What are common injuries in volleyball?
Volleyball is a high intensity sport that involves many overhead actions (shoulder loading with no ground support), sudden changes in direction, and repetitive jumping and landing, with multiple players in relative small area. Therefore the most common injury sites to athletes are ankles, knees and shoulders:
1. Ankle injuries account for nearly half of all indoor volleyball injuries at all skill levels both males and females1,2. The reported incidence of these injuries are 1/1000 hours, which includes competition and practice time1. In this sport, the most common type of injury seen is an inversion sprain usually affecting the anterior tibiofibular ligament1. The greatest risk of an inversion injury is a previous inversion injury on that same ankle (80% of sprains involve previous sprained ankle)1,2. More specific, the greatest risk is in 1st 6 months after inversion injury (6-12 months 10x greater chance than those without a previous history of injury)1,2.