Volleyball

Is volleyball safe?

Yes. Volleyball is about as safe as team sports get. The net keeps the two teams apart, so the violent collisions of basketball or rugby do not happen. The US National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSIR), which has tracked school and college sport since 1982, has not recorded a single traumatic death in volleyball. It counted five medical deaths among girls and women in 43 years.

What volleyball players do get is sprained ankles, jammed or dislocated fingers and, after years of jumping, sore knees, shoulders and backs.

How we estimated the death risk

US high-school girls had 0.02 medical deaths per 100,000 players a season. Over a season of about 70 practices and matches that is roughly 0.003 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per session, one of the lowest figures we have for any sport.

College women show a higher rate, partly because the college study combined several databases and autopsy reports, while the NCCSIR relies partly on media reports. A study of all US college athlete deaths from 2003 to 2013 found 1 sudden cardiac death per 49,217 athlete-years in women's volleyball, about 20 micromorts a year. About 56% of such deaths happen during exercise; spread over about 150 sessions, that is roughly 0.08 micromorts each.

Men are not measured separately, and in US college sport men had about three times the sudden cardiac death rate of women, so young men probably face 0.1 micromorts a session or a little more. We scored fatality risk for both sexes. Middle-aged recreational players carry the same heart risk from vigorous exercise as in any other sport, so anyone with heart symptoms should get checked before playing hard.

Indoor injuries

National surveillance of US high-school and college players counted injuries that kept a player out for at least a day. High-school girls had 1.11 injuries per 1,000 practices and games, among the lowest rates of any school sport, and college women had 3.81. Ankle sprains were the most common injury at both levels. Unusually, injury rates in college were about the same in practice as in matches.

Liberos, the defensive specialists who dive and sprawl for the ball, had a high rate of concussion compared with other positions, from collisions with team-mates, the floor and the ball.

Older European data put indoor and beach injury rates at 4.2 and 4.9 per 1,000 hours played, from a questionnaire of 295 elite and recreational players. Acute ankle and finger injuries came from blocking and spiking, and overuse injuries hit the knee and shoulder.

Beach volleyball

At the 2001 Beach Volleyball World Championships, the FIVB surveyed 178 professional players. Acute time-loss injuries ran at 3.1 per 1,000 competition hours and 0.8 per 1,000 training hours, lower than in most team sports. The knee, ankle and fingers accounted for more than half. Overuse was the bigger problem: 67 players had sought treatment for low back pain, knee pain and shoulder trouble.

A US college programme comparing its beach and indoor players from 2003 to 2020 found fewer injuries on sand, 1.8 against 5.3 per 1,000 hours. But beach injuries kept players out longer: shoulder injuries cost 52 days on average against 28 indoors.

Beach players also face the weather. Long days in the sun bring heat illness and sunburn, and an open beach is a dangerous place in a thunderstorm.

How to play more safely

1. Learn to take off and land safely. Land on both feet, and avoid drifting under the net into the opponent's landing zone. This was the core of the Norwegian programme that halved ankle sprains.
2. Use balance training or a lace-up brace after an ankle sprain. Previously sprained ankles are the ones most likely to go again.
3. Tape or buddy-strap fingers if you block often, and get a swollen finger checked rather than playing on.
4. Manage jumping load. Pain below the kneecap that gets worse after sessions is an early sign of patellar tendinopathy; cut back before it becomes chronic.
5. On the beach, plan for heat and storms. Drink often, use shade between matches, and leave the beach when thunder is heard.
6. Know where the defibrillator is in your gym or club.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (95) is around 0.1 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per session or less for young players, with young men the least well measured. Serious injury risk (75) reflects frequent but mostly minor sprains. Controllability (75) is good because landing technique and balance training work. Rescue (88) is close, with some heat and lightning exposure on the beach. Volleyball scores just above pickleball and well above basketball.