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Post by Gilmoy on Dec 11, 2016 21:17:13 GMT -5
A. Having fingers bent backwards doesn't hurt? No one ever gets broken fingers? B. Why doesn't the ball deform in those shots to the head that cause concussions? Objection: hearsay  I'm sure they do happen, but I've never been present when either case actually occurred. The point is that blockers do block volleyballs thousands of times per year without acute injury. Injured fingers are apparently the exceptional case, like sprained ankles. So there must be a simple physics/biomechanical principle to explain that. A. I concede the point that broken fingers (and knuckles) do happen. I had a guy at club team tryouts whose right ring finger had a broken 2nd knuckle, so that he could not make a closed fist. He could literally fold his ring finger backward until his fingernail touched the back of his hand, without any discomfort. It was shocking because it's so rare. From experience, I have sprained each ankle more times than I ever hurt a finger blocking. (only USAV men's BB, low level stuff) B. The ball did deform. Your eye just didn't register it. |
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Post by durtpile on Dec 11, 2016 23:13:31 GMT -5
Having fingers bent backwards doesn't hurt? No one ever gets broken fingers? Why doesn't the ball deform in those shots to the head that cause concussions? I'm sorry, but this has to be reposted for any mention of concussion from being hit in the head with a volleyball. Sure, sure. Sterling, of course. But, mere mortals don't have his brains, or his skull, unfortunately. |
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Post by durtpile on Dec 11, 2016 23:32:16 GMT -5
A. Having fingers bent backwards doesn't hurt? No one ever gets broken fingers? B. Why doesn't the ball deform in those shots to the head that cause concussions? Objection: hearsay I'm sure they do happen, but I've never been present when either case actually occurred. The point is that blockers do block volleyballs thousands of times per year without acute injury. Injured fingers are apparently the exceptional case, like sprained ankles. So there must be a simple physics/biomechanical principle to explain that. A. I concede the point that broken fingers (and knuckles) do happen. I had a guy at club team tryouts whose right ring finger had a broken 2nd knuckle, so that he could not make a closed fist. He could literally fold his ring finger backward until his fingernail touched the back of his hand, without any discomfort. It was shocking because it's so rare. From experience, I have sprained each ankle more times than I ever hurt a finger blocking. (only USAV men's BB, low level stuff) B. The ball did deform. Your eye just didn't register it. Your eye just didn't register it? Yeah, you tend to lose focus with a ball in your eye. So a ball, bending your fingers back, while itself deforming, doesn't cause any pain? I still haven't heard a reasonable explanation for why the girls clench their teeth and screw their eyes shut, when they go up for a block. Seems to me they would have more success with them open. That leads me to believe that the anticipation of the pain overrides training. |
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Post by reader on Dec 12, 2016 11:34:49 GMT -5
And there are plenty of concussions from getting smoked in the head. It's quite common and can be very debilitating.
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Post by hapaguy on Dec 12, 2016 16:42:42 GMT -5
Ogonna Nnamani lost a fingernail once trying to block a Kim Willoughby spike back in 2003 (I believe). She was being interviewed and she said the fingernail ripped right off...
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Post by Gilmoy on Dec 12, 2016 18:52:51 GMT -5
B. The ball did deform. Your eye just didn't register it. A. Your eye just didn't register it? Yeah, you tend to lose focus with a ball in your eye. B. So a ball, bending your fingers back, while itself deforming, doesn't cause any pain? I still haven't heard a reasonable explanation for why the girls clench their teeth and screw their eyes shut, when they go up for a block. Seems to me they would have more success with them open. That leads me to believe that the anticipation of the pain overrides training. A. Oh, I wasn't talking about the digger's eye; I was talking about yours. You, as a spectator (who had to ask the question), don't see the ball deforming. Hence your earlier confusion was based on a misconception. B. I don't really care about the "pain or no pain" question. The OP's scope is restricted to bone breaks  Evidently, fingers rarely do break. (I take your lack of further comment on this specific issue as agreement.) Regarding whether it hurts, I'll let you discuss that with whomever's interested. |
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Post by Wolfgang on Dec 12, 2016 19:17:09 GMT -5
Ogonna Nnamani lost a fingernail once trying to block a Kim Willoughby spike back in 2003 (I believe). She was being interviewed and she said the fingernail ripped right off... No, I thought that was Lauren Duggins' nails that tore off after an attempted block of a Nnamani attack. |
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Post by hapaguy on Dec 12, 2016 20:05:10 GMT -5
Ogonna Nnamani lost a fingernail once trying to block a Kim Willoughby spike back in 2003 (I believe). She was being interviewed and she said the fingernail ripped right off... No, I thought that was Lauren Duggins' nails that tore off after an attempted block of a Nnamani attack. I'm getting old but I'm pretty sure it was Nnamani that said she lost a nail trying to block Willoughby. I have the tape (VHS!) of that match somewhere if I can find it I will check... |
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Post by wonderwarthog79 on Dec 12, 2016 21:03:51 GMT -5
Fingers are broken all the time. Both of my little fingers were broken many years ago. You just keep playing. Best thing is to tape the little finger to the ring finger. Nastier are mallet fingers (more common in baseball) as a result of the ball hitting the end of the finger straight on and bending the last joint. The finger won't straighten because the tendon is strained (I believe). A splint will correct the problem, but it takes time. I suspect women's fingers aren't affected as much as men's are because the speed of the ball isn't as great. I doubt the compression of the ball really makes that much difference since compression only happens if your hands are used properly. Worst ever was severe inflamed knuckles when my partner and I were crossing over to dig a ball on the beach, and I caught him on his back with my fingers straight. I played out the match, but my knuckles blew up like you can't believe. I had a big date that night too. Volleyball is a b#@$, especially if you're clumsy!
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Post by usvballfan on Dec 12, 2016 21:10:41 GMT -5
Ouch!
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Post by dp02838 on Dec 13, 2016 13:37:32 GMT -5
Actually, that photo shows exactly why fingers (usually) don't break: the air-filled ball deforms instead. Scroll the high-speed video back a few hundred  frames, and you'd see that the ball deformed under Nwanebu's spiking hand to almost the same depth. That amount of deformation happens on every top-level hit, block touch, dig, facial  , and line bounce.[1] The way I understand it, the total energy carried by a volleyball can only be that which was imparted by cupped fingers (+ bases-of-fingers -- but usually not palms), and so it's necessarily less than the tensile strength of the fingers. Hence, whatever fingers did by pushing forward into the ball, cannot thereafter bend fingers backward. In principle, the blocker "counter-spikes" and pushes her fingers into the ball. The exceptional case is that a grazing shot could concentrate all of the ball's energy onto one finger, and 4 fingers could overpower 1, which is a risk we all take. That probably explains why blocking finger injuries are relatively rare: it's proportional to the surface area of those tiny zones of ball-vs-1-finger contact points, divided by the total area of the blocking surface. (Good thing the blocker had all that tape as extra support.)In my experience, it's far more dangerous to point a finger (or my left thumb  ) directly at the ball, because then all the force goes down your pipe-like bone into a joint, which thereafter must dissipate it via rotations or socket-hopping  (My thumb didn't break, it just rotated 90 degrees backward in the joint and stayed there. ER doctor looked at my X-ray for a minute, had an orderly help hold me down, and ... rotated it back. A non-invasive outpatient procedure, so there's that. I was blocking normally vs. a left-side hit that was wide-and-tight, so the ball came at me from an unusual vector that just happened to be antiparallel to my left thumb's vector. Durn Brasilians, getting there and spiking hard when an American would just punch with a fist. This suggests a rule of thumb  for blocking: rotate hands/fingers away from the actual line-of-sight vector to the ball.)[1] In fact, this deformation is why everybody in the gym can clearly see that a ball bounced "out", yet FIVB Hawkeye replay will rule it in. It's not an illusion, and we're not all wrong: at the instant of the ball's tangential contact with the floor, the vertical axis of the ball, and therefore its first infinitesimal contact point, is indeed out-of-bounds. But the ball squashes down until it's as wide as a pie dish, and so its footprint expands sideways and engulfs the line, and by rule that's "in". That's why Hawkeye replay shows every bounce as a full circle or stretched ellipse, not a point. Same rule in beach: the compressed ball can make the rope wiggle. Human eyes, with our low flicker fusion rate, cannot see the ball compress-and-rebound (n.b. a gyrfalcon probably could), so we interpolate the center-of-mass of the ball's trajectory, and we can pretty accurately judge that relative to a sideline -- but that's only a loose approximation to the written rule. Corollary: I think some line judges have been specifically trained in this, and they know (from past video reviews) that the ball compresses, and thus a bounce that is clearly center-is-out by a few inches is actually "in-by-squish". So they call those in, and we howl. But actually, (mutter mutter) they're right! We have such a line judge in the PNW who works a few of WSU's matches per year, and we've bayed so much at her that now we just laugh at opposing coaches and traveling fans when they get all het up and howl at her for the same thing.Having fingers bent backwards doesn't hurt? No one ever gets broken fingers? Why doesn't the ball deform in those shots to the head that cause concussions? Concussions in vball are more due to where on the skull you are hit. A serve to the side of the skull can often be much more concussive than an hard spike to the front or back of the skull. |
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Post by durtpile on Dec 13, 2016 16:26:26 GMT -5
Maybe we need a new volleyball. Design it to pop when it senses a skull approaching.
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Post by msrsv on Dec 13, 2016 18:41:12 GMT -5
Worst: dislocated and fractured thumb on what seemed like a pretty standard block and jammed thumb, until I looked at it and realized it was a hot mess.
Weirdest: avulsion fracure of middle joint, middle finger when I turned after landing and caught my hand in the sleeve of the guy blocking next to me (early 90s when we all wore shirts about 2 sizes too big), hurt but was taped and I kept playing for a couple of weeks before I got it looked at.
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Post by azvb on Dec 13, 2016 19:25:36 GMT -5
Since I rarely played front row, my blocking injuries were few. I did pull my eyelashes out in warm ups when my thumb got too close while I was "practicing" blocking (why I was practicing blocking I'm not sure).
Dug the ball with my face on a hit from Garth Piske. Kept playing, but I'm told I said really stupid things on the court and during time outs.
Saw a guy split the webbing between his fingers blocking. Blood everywhere.
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I'm sure they do happen, but I've never been present when either case actually occurred.
Evidently, fingers rarely do break. (I take your lack of further comment on this specific issue as agreement.)
frames, and you'd see that the ball deformed under Nwanebu's spiking hand to almost the same depth. That amount of deformation happens on every top-level hit, block touch, dig, facial 
, and line bounce.[1]
) directly at the ball, because then all the force goes down your pipe-like bone into a joint, which thereafter must dissipate it via rotations or socket-hopping 
(My thumb didn't break, it just rotated 90 degrees backward in the joint and stayed there. ER doctor looked at my X-ray for a minute, had an orderly help hold me down, and ... rotated it back. A non-invasive outpatient procedure, so there's that. I was blocking normally vs. a left-side hit that was wide-and-tight, so the ball came at me from an unusual vector that just happened to be antiparallel to my left thumb's vector. Durn Brasilians, getting there and spiking hard when an American would just punch with a fist. This suggests a rule of thumb 
for blocking: rotate hands/fingers away from the actual line-of-sight vector to the ball.)
