Most beginners don’t know whether volleyball is defined as a contact sport. Is volleyball another soccer or basketball in which you need to come into bodily contact with other players? Today I will answer this question.
Is volleyball a contact sport?
Volleyball isn’t considered a contact sport. Compared to other sports like basketball, soccer, or hockey, in volleyball, there aren’t many opportunities to come into bodily contact with other players. However, contact with opponents sometimes occurs and injuries in this sport happen quite often.
What is considered a contact sport?
When it comes to sports, there are sports with lots of contact and sports with little or without contact. How do we define a contact sport?
Often times, contact sports are also called “full-contact”. That means that those sports require physical contact between players. Good examples of such sports are boxing, wrestling, or even hockey. As a rule of thumb, if we want to assess whether some sport is a contact sport, we should ask ourselves “do players often touch each other physically or with equipment?”. If the answer is yes, then it’s 100% physical sport.
Probably you have ever watched wrestling or boxing. Those are highly contacts sport. Physical contact is necessary for these sports to exist. The same applies to hockey, in which players really often shove, push each other, and get in contact with their sticks.
Other sports that we can easily call full contact are rugby, American football, soccer, basketball, handball, lacrosse. And quidditch is also a high contact sport…
From 1 to 10. How contact is volleyball?
We already know that a full-contact requires players to touch each other for most of the time. If you have ever watched volleyball, you have probably noticed the amount of interactions between players.
In volleyball there aren’t many physical contacts between two teams. I think they usually don’t come into bodily contact. Sometimes one player steps on other player’s foot, but it happens rarely. Sometimes two players touch each other’s fingers in the air, but it’s also not frequent in volleyball.
Players from the same team have a contact during celebrations, but it’s not considered a contact. So, from 1 to 10, I’d rate volleyball 2, which means the contact between players is really rare, less than 1 time per match.
Volleyball isn’t a contact sport and it does not include injuries?
You might think that if volleyball isn’t a contact sport, then it means it’s safe. It’s not true and volleyball is actually quite dangerous.
Volleyball includes lots of physical activities like jumping, running, walking, diving. It means that pulled muscles and other injuries are quite frequent. If you jump and step improperly, it’s easy to twist your ankle. If you dive aggressively or you run without a warm-up, you can injure your muscle.
We usually associate a non-contact sport as safe. Some are. But volleyball isn’t chess. It demands many physical activities that are potentially dangerous.
Players are conscious of the risk. And they do whatever it takes to avoid the injury. But even though, they sometimes happen. On average, there is about 1 injury in a team per season. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but some of them are dangerous, and they can exclude some players from playing even up to 1 year, or they can make players end their careers.
If you don’t believe me, watch a video below.
Types of volleyball injuries
Now let’s take a look at the most popular volleyball injuries.
- Broken finger. It’s one of the most popular injuries in volleyball. When you set or attack the ball, it’s not that hard to do some incorrect move with your finger to break or dislocate it. It also often happens during a block. In order to prevent it, players often tape their fingers. If a player breaks his fingers, he’s going to miss games for another couple of weeks.
- Ankle sprain. When a player jumps and then lands, he needs to be aware of how he does it. If he forgets to land properly, it’s common in volleyball that players sprain their ankles. It’s painful and this type of injury excludes the player even for a couple of months.
- Torn muscle. There are many muscles that can be injured during a volleyball game. Those are leg muscles in particular. In order to prevent it, it’s essential to warm up well, but it does not guarantee a lack of injury.
How to prevent most of the injujries?
We can’t avoid 100% of the injuries. But there are ways to minimize the risk of injuries.
The most important part is a warm-up. It needs to be a good warm-up that involves every part of the body, particularly legs, arms, shoulders, and back.
Don’t forget about good condition and strength. Fatigues organism is prone to lose concentration much faster.
In order to protect legs, volleyball players some kinds of protectors. They prevent from bruises and scrapes. Also, the risk of injury is minimized by taping fingers. This method is widely used by middle blockers.
Players with the worst injuries in volleyball
Michal Winiarski
Some players are more likely to get injured than others. In some cases http://opelz-blog.de/bokstaven-u/index.html , it’s all about genetics, but sometimes players overestimate their strengths. A good example is Michal Winiarski. For most of his career, he was neglecting the right regeneration. His organism wasn’t able to handle his hard work and Michal eventually got injured. He couldn’t walk, but after some time he got the injury once again. It came out to be a back injury and because of it, he ended his career in 2017.
Sebastian Swiderski
A Polish player got injured in 2010. He twisted his knee and torn his quadriceps at the same time. After a long rehabilitation, he was able to heal the injury, but he had lots of constraints and eventually ended his career 2 years later.
Olieg Achrem
Achrem during an attack landed on his left leg. Asseco Resovia’s player bent and torn ligaments in his knee. He was out of the game until the end of the season.
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