Our Staff
Volleyball Fun In The Sun
By Denise Mann
May 31, 2001 - Summer is almost here, and the beach volleyball nets are being set up surfside across the country.
Are you thinking of playing? Wondering if you'll hurt yourself? It's safer than hard court, isn't it?
Beach volleyball can be a great way to get your daily dose of physical activity, if you play safely, experts tell WebMD.
Injuries during beach volleyball may differ from hard court, indoor volleyball injuries, according to new research presented Wednesday at the 48th annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in Baltimore.
For example, the most common injuries in hard-court volleyball are ankle and thumb sprains, overuse injuries of the knee and shoulder, and low back injury. By comparison, a new study of 252 Olympic beach volleyball players shows that these players are more likely to sustain foot injuries due to lack of foot and ankle support from sneakers and an uneven playing surface.
Researchers from the Lutheran General Sports Medicine Center in Park Ridge, Ill., report that 35 injuries occurred over the course of a seven-day Olympic qualifier professional beach volleyball tournament. Of these, 20% were neck and lower back strains, and 14% were foot injuries (including toe cut, a puncture wound from a nail, and one case of sesamoiditis, an inflammation or rupture of two small bones near the big toe).
Other injuries figuring in the grand tally include two strains of the quadriceps (the muscles in the inner thigh), two ankle sprains, two strains of a knee tendon called the ilitobial band, one sore bicep muscle, and one shoulder dislocation that occurred during a jump serve, report William Briner Jr., MD, medical director of the Lutheran General Sports Medicine, and colleague Jason D. Johnson, MD.
Though researchers initially speculated that heat injury would be fairly common among beach volleyball players, only one player suffered mild heat exhaustion during the course of the study, they report.
"You have to be in 'beach shape,' to play beach volleyball, which means you should train on the sand and get used to how it gives when you come down after a jump," says former beach volleyball player Wendy Trollope, a spokeswoman for the California Beach Volleyball Association.
Some beaches are cleaner than others, she says. "If you are the first person out there on a sand court, the sand is usually level and in great shape but if you are the fifth-round [match] in all-day tournament, there is more opportunity for potholes," she says, As far as falling, sand is more forgiving than a hard court -- especially on the knees, Trollope tells WebMD.
Cary M. Golub, DPM, a podiatrist in private practice in Long Beach, N.Y., sees a fair share of foot injuries in beach volleyball players.
"The biggest problem is that the foot is not supported, meaning that you are not in a shoe or sneaker and then you land on a nonflat surface and ankle and foot injuries occur," he says.
"When you play barefoot, the likelihood of jumping up and fracturing a toe is there, because the toe bends down and catches in sand and you can get a fracture. Ankle injuries occur when the foot collapses inward, lands in the sand surface, and the sand gives way," he says.
Less frequently, Golub says he sees cuts that occur from stepping on shells, nails, and bottles during play.
Sesamoiditis occurs as a result of the constant pounding up and down in the sand. "This trauma can cause an inflammation or fracture of the two small bones under the bone behind the toes," he says.
His advice: "If you are constantly playing beach volleyball, try wearing a foot covering such as a rubbery aqua shoe that provides some support, although not as much as you should have," he says. "Keep feet covered or supported as much as possible."
Try to have the surface as level as possible to prevent crater areas, and make sure the play area is cleaned up, he says. Beaches in Long Beach, for instance, are vacuumed to pick up large and small debris.
Despite the new findings, New York City sports medicine expert Lewis Maharam, MD, president of the New York chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine and the medical director of NYC Marathon, says there is little difference in the type of injuries sustained during beach and indoor volleyball, except that beach volleyball players are not wearing protective shoes.
If you look at upper extremity overuse injuries, they are the same, he says.
"The new study is of a small, select group of high-performance athletes, while studies of indoor, hard-court volleyball have looked at larger numbers of players," he tells WebMD.
And researchers may have found more cases of heat exhaustion if they had looked at players on a public beach, he says.
"There may also be more dehydration because amateur players don't think about drinking, while professional athletes do," he says. Amateur players may have had more strains and sprains than high-performance athletes because they don't stretch before a game.
"The most common injury of everyday people playing recreational beach volleyball is severe sunburn, " he says. "Wear a hat or a visor and sunscreen with a sun protection factor of 30 or higher -- and reapply it when you sweat," Maharam says.
"Think hydration," he says. "Stay away from beer or alcohol, which are diuretics and help you to lose fluids," he says. Instead, choose sports drinks like Gatorade or PowerAde.
"If you are going to play beach volleyball on the weekend, stretch and strengthen the muscles that you will use during the week at the gym," he says. They include the biceps, triceps, forearm, hamstring, and lower leg muscles.
"Wear beach shoes and watch where you step because glass and rocks could be in the sand," he says.
And last but not least, "Take it slow. Don't overdo it and spend 12 hours playing beach volleyball your first weekend out," he says.
According to Volleyball World Wide, beach volleyball started in the early 1920s in Santa Monica, Calif., where the first volleyball courts were put up on the beach. In 1927, it became the principal sport in a French nudist camp in a northwestern suburb of Paris.
Over the following decades the sport took off nationally and internationally, with courts and contests popping up on beaches everywhere. In the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, 24 men's teams and 16 women's teams represented their countries in the first-ever Olympic beach volleyball tournament.
