Playing volleyball while injured – Week 2

5/8 weeks for my supposed full recovery from my back strain injury, another week where I played a 2 hour session of indoor hardcourt volleyball.

I had spent the previous week recovering from the last 2 hour session, my knees having not made a full recovery since then. They did feel sore and they did ache, but the pain was not debilitating since I have already gotten accustomed to it and understand how far I can push myself. Besides that, returning to play indoor hardcourt volleyball was more to test the condition of my back strain than the function and health of my knees.

I used this week to adjust the style of my approach, where in the past I would approach rather upright and thus generate a majority of my leap force through my quadricep muscles, this time I started closer to the ground with my knees and hips further bent so that I actively used my posterior (Glutes and Hamstrings) muscles to a greater extent. I have identified that the source of my patellar tendonitis came from the overuse and dependence of my quadricep muscles having to generate all my leaping force. With my knees having yet to be fully recovered from the previous week, this adjustment in my approach greatly reduced the impact forces that my knees and joints normally absorb. I felt more agile, I could jump higher and for much longer, and most importantly, the knee pain was not as noticeable.

It is ultimately my goal to treat my patellar tendonitis, however I have reached the point where my condition is already chronically affecting me. I can either choose to simply rest and not play volleyball again, or adjust my trainings to address my weaknesses that resulted in my initial patellar tendonitis condition and persevere. Looking back at this point 5 years from now, I may consider myself to be incredibly stubborn, as I know I must be portrayed right now, but I cannot accept that this condition forever robs me of my passion for playing volleyball. I suppose I could simply become a fan and observer, or even transition into a coaching role, however I know, no matter what, I will always want to play. Up until my body breaks, I probably will still continue to play. This does not mean I will push myself until I break, but if it breaks due to naturally deteriorating without myself addressing the issues, then that will be the time to reassess my passion for playing.

Playing indoor volleyball with an injury.

4-6 weeks to recover from a mild back strain. 6-8 weeks that I personally prescribe myself so that I can avoid re-injury all together.

It has only been 4/8 weeks into my recovery and I ended up playing 2 hours worth of indoor volleyball. Damn.

The decision to play was made quite lightly, my body had been steadily recovering and strengthening through the various bodyweight exercises that I have been performing. It was because I felt strong and stable that I figured that I would not experience any issues if I played a light game of volleyball. I forgot that I am unable to actually control my intensity when I play, so what I intended to be a light game turned into a high impact game once again. I think I simply forget any pain or injury that I am experiencing when I set foot on the court, the movement of the ball and the potential for greatness always captivates me.

8 weeks without touching a volleyball resulted in a noticeable decrease in my passing and hitting skills. My setting skills were still somewhat competitive, albeit I kept setting too close to the net. It was as if I forgot how to pass or hit optimally, conceptually and in my head I knew what to do but my body would not cooperate. I had a few good receives occasionally, but my lack of consistency was quite frustrating especially since I want to transition into a Libero.

What was noticeable in my spiking was that I did not experience any pain in my jump or landing. I actually felt completely pain free while spiking and for a second forgot that I had patellar tendonitis. What was also noticeable was that I could not spike with any notable power so I opted to simply place the ball, hitting light angle shots whenever I had the chance.

It is now 4/8 weeks into my recovery and my knees currently still ache from that volleyball game. I did not realise that a 2 hour session of volleyball would result in my knee aggravating to this extent for this long. I suppose this is the price that I pay for rushing my recovery, nothing humbles you more than your own body screaming at you to slow down. I will play again this week to test my skills and satiate my need to play, but hopefully I am able to control myself!

Never rush your recovery from injury – Off-season Volleyball

 

I had initially planned to finish my first volleyball season as strongly as possible, no matter how the last game would have ended, I wanted to play. Unfortunately, injuries occur at the most unexpected times.

The very last training session my team and I were doing high intensity receiving drills where two players had to ensure that any ball, tossed by the coach, did not hit the ground. It was high intensity because he would toss the ball randomly, further away or incredibly close, a large or small toss, and we had to receive them regardless. It was in this training session that I experienced my first ever back strain. This was an entirely new injury because I suddenly lost my ability to bend at the hips, comfortably. Initially I thought one of my legs was tight, or that my back was simply stiff, so my first point of action was to foam roll with my Hyperice Vyper 2.0 when I got home. I already knew that this was an unusual tension that I felt in my lower back because, as I drove home from training, it was difficult to sit. After I foam rolled, the initial pain and tension that I experienced was not completely lifted, but was significantly improved.

The next morning it felt like I never knew how to walk. It was incredibly difficult to stand up from my bed, let alone get changed for work. However, since I still considered that this injury was nothing more than sore / tight muscles, I pushed through and went to work, albeit heavily assisting myself through the use of compression shorts, a sports support belt and I sat on a cushion while driving. Throughout that week I was noticeably recovering at a steady rate, by Wednesday the initial discomfort of bending at the waist was almost gone and I had regained my range of motion. As I still felt discomfort, I did not do any strenuous exercise that week and simply rested from all physical activity to further promote recovery. The following week I restarted my physical activities by simply walking on the treadmill and performing very light weighted upper body exercises. I did not progress onto lower body exercises until the following week, the same week in which I also started playing indoor beach volleyball. The week after that I was still only performing bodyweight lower body exercises and lightly weighted upper body exercises, even though I had regained full range of motion and the pain was gone. It would seem then that I was recovered enough to start weighted lower body exercises again, which was I regrettable mistake.

I was performing squats for the first time in months when I re-injured myself. Before this happened I was performing body weight squats with ease, on a bosu ball, and felt solid and secure in the movement. Deadlifting also felt solid, albeit I had experienced a significant decrease in my strength, I could still perform the movement as usual. In terms of upper body strength I was bench pressing almost as heavy as I was on my powerlifting program, so everything told me that I could proceed with squatting again. I had decided to work up to 80kg because I felt solid doing 60kg, but in my last set I felt a sudden strong pop sensation in my lower back and had to immediately rack the barbell. I decided to go on the elliptical for 5 min just to keep the blood flowing and to gauge if I had broken / fractured / herniated a disc in my lower back and/or spine. My greatest fear was that I fractured or herniated a disc, but as I was still able to support myself while walking upright, I could rule out having broken my spine. As I drove home I began to consider that this was the exact same injury that occurred to me previously, except the initial injury resulted from a sudden change in direction while weighing heavier than throughout the season (I discovered this weeks after). True enough, when I went to the doctor the next day for an examination, he ruled that it was a mild muscle strain and that I must recover and rehabilitate for 4-6 weeks, adjusting it to 6-8 weeks myself.  Due to my eagerness and stubbornness to be fully recovered, I caused myself to re-injure and thus all plans for focusing on volleyball, both indoor and outdoor, and doing weighted lower body movements to improve my vertical, had to be halted. Moral of this lesson, do not be over eager in returning to normal activities even if I feel 100%.

I am currently in 4/8 weeks of recovery and I no longer experience any pain in bending at the waist and have regained full range of motion. I have not / will not attempt weighted lower body movements for the remainder of my recovery period, instead opting to only body weighted exercises in a calisthenics manner. During this period I also weighed myself because I was curious if I had gained any weight, I am ashamed to report that I currently weigh 10kg heavier than my maintenance of 85kg during the season. This was a hard fact to process because this has been my most active year in recent memory, but my negligence in external physical exercise and activity except volleyball was my downfall.

My current plan of action, to improve my quality of life and to prepare myself for a stronger and more optimal performing season, is to lose this unwanted weight. Losing the weight will provide me with the greatest improvement in all aspects because I will be more agile while reducing the force on my knees while playing volleyball. The benefit of doing bodyweight squats is that I do not experience knee pain and I can focus on activating my posterior chain, rather than relying on my quads.

Physical Fitness in volleyball – Season 1

Competitive Volleyball season 1 – April to August 2017.

Knee

My greatest insight into this first season in my 5 your journey is that I am still physically able to play. I had hoped in the preseason that I would possibly last throughout the entire season, and in writing this I have done that. Not only that, it is not that I feel stronger or have less knee pain, but I have discovered techniques to alleviate and sometimes negate the pain.

In the preseason I simply engaged in a lot of social volleyball games, as well as 1x per week training session. These training sessions were meant for high school / complete beginners to the game so I was able to relearn and fine tune my essentials. During this time my knee pain would flare up occasionally and, since then, have discovered different methods to treat the pain. Initially my remedy was to purchase knee supports, which is why I have 2 Bauerfeind knee sleeves. I additionally invested in highly compressive leggings to further support the key muscle groups in and around my knees. Once I found that my pain was not as intense, but still lingering, I educated myself in foam rolling techniques. At this point in time I have invested in a Hyperice Vyper 2.0 foam roller that has 3 vibration intensities to more effectively loosen my fatigued muscles.

Once I established proper foam rolling methods into my treatment ritual, in order to ensure that I was able to play a competitive volleyball game with minimal pain, I resorted to rubbing heat gel in and around my knees to prep them for game time. During the warm up the gel would activate and assist in keeping that region heated and loose. Occasionally, when the heating gel would not work, I would use kinesiology tape under my knee sleeves for further support. This practice proved invaluable during the Collie Cup tournament where I played volleyball for 2 days, the first day having 5 games. The kinesiology tape was able to further stabilise my knees along with my knee sleeves, while the highly compressive skins tights decreased as much muscle vibration as possible.

Additionally, I established a pregame warm up routine that greatly assisted in warming my lower body and reducing my knee pain. The warm up involves running 2-3 laps around half / full court, followed by half court drills. In the preseason I used to do more elaborate warm ups which I have been unable to do in the season due to time constraints in the warm up phase of  an official game. I will return to doing these warm up exercises in the offseason and increase my efficiency so that I can still perform them during an actual pregame warm up.

Another method that I had developed during the season was to change my mentality during a game. On top of being calm and collected, I also channelled the thought of “air” and “light” in order to translate into being lighter on my feet. This served to make me faster in my response timings, as well as to change the way I exerted force on my muscles and joints. Instead of pounding them into the hard wood to move, with my adjusted mentality I used only as much force as needed to get me into position. This greatly served to reduce my knee pain and actually helped me increase my speed, if not only as a placebo effect.

As previously described in my previous post, my landing mechanics this season declined as compared to the preseason. Although, having a “light” mentality assisted in landing as softly as possible, thus allowing me to actually use the knowledge that I had gained to land properly. For the new season, I am to always have a “light” mentality as well as to further improve my landing mechanics so that I may minimise as much pain as possible.

Thumb

As previously stated, during the beginning of the season I had initially sprained my thumb and did not pay the injury much thought. Unfortunately, this sprain developed into a chronic injury and as a result, I am currently seeking medical attention at this time of writing. Oddly, I only sprain my thumb when I play volleyball because otherwise, it is fully functional. I can still grip properly and use my thumb when I lift weights, but I can not perform a simple set without the possibility of a further sprain.

Throughout the season I used a thumb support during the game and this did not help as much. In retrospect it was probably because of the way I used the straps and how it did not support the area where my thumb had weakened. My only hope for a full recovery is to rest it, as well as perform various thumb exercises to strengthen the muscles, if any are injured.

The last training session I had attended, instead of using a thumb support I wrapped my thumb with sports taping. As a result, I was actually able to gain the mobility and flexibility I had lost with the thumb support, while being pain free. This was only 1 time that I had tried this technique, so I may make use of it more often in the future.

Eczema

I have always had to deal with my hereditary condition of Eczema in various parts of my body. The worse conditions are when it is incredibly dry and cold, as well as constant contact with dirty / drying surfaces. Throughout the season I had noticed that whenever I contacted a particularly dusty / dirty volleyball, my eczema in my right hand would flare up. However, if the ball was relatively clean, I would not exhibit any symptoms of eczema in my hand. In relation to my thumb condition, it seems that the material of the thumb support affect the skin on my right hand, and at the time of writing, I am treating it with mild hydrocortisone cream. It has healed considerably, but not yet fully. My middle 3 fingers have also experienced instances of eczema flares and I have treated them with sports tape and rigorous lotion application.

Fitness

My overall fitness level was gradually increasing in the preseason and towards the middle of the season. I could feel that the pain in my knees was decreasing, as well as my jump vertical increasing as I had less weight to overcome. This was also the time of proving my skills to the club, so I was extremely determined to be as fit and move as fast and functionally as possible to secure a favourable division. Unfortunately, partly due to my increased and varying workload, I dramatically decreased my gym activities in favour of focusing on my volleyball recovery and performance. This was counterintuitive because my performance suffered considerably, and my fitness dramatically decreased. I no longer was as fast and the pain in my knees increased again as I gradually gained weight. At the time of writing I have restarted my gym activities with a different goal, to ensure the health of my active lifestyle. Where I used to dislike cardiovascular exercises, I now take 30 min to simply walk before I engage in any weighted exercises. This ensures that I never get lazy or forget to do my cardio activity after my weighted trainings.

Season 2 and beyond

Now that the first season in my 5 year journey has ended, it was a valuable experience to play again. I have gained immense knowledge in how the organisation, club and league, are handled and I am now more familiar with the volleyball calendar for the year. I can easily reflect and consider this to be an incredibly negative experience, one that would give me reason to not play another season, but I choose to be grateful in still being able to play. To just be able to stand on a court again and to be in an actual competitive volleyball game, this has been a goal I had been working towards in the past 6 months leading up to the season. I am extremely hopeful for the next season as I am going to take this offseason to rest and strengthen myself again. I want to come back stronger and more balanced for any team that I decide to join. My love for the sport has always been in the background, through the small good times and immense bad times, I have loved the sport in all of it. Here is to the second year in my 5 year saga in competitive volleyball.

Reviewing a rough season in volleyball – Season 1

Motivations

Competitive volleyball season 1 – April to August 2017.

What a wonderful and challenging experience to play competitive volleyball again this season. I am a very passion driven person and most activities I engage in at my highest abilities involve myself being completely passion fuelled. As evidenced with my inactivity in posting throughout the season, it was a season that was not filled with passion. Instead, this season was incredibly educational and informative in how volleyball is conducted in Western Australia and what the players / people are like in the community.

It was like yesterday when I decided to play competitive volleyball again, and throughout this entire season, I have not regretted it. There were times when my faith and passion for the sport wavered for various reasons, but as it ends I find myself incredibly excited and hungry for the next season. When I began the season I was highly focused on my individual abilities and simply played the game based on that. The progress I achieved leading up to the season was immense, I felt and knew that my skill level exponentially increased from when I started playing social volleyball. During trials I consistently put forth my best effort to showcase the skills that I had developed and honed in the preseason. As my position was yet undefined, I was focused on demonstrating all of my skills in hopes of securing a minimum Super League Division 3 placement. This was also the period of time when I had yet fully injured my thumb, and as a result, I was flexible to become a setter because I did not have any difficulties in controlling the ball then. Everything was new, everyone was new and the entire experience fuelled me to continuously do better for myself in the sport I cherished. Even my mentality was still hopeful and optimistic for the performance and team camaraderie that I had envisioned for the season.

Unfortunately, this wave of progression only carried me up until the 5th game of the season as each of the teams began to exhibit signs of complacency and loss of motivation. As each player’s position was likely defined at this point, we then focused on team dynamics. We never left this phase of training. The ongoing excuse throughout the season was that we were a new team representing a new club, so it was expected of us to behave and perform poorly. I still do not accept this as a reason for our poor performance. As captain for the SL3 team and as the main setter I had 2 roles that were opposing each other throughout the middle and end of the season. As the captain I attempted and tried to maintain a sense of “team” within the team and set guiding principles and attitudes that each player should have for a game. Unfortunately, this did not last and my role as captain eventually became the player who handled complaints and raised it up to the coaches. In short, I did not function nor feel like a captain of a team, at least not in comparison to any other leadership role I had in the past. It was as if the team itself did not see the need for a captain, nor did I feel like I could be a competent one due to my role as a player. As a player, I was desperate to improve my individual skill, to be given more personal coaching away from the “helpful” criticism of the team. This only materialised twice. It was as if my coach solely relied on team dynamics and team practice to improve my individual skill as a setter, as if that would have worked out. As a result, I was not confident in my role as a captain because I was not confident in my role as a main setter for the team. I could not fake the confidence needed for the team because my genuine confidence in my own ability was non existent. This severe lack in confidence permeated to other parts of my volleyball life, as evidenced by the complete lack of content in the middle of the season. I had almost lost all of my motivation to improve as no matter what I did, it was never enough.

By the end of the season, my mind was already focused on the offseason and next season. I had effectively given up on the current team as it was incredibly negative and toxic to be a part of. It was not ever exhibited during trainings because there was no pressure to perform, but when it came to game time everyone was incredibly tense and negative. In retrospect I suppose it was due to each individuals inability to handle stress in that highly stressful situation. Each player also exhibited different manners of intensity for the game, some were extremely vocal while others were the silent seething types who would only explode through sheer aura and small comments. This cacophony of mentalities eventually lead to our extreme underperformance and regrettably non existent team atmosphere. Even as I write this now, I do not wish to play in the same team with the same players next season. I may handpick a few, but overall I wish never to competitively play with most of the players. It was an overwhelmingly negative atmosphere that no one knew how to address, even the coaches were confused. In their view, our performance was equal or better than most teams during trainings, but we were never able to translate that to game time. As previously stated, it was the hidden inability of handling pressure as well as adapting in a very negative and judgemental atmosphere. As the setter, this was an absolute nightmare. There were moments where I executed absolutely perfect sets, but these moments were few and far between as I was continuously pressured by the entire team. Even if the ball was a perfect set, if the hitter was unable to execute, it was my fault. Warming up to hit, if I was unable to deliver absolute perfect sets every time, it was my fault. If the feeder to my set gave me a bad feed, it was my fault. Ultimately, it felt as if I was blamed for every loss in the season. Mentally, this destroyed my enjoyment with this team. At least I still relished and enjoyed the game when I was not playing competitively. In retrospect, the only reason why I wanted to play competitively again was to improve upon my skill and to play at a higher level, this was not the case. I did overall improve my setting and I performed a few sets which I would have never been able to practice in a social environment, but ultimately it was not enough to justify this as a successful season based on performance. However, it was a successful season in all other aspects that did not involve my competitive performance. This will be described in further detail in another post.

Skills development – Setting

This section will begin with an examination in my primary role this season, as the main setter for SL3. I would like to consider my experience slightly positive but largely negative, but honestly it was entirely educational, neither positive nor negative. When I began as the main setter, my initial motivations for this position was to ensure that I received the most play time of any player on the court. Essentially I wanted a position that was invaluable to the team, one where I would not be easily substituted off in the middle of the game. I was also highly inspired by Kageyama, one of the two main protagonists in Haikyuu!!. He described the position as the main control tower, guiding and directing the flow of the entire game.

I found this to be true, however I was largely unable to execute as necessary due to consistently failed 1st passes. Additionally, at the beginning of the new season and throughout the season I had sprained my thumb. At first I thought this was a minor injury that would resolve itself quickly, but instead it lasted the entire season and still affects me today. I am unable to play volleyball without spraining my thumb. I am currently seeking medical treatment for my condition and hopefully I can recover before next season. If not, I will probably opt to play Libero instead as I would not be needed to set as much.

In terms of my actual skill and technique, this largely improved throughout the season. The main improvement in my technique was after one of two setter specific coaching sessions, ONE OF TWO, where my coach said that I should visualise grabbing the ball instead of catching. This initially seemed counter intuitive, but it resulted in adjusting my form so that my sets became more consistent. This was the greatest improvement in my skill the entire season, this one coaching direction that changed my technique entirely. Additionally, I was able to consistently set quick hits for my middle positioned players, as well as do other higher level sets with Kai. The greatest difficulty I had, and still have, is in my back setting. This is because of my injured thumb and how it is integrally involved in performing the movement. Instead of using the new technique I learned, I had to return to “catching” the ball and using my thumbs and fingers to push it up and backwards. As a result, my success rate for back sets was abysmal. In regards to my front setting, even in the end I still found that I was unable to fully push the ball out consistently. I was always slightly shorter than required. At times this was fine because the hitters had already adjusted to my inabilities, but other times they aggressively denied it and vocally tried to “help” me. Also, I began to develop a greater awareness of the entire court as a setter. My positioning when setting up for the ball was always dictated by the position of the other players. Largely, when I was unable to set a ball that was passed adequately, it was because I responded to a small shift in the position of the other players. It was never evident but, in retrospect, I did that to avoid collision and injury. This awareness also began, unfortunately only at the very end, to extend to the oppositions court as I started to focus on the match ups between my front row, as well their entire positioning when I went to set. With this developing awareness and the hope of my healing thumb, I am motivated to further develop my skills as a setter.

Overall, my experience as a setter was incredibly educational and if I am able to heal and rehabilitate my thumb condition I may want to do it again, but at this point in time I do not entertain the idea of returning as a setter.

Spiker

As a spiker this season, which only occurred if I was playing in a 6-2 or 5-1 formation, I was adequate. Neither stellar nor under performing, just adequate. This is largely due to my shift in focus at the beginning of the season when I was chosen as the main setter. In the preseason I had begun to improve upon my different shots, as well as my landing mechanics. I was still able to partially maintain these skills, but I did notice that I focused less on my landing mechanics as the season progressed.

In terms of my arm swing, literally at the very end of the season did I view a video that explained what I was doing poorly, and it was never fully using my whole body and extending my arm. In the preseason I had been taught the theory and shown what it meant, but it was not as exaggerated nor emphasised as in the video I viewed at the end. As a result, in this off season I want to develop this technique so that, even if I am unable to jump higher at this point in time, I will at least be able to always hit within the court.

For my landing mechanics, this was exponentially developing in the preseason as I initially endeavoured to be an outside / wing spiker. In this upcoming offseason I will definitely focus more on this as it was integral even as a setter in my block landings.

Passer

This was my least developed skill throughout the season, even though we primarily focused on this in training, literally every training session involved a drill for passing, I was only focused on the setting portion. As a passer, my abilities somewhat developed in the season, more in the preseason, as I began to develop better positioning of my arms in the movement of receiving. I now know to keep my arms close to my body until I am able to set myself and balance before receiving the ball, this is instead of throwing my arms out before I am set in place. I have also learned to minimise my head movement by tracking the ball with my body, forcing me to get into position instead of simply looking at the ball travel to the position.

The greatest skill I developed as a passer in this season was diving and diving safely. In high school I had never dived safely, I always relied on the cushioning of the knee pads. Now, I have educated and practiced the necessary mechanics to execute a safe dive in multiple variations. This is also one of the reasons why I do not mind becoming a libero as I have gotten comfortable with the ground than I have been ever before.