectively be helpless and injured for far longer.