Coaching Volleyball 2.0 CVB2.0 Special Issue 1 | Page 13

Fired Up
Fired Up
Returning to Play After A Long Break
By Jim Miret, Front Range Volleyball Club
I
hope as you read this article you and your loved ones are
healthy and safe. Without a doubt, we are all missing our
sport and our volleyball communities and connections.
Hopefully we are all back in the gyms training and getting
ready for our next club competition sometime in late May
or June.
To be sure, none of us have ever experienced such a long
break in the middle of our competition season. This poses
quite the challenge for all coaches – how can we best prepare
our teams for competition after such a lengthy pause in
training? And with tournament preparation, how can we
prevent injuries in our athletes who will not be used to high-
volume training and therefore more vulnerable to injury?
There have been a few studies on injury rates in volleyball
(both articles are linked below), conducted among college
volleyball players. These articles examine volleyball injuries of
all types, and both pay particular attention to which parts of
the season the injuries occur in.
https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/NCAA_W_
Volleyball_Injuries_WEB.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5968995/
It’s appropriate to relate the college volleyball season to our
current situation because their players report for training in
August after an extended break, and they begin competing
near the end of August. In this scenario players have been
training in the off-season on their own, but very intense
individual and team training starts when players report to
school in August. When players report most programs will
conduct 2–3 practice sessions per day for 2–3 hours per
session in the month of August until school begins.
In both studies the times volleyball players are at the
highest risk of getting injured most often occur at the
beginning of the season in August, and the beginning of off-
season training in January. It is important to note that this is
when these players are coming off of extended breaks, even
though they are “conditioning” during their off time.
Coaching Volleyball 2.0 | 13