At California Lutheran University, I see the drive to improve is everywhere. Student-athletes push themselves through early lifts, late practices and hours of repetition to reach their goals. But somewhere in the mix of hard work and ambition, one key element keeps getting overlooked: injury prevention.
In today’s sports culture, athletes often measure their worth by how much they can handle — more hours in the gym, more practices, more effort. The mindset seems simple: train more, get better. What many athletes forget, though, is that progress isn’t just built through grind. It’s built through recovery and knowing the body’s limits.
As someone who competes in mixed martial arts, I have experienced the same reality. My mindset for years was to outwork everyone with early mornings, late nights and endless sparring sessions. I took pride in being the guy who never skipped a practice. Eventually, I realized that more hours didn’t always mean better performance.
Cal Lutheran student Dylan Druian, who has wrestled his entire life and continues to do so outside of school, is familiar with the toll that constant training can take.
“During the wrestling season, we would have about five practices going on in the evening after school,” Druian said. “We would spend three days a week during strength and conditioning in the weight room and then would do five days a week of high-intensity technique training.”
While this type of routine is said to build “toughness,” it also pushes the body to its limits. Druian said wrestlers overlook “prehab,” the idea of preparing their bodies before competition to prevent injury.
“For me, prehab is what we do before stepping on the mats, which includes stretching and mentally preparing yourself to wrestle,” he said. “I do not think wrestlers spend enough time on this aspect, especially with weight cutting. On top of prehabbing, wrestlers should definitely take better care of themselves.”
Druian learned this lesson firsthand after experiencing a serious injury himself.
“An injury that ended my season was when I tore a ligament in my right arm,” he said. “It was very difficult to wrestle with just one arm.”
The setback forced Druian to think differently about what it means to train smart.
“It’s hard to balance training intensely five times a week while also remaining healthy,” Druian said. “But the key to it, I think, is good sleep and making sure your body gets enough nutrients.”
Brandon Lowe, a former collegiate baseball player at Arizona Christian University and current Cal Lutheran student, said he experienced similar pressure and learned nonstop effort does not always equal better results.
“When I played collegiate baseball in Arizona, two days out of the week going high intensity and two to three days of medium intensity seemed to benefit growth,” Lowe said. “But anything more than that and you’re going to start breaking yourself down.”
Lowe said his experience that ended his collegiate athlete career proved costly.
“In [the summer baseball season], I dislocated my shoulder. It not only ended my career but took me a whole year to even raise my arm.”
Lowe said adjusting his approach to recovery made all the difference.
“To mitigate smaller injuries, I started to implement dynamic stretching rather than static,” Lowe said. “The trainers taught that dynamic stretching before playing was beneficial, just like warming up an engine. You wouldn’t want to go in cold and have a greater chance of sustaining an injury.”
Competitive environments can make athletes ignore what their bodies are telling them, according to Lowe.
“In a competitive standpoint with other peers around you, sometimes you can ignore your body and try to tough it out, but this can lead to more injuries,” Lowe said.
Both Druian and Lowe agreed that being “tough” is not about ignoring pain, but about knowing when to rest.
“Wrestlers have the mindset of just go, go, go and grit down,” Druian said. “Sometimes it leads to serious injuries because guys just don’t want to stop wrestling.”
Even professional athletes are beginning to understand there are points of diminishing returns. NFL legend Tom Brady built his longevity on recovery by launching his fitness brand, TB12, in 2013, which offers holistic-centered regimens for athletes through their performance centers and online guides.
According to the TB12 Explained guide, athletes participating in the TB12 method implement five daily habits into their routines to counteract overtraining, including mental fitness, movement, hydration, nutrition and pliability.
“The most critical component of the TB12 Method is pliability, a state in which your muscles are resilient and able to move without restriction. Pliable muscles — achieved through hands-on body work and pliability movements — are better at absorbing force, allowing the body to withstand the impact of sport and daily life,” per the TB12 Explained guide.
His philosophy shows that training smart can keep student-athletes in the game longer, instead of simply training harder.
Personally, I have gone into fights overtrained before, feeling physically strong but mentally and technically off. My timing felt off, and my reactions were slower. It was not from laziness, but from giving too much. Fighting, like any sport, is about precision and control, but athletes need to know when to push and when to pull back.
One day after training, my boxing coach, Chris Key, told me something that stuck with me: “It takes confidence to take a day off.”
That line changed how I viewed work. I do not need motivation to train, if anything, I need the confidence to rest. I have learned that taking care of my body is not weakness, it is strategy.
Student-athletes need to rethink what real toughness means. Training is vital, but recovery, sleep and prehab deserve the same respect. The best athletes are not the ones who burn out the fastest; they are the ones who train intelligently enough to stay in the game.
