Introduction: Unlike other team sports on the court, volleyball lacks physical contact between players, the teams being separated by the net. However, lower limb injuries take place during spiking and blocking trough unintentional and illegal intrusion of a player in the opponent’s court. Due to the specificity of the game, the joints of the upper limbs are also subject to overload.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the international literature on injury and trauma in performance volleyball.
Methods: We analysed several studies about injuries in performance volleyballwhich were identified using online databases: Google Scholar, EBSCO, Springer, Elsevier, and Scopus.
Results: The injury patternshows the ankle sprain as being by far the most common injury in volleyball with a percentage of 31.9%. The knee is the second most injured anatomic site, 17.38% of injuries affecting this joint. Third most frequent injury affects the fingers 13.44%, followed by lower back 12,38% andshoulder trauma 12.18%. The hand is injured in 6.97%, while other injuries were found in 5.25% of cases.
Conclusions: The need for in depth analysis of volleyball injuries still persists. Analysing the literature we are comming to understand the mechanisms that produce the injuries with the purpose of finding metods to avoid these unfortunate events before they happen. It is no longer enough to recover from an injury, it must be prevented entirely if possible. Time spent by a player recovering may negatively affect the team's performance.
Injury prevention measures must occupy an important place in training. Coaches should take into acount all the factors that influence injury incidence and design the training plan accordingly.
