The volley that hurts you is the one you never moved for

Net injuries are usually blamed on reaction speed, but the damage comes from arms taking a load the legs declined.

There is a category of shoulder and wrist complaint at the net that gets filed under bad luck. A ball comes fast, the hand goes up, something twinges. The tidy explanation is that the reflex volley is inherently violent. I do not buy it.

Look at where the feet are. In a clean high volley the player has taken a split step, loaded the outside leg and turned the trunk, so the arm arrives at the ball as the last link in a chain that started at the floor. In the version that hurts, the feet are still. Nothing rotates. The arm is asked to both stop the ball and generate the block on its own, at full extension, with the elbow above the shoulder. That is not a reflex problem. That is an isolated limb absorbing a load the body was supposed to share.

The reason players stop moving is not laziness either. It is anticipation failing late. If you commit to the wrong side and then have to reverse, the legs are already spent on the wrong direction and the arm becomes the only thing that can still get there. So the injury pattern is downstream of a reading error, one or two shots earlier, usually at the moment of approach.

Which is why I think net drills that feed balls fast at a stationary player are close to useless and mildly harmful. They train the arm to save the point on its own and they reward the exact motor pattern you want to eliminate. Feed slower, but feed wider, and make the player earn the ball with two steps. The volley should feel like it happens because you arrived, not because you flinched.

The other half of it is height. A volley taken at eye level with the elbow tucked is a comfortable joint position. A volley taken above the hairline with the arm straight is the same shape as the serve at contact, minus the run up and minus the leg drive that normally pays for it. Repeat that a couple of hundred times a week and the shoulder keeps a record.

Good net players look slow because their first movement is early. The ones who look quick are often the ones who are late and covering for it.

Reflex is what you call the last resort when it works.