Historically, resilience was used in child psychology to describe success against the odds, to describe an individual resource of resistance and latterly has been used even in monetary policy as the adaptive ability of an economic system to absorb or cushion against loss. Let us though consider the term in a sports medical setting.

‘Injury’ is feared as much by recreational participants as the high-performance athletes, as they negotiate the trials in daily life. In this editorial, I focus on two forms – controllable and uncontrollable injuries.

An injury can be defined as any physical state that impairs movement. These situations can occur in an instant through some accident or contact with something or trip or fall and none of us can truly create a physical activity environment that is completely safe from these occurrences. These injuries, in a sense, can be classed as ‘uncontrollable’. Injury can also occur after a journey of mishaps and accrued errors in movement and training and these we class as ‘controllable’. This article focuses on controllable injuries and the illustrations are primarily taken from the world of sport and physical activity although the execution of life's daily tasks at home and in the workplace also forms an arena where controllable injury can take place.

In sport, we often observe and measure activity in terms of the speed, endurance or power that underpin the sport-specific movements on view. The 21st century provides us with extensive technology to measure just about everything, and we now see an army of …