This Pro Volleyball Player Is Learning a Whole New Position for the Olympics

Volleyball star Matt Anderson, 37, has set, spiked, and jumped in courts over the world, playing on foreign pro teams for more than a decade. However, nothing quite beats the feeling of returning to his native soil to represent Team USA in Paris this summer.

He’s no stranger to the Olympics, either. In his debut games in London 2012, he was the youngest person on the team at 25 years old. He’s played in every Olympics since—competing this year in Paris will be his fourth stab at an elusive gold medal. The team earned Bronze in Rio in 2016, but Anderson wants more. “I’ve damn near won everything on the professional circuit,” he told Men’s Health. “If you say to somebody, ‘I’m an Olympian,’ their first question is going to be ‘did you win a medal?’ Their second is going to be ‘was it gold?'”

Last time we spoke with him, he had just returned to Anaheim, California to start training with Team USA. We caught up with him in the beginning of June to see how he’s adapting to being back with the team, new style of play, and even a new position on the court.

I’M FINALLY AT a place where I feel like I’m finding my rhythm again. Not only getting into the gym with the guys, but also with me changing a position on the court, from the left side to the right. It gives the team better balance on the court. When I have to switch, though, even the small details are heightened. It’s all about working to find that stride. I’m looking at a lot of film, looking at scouting reports of myself, and seeing what I need to improve on. At this level, it’s crazy how much an inch here or there, or one extra step here or there can can make the difference between making a point or not making a point. It’s basic proprioception stuff that I need to tailor because there’s not a ton of room for error.

The things I’m concerned about during this phase of training are also things that excite me. How you train is somewhat discouraging because you’re working on all the things that you’re not great at. So there are mistakes, there are miscommunications, and there are frustrations, which can make for a pretty tumultuous training atmosphere. But I think something that our coaching staff and the players on his team do really well is see through that. We know that it’s a process-oriented system that we’re trying to get better at overall. To do that, we have to go through tough times.

But on the flip side of that, when it comes to competition, it’s just about playing and competing and being us. That’s what I’m really excited about. In a way it will take some of the kinks out and hopefully get us out of our brains. We can just go out there and be physical and in play the way that we feel is our best.

We’re at LAX right now, on the way to the International Volleyball Federation Men’s Volleyball Nations League competition in Ottawa. The whole qualifying process is three rounds of pool play—the first round was last week in Turkey, then this week in Ottawa, and then two weeks from now in the Philippines. We have to finish top eight to make it to the finals in Poland and qualify for the Olympics.

The travel never really gets easy. As I get older, the more time spent on planes and everything, I get a little bit more inflammation in my joints. So it’s just about being aware of that, and being a little bit smarter in my preparation. I’ll hit the sauna or the steam room at the hotel, use some Normatec boots, do contrast therapy [swapping between hot and cold therapies], and more. We also go a few days earlier to get acclimated to the time zone and such. But I have a lot of practice with not getting sleep and having to get up and train, since I have two kids. You learn that your brain and body is pretty powerful in that way.

Going into these competitions, it’s time to just compete and uses these matches as a benchmark of where we are and how we’re feeling against the best teams in the world. But I’m going to try not to be so critical [of myself]. This is the summer to keep that competitive edge on a positive note, even if the matches don’t go the way we want the way we want them to, to keep the energy up.

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