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Olympian Matt Anderson on the State of Team USA Volleyball

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Olympian Matt Anderson on the State of Team USA Volleyball

This story is part three of Men’s Health’s “Road to the Olympics” series, where six athletes share their training journeys as they prepare to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympics in July. Read all of the athletes’ entries here.

Volleyball star Matt Anderson, 37, has set, spiked, and jumped in courts over the world for more than a decade. But he says that nothing quite beats the feeling of returning to his native soil to represent Team USA. 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. Competing this year in Paris will be his fourth stab at an elusive gold medal. The team earned Bronze in Rio de Janeiro 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 was off to the International Volleyball Federation Men’s Volleyball Nations League (VNL) competition in Ottawa. We caught up with him in the middle of July to discuss how it went, and to see how he’s feeling before heading to Paris.

WE JUST LANDED in Poland yesterday. We have two friendly matches left here, and then it’s on to Paris. We get in on the evening of July 22, and then we have athlete processing the next day, where we get all the new gear and stuff from the sponsors. That’s always a fun part [of the Olympic process]. Then we’ll have a few trainings to be able to iron stuff out. We’ll only get one training session on the competition court before match play starts on the 27th. And hopefully we play the entire Olympics.

The pool play at the VNL competition didn’t really go as we’d hoped. We didn’t make it to the finals. It really showed us that we aren’t where we need to be yet. We definitely had glimpses of where we want to be as a team. But we also saw a couple things we needed to work on. I think physically we look pretty good, but we just weren’t playing the best volleyball.

“To me, the Olympics is the BEST TROPHY to win in our sport.”

A lot of our guys were pretty beat up, battling injuries. It didn’t allow us to go as hard. So when it came to actually performing, we just weren’t as sharp as we want it to be. We’re making the proper adjustments, though, and that makes me feel better about our performance. For me personally, I’m the type of player that when things aren’t working as well, or are as sharp as we want them to be, I put my head down and want to work hard until it’s all flushed out. All of these changes are things we know we can do, and things we’ve done in the past regularly. So getting back to doing it just requires the adequate amount of training reps, from my perspective.

Like I said last time, I’ve been trying to stay positive in terms of our performance. And I think part of practice is being somewhat analytical—I need to be able to criticize myself and check in on what I can do better. But competition is about being a little more free-flowing and less critical, which is kind of a counterintuitive approach compared to the way I view practice. So striking that balance takes time. I think these friendly matches on Saturday and Sunday are going to be a great indicator of how I’m feeling both on and off the court.

By not making the finals at VNL, though, we got an extra weekend at home. That gave us some more time to train. We might not be perfect on the court, but I feel like we’re in a really good spot when it comes to team chemistry. We’ve had a lot of team meetings and have really grown together.

I’m definitely starting to really feel the emotions of it all. We have this awesome opportunity to go for greatness in our sport. To me, the Olympics is the best trophy to win in our sport. So there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of stress and anxiety, for sure. But I think we have everything in place to set us up to play our best.

Want to follow more Olympians’ journeys? Click below to read about their training methods, wellness routines, and more.

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