Why not to play sports — lift weights instead
Hot take: sports are fun but terrible for consistent fitness. Here’s why I lift instead.
Injury risk
This is the one people ignore until it happens to them.
Basketball — ankle rolls, knee stress. Football — ACL, hamstring tears, ankle sprains. Cricket — lower back, shoulder overuse. These are not rare edge cases. Anyone who’s played sport for more than a few years has been injured.
Sports require explosive, multidirectional movement with other people who are also moving unpredictably. That’s inherently higher-risk than a controlled lift in a gym.
A torn ACL takes 6–12 months to recover from. A bad lower back from football can take years to fully resolve. That’s months or years of zero fitness activity while you recover.
Proper strength training — done with correct form and appropriate load — has a dramatically lower injury rate. Most gym injuries come from ego lifting and bad form, both of which are controllable.
Consistency: sport schedules vs just showing up
To play sport, you need:
- A team or opponent
- A venue
- Everyone to show up at the same time
- Weather to cooperate (for outdoor sports)
Any one of these can fail on any given day.
The gym is open. You can go alone. It takes 45–60 minutes. There are no opponents, no team WhatsApp groups, no rain cancellations.
For busy engineers and founders, this matters. Consistency over months and years is what produces results. Sports make consistency contingent on things outside your control.
What sports won’t give you
Sports give you cardiovascular conditioning, hand-eye coordination, social time, and fun.
They don’t give you: progressive overload, targeted muscle development, or control over which parts of your body you’re developing.
Progressive overload — systematically increasing the stress placed on your body over time — is the mechanism for long-term strength and muscle gains. You can’t do progressive overload in a football game. The game determines the load, not you.
When sport genuinely makes sense
I’m not anti-sport. I think sport is great for mental health, community, and enjoyment.
Sport alongside lifting works well. Train strength 3–4 days a week, play sport 1–2 days. The strength training makes you better at sport and reduces injury risk.
Sport as your only fitness — without a strength base — is where I think people underestimate the downside.
My own switch
I played cricket and basketball through my early 20s. I loved it. I also accumulated injuries that bothered me for years.
When I committed to consistent strength training, the injuries stopped. My performance in the sports I play occasionally got better. My body composition improved. My back doesn’t hurt.
The switch was worth it.
The takeaway
Strength training is the foundation. It’s consistent, low-injury, and gives you control over your body’s development. If you enjoy sport, play it — but build your strength base first.
Building something? Follow me on Instagram and Twitter — I document everything.