Effectiveness of VolleyVeilig: the prevention of injury among youth volleyball players

Both acute and overuse injuries are common among volleyball players. The incidence rate ranges from 1.7 to 10.7 injuries per 1,000 playing hours. Depending on the definition used, 25-35% of injuries are sustained by youth players. Volleyball injuries most often involve the shoulder, knee and ankle. Consequently, an intervention called ‘VolleyVeilig’ was developed in order to prevent or reduce the occurrence of shoulder, knee and ankle injuries in youth and adult volleyball players. ‘VolleyVeilig’ is an exercise-based warming-up programme. The effectiveness of ‘VolleyVeilig’ has been recently assessed in adult Dutch recreational volleyball players. The next step is to evaluate the effectiveness of the ‘VolleyVeilig’ intervention among youth volleyball players. A quasi-experimental study, based on a prospective controlled design, will be conducted over one volleyball season (September 2019 – April 2020).The intervention group will be asked to use ‘VolleyVeilig’ for youth players, and the control group will be asked to continue their usual warming-up practice during the course of the study. Allocation is based on competition region. Nevobo organizes its recreational competitions in four different geographical regions, and recreational teams compete against each other within a geographical region. Allocation by competition region is chosen to avoid any contamination and competitive bias within a competition region. Volleyball exposure and injuries are registered weekly per player over the volleyball season (September 2019 - April 2020). The aim of the proposed study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the ‘VolleyVeilig’ volleyball warming-up programme for youth players over one-season (2019-2020) among youth volleyball players aged 10 to 16 years on volleyball related injury rate, severity, and burden of injuries. Secondary aim is to evaluate the delivery and use of the programme within the context of the effectiveness study, in order to explain programme outcomes and gain insight in facilitators and barriers that influence the uptake of the programme by youth volleyball trainers/coaches (process evaluation).

The hypothesis is that the injury rate, severity and burden of injury over one-season is lower among youth volleyball players using ‘VolleyVeilig’ than among youth volleyball players not using ‘VolleyVeilig’ (volleyball as usual).

Aug/Sept 2019 - Inclusion
Exposure, injuries and compliance are measures weekly during the volleyball season (Sept 2019 - April 2020)
April / May 2020 - Process evaluation
May 2020 - Study end

The intervention ‘VolleyVeilig’ (available in Dutch) provides volleyball trainers/ coaches and players with a good and standard warming-up programme to prevent volleyball related injuries, and was specifically developed for this purpose by
Nevobo and VeiligheidNL in cooperation with sport physiotherapists, volleyball trainers/coaches and other experts. The programme includes more than 50 distinct exercises, each warming-up will take up to 15 minutes, and has to be conducted at least twice a week prior to any volleyball activity (training or match). It provides volleyball trainers/coaches every week with a new warming-up programme that shows progressive increments in terms of intensity, frequency, duration and/or complexity.