Role of Functional Risk Factors in Predicting the Injuries of Iranian Elite Male Volleyball Players

Although sport injuries are common in volleyball, insufficient information is available on the risk factors for these injuries. Due to the high reliability and validity of the functional tests as well as the low cost and availability of these tests, hoping tests were used to investigate its role in predicting injuries to elite Iranian volleyball players.

In the current study, 60 Iranian male volleyball players were selected as the study participants. Prior to the start of the tournament, volleyball players were evaluated using hopping tests to assess functional risk factors. Volleyball injuries were also evaluated prospectively over a semester and analyzed using SPSS, version 24. Pearson correlation test was run to investigate the relationship between the research variable and the prevalence of injury as the criterion variable. Logistic regression test was used at the significance level of 0.05.

There was a significant relationship between hoping tests and injury incidence among adolescent volleyball players. Also, there was a significant relationship between injury incidence and single leg jump, single leg triple jump, jump time, and single leg cross jump, respectively. Correlation values of -0.427, -0.554, -0.580, and -0.610 were observed.

According to the results, considering the fact that the participants’ Hoping Functional Tests scores after performing and recording the observations showed a relatively favorable condition, it can be stated that the better performance in these tests is linked with the risk of injury among volleyball teenage athletes. It may be concluded that the higher the performance of athletes, the less the possibility that they may be injured.