Back pain in volleyball: taking the load off your hitter's lower back
After the game form a hitter stands still for a moment with a hand in his lower back and rolls his hips around a bit. Next week he does it again, and the week after that he asks whether he can skip the serving block. Nothing happened, he did not fall, and yet this is the third place where volleyball players break down.
The back is in the top three and nobody counts it
In volleyball, most conversations are about ankles, knees and shoulders. In injury records the lower back is almost always right behind them, as a standing site of overuse. The percentages differ from study to study, but its place in the order barely changes.
There is a simple reason the back nevertheless stays under the radar: it does not belong to one action. A shoulder hurts when hitting, a knee when landing, and a player can name that. A back hurts afterwards, in the car or the next morning while pulling on socks. There are hours between the cause and the moment the player notices, so it rarely reaches you.
So look at a hitter at his highest point yourself. The hitting arm goes back, the chest turns with it, the hips slide forward: the trunk makes an arch, extending and rotating at the same time. On contact that trunk snaps the other way in a fraction of a second, with the lower back as the hinge.
As long as that arch is nicely distributed, nothing is wrong. The extension should come from the hips, from the thoracic spine, and only last of all from the lower back. If one of the first two goes stiff, the movement does not disappear — it shifts. Three things make it heavier in volleyball than in most sports:
- Extending and rotating come together. Extending alone is bearable, rotating alone too; the combination puts the most load on the small joints at the back of the vertebrae.
- It is always the same side. A right-handed hitter makes his arch hundreds of times a week towards the same side. Volleyball contains no movement at all that mirrors it.
- The landing comes straight after. The player lands while the trunk is still snapping back, and the back has to absorb both things at once.
The jump serve is a category of its own: the body hangs loose in the air and the toss decides everything. If the toss goes too far back, the arch is deeper than in any spike. Anyone who teaches the jump serve to a whole team raises that team's back load at a stroke.
The good news: the dials are in the coach's hands. Where the ball hangs, how often a week somebody gets into that position, and whether the hips do their share — all three can be steered on a Tuesday evening.
Three kinds of pain, and why the difference matters
"My back" can mean three different things. You are not making a diagnosis — you are deciding whether this is a training question or a doctor's question.
- A broad, nagging stiffness across the lower back. On both sides, the player puts his whole hand on it, it warms away in the first ten minutes and comes back at the end of the evening. Usually a load story: too many arches in too few days. The rest of this article is about that.
- Pain at one point on one side, coming on when bending backwards. The player points with a fingertip beside the spine, and it mainly hurts on extension and on the hitting motion, not on bending forwards. In a player who is still growing, this is the picture you do not wait out: in sports that combine extending and rotating — gymnastics, the tennis serve, javelin, volleyball — an overloaded spot in the bone of the vertebral arch is a known cause, and that calls for examination a coach cannot provide. If such one-sided pain lasts longer than two to three weeks, the player goes to the doctor, even if he can play perfectly well.
- Pain radiating into the buttock, leg or foot, or tingling and loss of strength. Not a dosing question. Report it the same day, and do not play on to finish the set.
Fever, pain at night on a day with no sport, or trouble passing urine do not belong with sporting load in any case. Then you phone a doctor the same day.
What you see from the sideline
You do not have to wait until somebody reports it. Four things you can see yourself.
- The hand in the lower back between drills. Once is nothing. Three practices in a row with the same player is a report that has not been spoken out loud.
- The ball arriving behind the head. The hitter is late and compensates with the trunk instead of with the legs: the contact point shifts backwards and the arch gets deeper.
- Balls going long. A trunk that stays open too far hits the ball up instead of down. A run of balls hit out is not always concentration.
- The jump serve that disappears. "The float lands better" is rarely a tactical choice in a player who spent two months working on it.
The biggest dial is in the technique
For the lower back the position of the ball matters more than any exercise: the ball should stay in front of the hitting shoulder, not above or behind it. Everything that pushes the ball backwards pushes the load into the back.
- The timing of the approach. Leaving too late is the most common cause of a ball behind the head. That is where the gain from working on the three-step rhythm sits: it decides where the ball hangs in relation to the body.
- The pass that comes too close to the net. A ball stuck on the net forces every hitter to bend backwards. So not a hitter's fault but a passing and setting question — and it costs your hitters dozens of deep arches per practice.
- The toss on the jump serve. Have the player toss ten times without hitting and watch where the ball lands: ideally half a step to a full step in front of the take-off. If it drops on the player or behind him, the back repairs that every single time.
When teaching the swing, stress that the power comes from below: hips and abdomen, then chest, and only then the arm.
Count arches, not jumps
For a knee you count jumps. For a back you count arches: every time a player extends and rotates in the air with the ball above or behind the head. Those are the attacks, the jump serves and the blocks where he really stretches out. Count it once for one hitter, in one ordinary week:
- Tuesday: a 15-minute serving block with 30 jump serves, a 20-minute hitting block with 40 swings, a game form with 20 swings. Together 90.
- Thursday: no serving block, hitting block 35, game form 25. Together 60.
- Saturday: warm-up hitting 25, match 40. Together 65.
A good 200 arches in a week in which nobody did anything special. Now "take it a bit easier" becomes a sum. With a player who has complaints you take off a third, and the most expensive go first: the jump-serve runs and the hitting runs on high, slow balls, because those are where the player stays open longest. Never cut one evening out entirely — then he loses a practice instead of part of his load. Write your practice blocks out in advance with a duration next to them, and you see the arches before they are made.
The problem rarely sits in one evening but in the stacking: a rearranged match on Wednesday between two practices, a tournament, or the first weeks after the winter break in which the weekly total doubles — the risk moment that comes back with every overuse complaint in injury prevention. So look at your calendar before you build a practice, not afterwards.
The rule of thumb: between two heavy arching days there is at least one day on which the back has to extend for nothing. If there is a match on Wednesday, Tuesday is not a serving block but passing work, defence and play on fast balls.
Practical tip: ask the whole team at a fixed moment every week how stiff the lower back was on getting up, on a scale of 0 to 10. It is not about the number but about the line over four weeks. A 4 says nothing; a 4 that was a 1 three weeks ago says everything.
What you build in: hips open, trunk still
The aim is not a stronger back but a back that has to do less: giving movement back to the hips and the thoracic spine, and teaching the trunk to stay still while arms and legs move. Eight to ten minutes, three times a week, fits into or straight after the warm-up.
- Opening the hip flexor. Half-kneeling, squeeze the glute of the back leg, tilt the pelvis slightly, and only then lean forward. Two times 30 seconds per leg. Without that glute squeeze you are stretching the lower back instead of the hip.
- Rotating the thoracic spine. Lying on your side with the knees drawn up, open the top arm out to the back. Eight calm repetitions per side.
- Anti-extension for the trunk. On your back, lower back flat against the floor, slowly lower the opposite arm and leg. Three sets of eight per side; the moment the back comes off the floor, the repetition is over.
- Glutes. Bridge or single-leg hip extension, three sets of ten. Strong glutes supply the extension that otherwise comes out of the back.
- Side plank. Three times 20 to 30 seconds per side, against the one-sided load of always hitting from the same side.
What is not in the list counts too. Sets of sit-ups do little, and long stretching of the lower back feels nice but changes nothing about where the movement comes from. The basic exercises from strength training for volleyball players — squat, hip hinge, pulling and pushing with a still trunk — do more for a back than any back exercise. If the player is seeing a physiotherapist, that programme takes precedence over what is written here.
Youth: the same complaint, a different urgency
In a player who is still growing, the back is not a smaller version of an adult back. During a growth spurt the levers get longer while the control lags behind, and there are growth zones in the spine that spread the load differently. It is precisely in those years that the player wants to learn the jump serve and goes from twice to four times a week.
Three agreements make the difference. One-sided lower back pain lasting longer than two to three weeks goes to a doctor, even if the player is taking part as normal. You do not introduce a new jump serve and more practices in the same quarter. And do not let a youth player do heavy overhead exercises with weight while he cannot yet hold his trunk still.
Writing it down and referring on
Note four things: the date, which side, what the player was doing when it came on, and that week's stiffness score. One line a week, in the player notes in Koach or in a notebook. Loose numbers in your head are gone in two weeks; only the pattern over a month counts.
The build-up afterwards follows the same logic as with other overuse complaints: up in steps, with the next morning as the measuring moment, and only further once the previous step has been come through without after-effects. That system is worked out under jumper's knee; for the back you replace "jumps" with "arches".
Refer on to a GP, sports physician or physiotherapist in the case of: radiating pain into the buttock or leg, tingling or loss of strength, one-sided pain on bending backwards lasting longer than two to three weeks, pain at rest or at night, complaints after a fall on the back, and anything that has not eased after three to four weeks of adjusted load. Whether you can go straight to a physiotherapist differs by country and by insurance — find that out once for your club and write it down. What is set out here are general principles for recognising and dosing, not treatment advice.
Frequently asked questions
May a volleyball player with lower back complaints keep playing?
With a broad, nagging stiffness that eases during play, usually yes, provided you lower the number of attacks and jump serves per week and check that the score the next morning is not rising. With pain radiating into the buttock or leg, with tingling or loss of strength, and with one-sided pain on bending backwards in a player who is still growing, the answer is different: then you have someone look at it first.
Why is it spikers and jump servers in particular who get back complaints?
Because the hitting motion demands extending and rotating at the same time, always towards the same side, and because the landing comes straight after it. If the hips or the thoracic spine are stiff, the lower back supplies the part of the extension they do not give — on every swing again. A ball hanging behind the head, or a toss that drops over the player, makes that arch deeper still.
My fourteen-year-old has had pain on one side of his lower back for three weeks. What now?
That is the picture you do not wait out. One-sided lower back pain in a growing athlete that comes on when bending backwards and lasts longer than two to three weeks should be looked at by a GP or sports physician, even if the player can take part as normal. In the meantime take the jump serves and the runs of high attacking balls out of his practices.
Do a back brace, tape or a heat belt help against back complaints in volleyball?
They can feel pleasant during play and dampen the complaint somewhat, but they change nothing about the cause: where the ball hangs and how often a week the back has to extend. Use something like that alongside an adjusted programme at most, never instead of one, and not to get a player through a match you already know he would be better off skipping.
Which drills do I leave out for a player with lower back complaints?
First of all everything that stacks extending and rotating: long runs of jump serves, hitting runs on high slow balls, and drills in which the ball keeps arriving behind the head. Heavy overhead exercises with weight are better parked for a while too. What is left is enough for a full practice: passing, defence, setting, blocking work and attacking fast balls in front of the body.
How long does it take for lower back complaints to go away?
With an ordinary load story you see improvement within two to four weeks if the number of arches really comes down and the hip and trunk exercises are kept up. If it goes more slowly, or if it comes back with every build-up, there is usually something in the technique or the weekly planning that has not yet been dealt with. Complaints that have not eased after three to four weeks belong with a physiotherapist or doctor.
