When it comes to professional sports, volleyball tends to see less coverage than major sports like football and basketball. However, it is unique for the athletic skills it requires top players to develop along with the various settings volleyball is played in—from sand to water to wooden floorboards.
Similar to basketball, volleyball is a quick-paced game that forces athletes to stay on their toes and use minimal space to generate huge amounts of force. It’s tactile, powerful, and constantly moving. Unsurprisingly, this makes it a top option for sports fans to watch, even if most of the hype around volleyball is reserved for the summer Olympics sand volleyball matches.
Slowly but surely, this trend is changing—and oddsmakers might be giving the sport a boost. Back in 2018, the US Supreme Court lifted a ban on sports betting. Since then, more US states have opened their doors to oddsmakers—and sites like OddsChecker make it easy to peruse welcome offers from leading sportsbooks.
Many of those sportsbooks offer lines on leagues like Italy’s Superlega, Brazil’s Super League, and Poland’s PlusLiga—to name a few. This has helped generate new interest in volleyball and even spark interest in general sports fans who might be intrigued by the fast-paced game. One of the first things a new fan will notice is that the athletic skills employed by top stars like Max Holt and Facundo Conte aren’t quite like anything they’ve seen before.
And they’re not wrong. Let’s explore why volleyball players have some of the world’s most unique athletic skills.
A Vertical Leap
Volleyball players are vertical leap champions. In fact, only basketball players will be asked to jump at similar heights throughout the game to score, rebound, and assist baskets. In volleyball, players will need to soar with just about every play. And while basketball players aren’t slouches, it’s widely known that volleyball stars outperform their vertical leaps often.
That’s because players are continually leaping to volley, block, set, spike, and more at the net-level. For both offense and defense, players must extend to their fullest.
Ankle Strength
Let’s cover one of the little-explored elements of that vertical leap: ankle strength. Once again, it’s easy to draw comparisons between volleyball and basketball. Athletes in both must pivot and generate speed quickly, while also jumping often, which can spell disaster for the ankles.
But volleyball players tend to have incredible ankle strength—and much of that comes from repeated leaping. In other words, their ankles are able to handle quick movement, lands, and accelerations at top speed. Viewed in this way, ankle strength in volleyball players prevents injuries associated with falling, including sprains and twists to the ankles and knees.
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Powerful Arms
There’s no carrying the ball, no dribbling, and no chest passes. Volleyball players have a split-second to hit the ball precisely—and with great power. For this reason, volleyball players have excellent arm strength, including their shoulders, biceps, and triceps.
This puts them on par with other athletes who regularly use their arms, including basketball, swimming, golf, and tennis players. But unlike these other pastimes, athletes playing volleyball are hamstrung to make hard hits in a limited amount of space. Like a golfer, they have one chance to land a strong spike.
Quick Reactions
However, unlike a golfer, a volleyball player doesn’t set up their hit perfectly on a tee. Instead, they’re faced with reacting in time to hit a ball that might be sailing between 50 to 70 mph toward them. That means that volleyball players have some of the quickest reaction times in professional sports.
Like a tennis player, a volleyball player has to be able to react while the action moves at an incredible speed. More specifically, they can’t just react—but need to make a play that will earn their side a point or diffuse an offensive attack from their rival. And, unlike their tennis counterpart, volleyball players must react quickly while moving seamlessly as part of a six-person team. In other words, they’ve got to react quickly, hit hard, and leap high—all without running in to their teammates.
