Understanding volleyball injuries: The etiology and burden associated with the sport’s most common injuries

Abstract

Volleyball is a fast-paced, hard-hitting sport that requires its athletes to perform a large volume of jumps and overhead attacks. As a result, most injuries in volleyball involve the ankle, knee, back, hand/fingers, and shoulder – comprising about 70% of all injuries within the sport. Injury risk management approaches may want to focus on these common injury locations to achieve maximum results.

Ankle sprains are the most common type of acute volleyball injury. To best understand the sportspecific factors involved with ankle sprains, it is recommended to perform a detailed video analysis of actual injury situations, since there is limited validity of questionnaire data from players and witnesses to provide this important contextual information. The repetitive nature of jumping within the sport has long been believed to be associated with knee problems (i.e., jumper’s knee). A commercially available device to measure jump load has garnered significant adoption within the sport, but still needs to be validated in this population of professional players. Additionally, position and individual jump variability among professional players has not been investigated and individual jump demands are unknown. Despite the prevalence of shoulder problems in volleyball, prospective studies examining associated risk factors are almost non-existent. Finally, the knee, low back, and shoulder account for most overuse injuries in volleyball; unfortunately, previous studies utilized methodology that failed to examine the extent of their injury burden and impact on performance. Research using appropriate methods to capture the true prevalence of overuse complaints among elite players is needed; how these complaints change throughout the season is also unknown.

The overall aim of this thesis was to provide valuable insights into the etiology of volleyball injuries, which lays the foundation for managing injury risk within the highest levels of the sport. We focused on injury burden, risk factors, and mechanisms leading to common injuries and complaints among elite volleyball players.