Cameron Branch – Canadian opposite – and I became friends during our first pro season, playing for VCA Amstetten Niederosterreich in Austria. Although he might seem at first as a big goofball, falling for everyone’s jokes, he is dead serious when it comes to volleyball. His dedication to his body and his craft, his passion and hard work instantaneously made me like him. We also shared a similar story – having gone through 5 years of Canadian college athletics to then move to Europe and start playing pro on the same team. We could talk volleyball for hours, but that’s easy – you can do that with almost any volleyball player. But we could also talk about other things in life, our values, philosophies, lessons learned. There was a lot of things I admired about him (and still do): for example, his openness to experiencing new cultures combined with his extraversion allowed him to talk to complete strangers and ask questions about this unknown place he found himself in. Today Cam is still playing pro, he just finished another season in German 2. Bundesliga. He started his own business – Branch Sports Performance – which he is using to help athletes achieve their goals through healthy and fulfilling lifestyle. I asked Cam to have a conversation with me about his philosophies as an athlete and as a coach and his transition from playing college athletics to the professional volleyball world in Europe. Below you can read that very conversation.
–Hey, Cam, why don’t we start our conversation by having you introduce yourself to the people out there?
-My name is Cameron Branch, I was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I’m a pro volleyball player, coach, a family member, a friend and a student of life. Throughout my experiences as a professional athlete I’ve come to appreciate the process of growing not only as an athlete, but also as a human. Over the past 10 years I’ve used my experiences to develop a coaching business which is centered around helping athletes and developing humans. I am using everything I’ve gone through, including my failures and struggles to help people who are trying to take a similar path to the one I took. In other words, I often think – what would my younger self need? What kind of guidance would a 16-year old Cam want in order to succeed? These kinds of questions represent an important part of my coaching philosophy.
-I find the phrase you used – “student of life” very interesting. Could you expand on that for me?
-For me, there’s not many more motivating things in life than learning. And I mean it on both ends of it, too. When I learn something myself, or when I’m helping someone else learn something, I get so excited to experience that. Especially when you talk to someone and they have this “oh” moment, when you see that something just clicked in their brain, that they finally understand something they were struggling to see before, that changes your life as a teacher, coach or a mentor. And I think I got addicted to seeing that. Seeing your own growth and the growth of your client or student, it’s really exciting. Even watching the growth of your friends, or family members. I believe it’s crucial to have this mindset of life-long learning, this mindset of “if I do well I use it as a lesson, if I don’t do well I also use it as a lesson”.
-Allow me to pick on yet another thing you said a moment ago: you mentioned your coaching philosophy is partially based on this question “what would a 16-year old Cam need?”. Why did you choose that age specifically? Is there some regret I’m sensing? If you had the knowledge you have now at that age, would you want to change anything?
-I chose 16, because that’s the age where we start to make some very important decisions. Are you starting to prepare for college or university? Are you specializing in one specific sport? When I look back, I was really confused at that age. I had some important coaching figures in my life to help me along the way, but I had difficulty strategically planning what the next 5 years looked like. It caused a lot of tension. I had all these big decisions to make and I don’t think I had the necessary problem-solving skills and the discipline required to answer these questions properly. Another thing is the fact that as a young adolescent you’re not really sure who you are. I wish I had more of an understanding of myself and my emotions. So now, having gone through all of that by myself, I’m trying to make sure that I can be that kind of a mentor for those young athletes, among other people. Some questions such as why do you do what you do? The why behind my identity as a human and athlete. Of course, we have our parents, but they might be biased, they might want different things for you than you might want for yourself.
-We could have a whole different conversation about the morality of putting the burden of those huge decisions on the backs of 16-year olds, but with that being said, I really admire the fact that you’ve gone through that process, you’ve lived it and now you’re using these experiences to make it easier or better for someone else.
-Yeah, it was a time of big struggle for me, and I wish I had a mentor, or a personal coach that could guide me to help me make sense of what’s ahead of me. Or even to help me figure out my own self. Someone to ask me: what do you feel? Why do you think you feel it? Where is this lack of confidence coming from?
-I think this is a good transition to something else I wanted to ask you: you’ve recently written a post about – among other things – the advice you want to give to the young athletes who are in the middle of their transition period: whether it’s from high school to college, or from college to pro. As I’m reading your piece, I had this one question: As a 16-year old, I – Kornel Kowalewski – did not know who I was. I was still trying to figure it all out. But I had this one big advantage over my peers: I was really curious about a lot of things. If something grabs my attention for even a split second I will definitely look into it to learn more about it. For example, if I watch a movie and I think it was a really good movie, I’m going to do a lot of research to find out more about it: I’m going to watch interviews with the director and the actors, and read about the behind the scenes stories. As a volleyball player I’m constantly looking for more information on how to improve my craft. So now, imagine you’re coaching a group of young athletes who do not have that curiosity. They will listen to you, they will do what you tell them to do. But they will not go beyond that. My question to you as a coach is: can you teach that kind of curiosity? And if so, how?
-I love what you just said, I love how curious you are. This curiosity is probably the best tool you can have when it comes to learning. When it comes to how we develop it, helping athletes explore their environments can be beneficial. Asking questions that que them to draw awareness and attention to their actions and behaviours is a step in the right direction because we are so automatic. It’s important to have athletes slow down, and think introspectively. As an example, when I’ve done nutrition education, I ask athletes “what did you eat yesterday?”. After, it’s a matter of constant reinforcement, and patience. Behavior takes time to shape and even more time to change. So again, constant reinforcement – ask your athletes: “how did that meal make you feel?”, “how did that weight session make you feel?”. The more attention and awareness you can bring to your inner self, the more growth will occur.
-But reinforcing that kind of behavior, it cannot be as simple as “you did a good job, here’s a cookie”, right?
-Be a human. Be a human coach. At the end of training, take your athlete aside and ask them “how are you doing?”. And then ask them “but how are you really doing?”. The more we humanize coaches, doctors, physios, the easier it is for the athletes to use the resources or the advice they can offer. Of course you still need to leave some room for a position of authority or leadership that comes with these jobs, but you also want to show the players that you care, that you truly really care. You also need to remember that not all athletes or people work the same. That’s the difference between the science of coaching versus the art of coaching. For one 16-year old, having a sports journal will be a great learning tool. But their teammate might hate it, or it will simply not work for them. So you might need to develop different strategies for different athletes. It involves annual planning for a whole team, or for individual players: this is where we start, this is where we want to be in a year, and one of the ways of getting to that point is developing that curiosity.
-I really like what you said about the individualistic approach to each player. But there’s still a lot of coaches out there who treat each player the same way, for them their players are just cogs in the machine, there’s no room for individualism. What are your thoughts on that?
-There’s been a lot more human development growth within the coaching space in recent years. The so-called “old school mentality” is to coach technically, tactically and that’s about it. Luckily, we’ve had a lot of research when it comes to player-coach relationships lately. So coaches now become more aware of this individualistic approach. So for example, I am being motivated by loud screaming by my coach when I’m playing and you might prefer to be spoken to softly and calmly for example…
-Definitely not the case, but I get your point.
-…But yeah, nowadays coaches hopefully realize that it’s really important to be attuned to all the different characters on the court. Asking your players simple stuff like “where are you from?”, “how many siblings do you have?”. We’re back to that human aspect of coaching, which again proves to be crucial. Your performance might be the reason why you’re there, but you also want to feel supported emotionally. The more you understand your athletes as humans, the more relatability you will find in your relationship, which will lead to an easier path of changing bad habits, behavior or performance overall. Because what’s worse than stepping onto the court with the feeling of “my coach doesn’t have confidence in me”? I just want to make sure I’m making myself clear: I am not saying this means that you shouldn’t coach your athletes hard or that you shouldn’t push them a lot. But you need to get to know your players well enough so that you know what’s their limit, how hard you can push them.
-That’s a great point. We all have a different limit, different “breaking point”. Even if I’m an “old school” coach or a hard-ass coach, I might still scream at you differently than I would at someone else. Or at least with a slightly different intensity.
-At this point we need to be mindful that there’s different resources in different teams or environments. Not all coaches are being paid full-time salaries. Not all coaches have the resources to invest into personal development. Some of them are coaching on a voluntary basis with very limited resources. The other part of it is that not all coaches are the life-long learners we talked about a minute ago. They would rather spend their time on tactical and technical development. Or perhaps they just simply have no one to teach them that this is an important aspect of their sport. We often forget that this is the reality of a big part of the sports world – not all places are 100% professional with access to big sponsors or government funding, like college athletics in Canada, for example. Not every team has NBA, MLB or NFL money. But the funny part about that is that we – athletes on the lower step of the ladder – might actually learn more life skills than the guys on top of that ladder, simply because we have not been given everything. We have to fight, work hard and earn what we really need. We need to maximize our limited resources and I think that makes it really valuable and meaningful. Now that I think of it, that sounds like an interesting study: who finds it easier to transition into life after your on-court career is over? Those who had everything or those who didn’t?
-Speaking of transitions, I wanted to ask you about your transitions: You were born in Canada, you played 5 years of college volleyball there, at Nipissing University. After that you flew across the ocean to play pro in Austria, France and now Germany. I wanted to ask what was it like transitioning not only from the college level to the pro level, but also transitioning from athletics in Canada to European athletics?
-For me, going from college to the pro team in Austria, I was told that if I go there and don’t play well my first season, it might be the end of my volleyball career. I had to make a name for myself which put a lot of pressure on me. So at that time I was playing with a lot of fear which was actually very beneficial for my performance (a topic for another day). However, one thing I found particularly hard to adjust to was the amount of free time. Coming fresh from university, being a student-athlete means that your schedule is packed all the time. Time management is essential to having success at that level. So what I did in Austria was apply the skills I learned in university into my new reality: I had everything scheduled [click here to see Cam’s routine]. I kept myself busy, but everything I was doing was to ensure I was performing at the highest level.
-Do you think this transition from college to pro was easier or harder than the one you made from high school to college?
-I think high school to college was harder. I remember during my first four months of college I was really struggling to manage the two personalities: the student and the athlete. It’s a really difficult thing to do, because they are both full-time identities. They both require so much time and discipline, it’s hard to give your 100% to both. You’re tired on the court, because you’re up late studying and then you’re not doing well in class or during exams, because you’re tired from practice. You add cooking, cleaning, being a family member and a friend on top of that, you become really tired mentally, emotionally and physically. You need to find some sort of structure or routine to help you manage all of that.
-Cam, one last thing I wanted to ask you about: I’ve also played college volleyball in Canada for 5 years and now I just finished my 5th professional season here, in Europe. I see a huge difference when it comes to the emphasis put on the team spirit. In Canada I’ve always felt like everyone is truly a part of one united collective. In Europe even though you still make friends through volleyball, the teams I’ve played for always felt divided. Even the team we played together for in Austria – VCA Amstetten – had a group of international players and another group of Austrians. Which always makes me feel like I am just a mercenary. Have you noticed a similar thing in the teams you’ve played for?
-Absolutely. We’re foreigners, we come to a new team, so we’re always going to feel like outcasts. I believe it’s up to the organization you’re joining to make you feel like you’re a part of the team. It’s the management’s job to do it. It’s the coach’s job to do it. It’s your new teammates’ job to do it. I think the European mindset is still very old school: technical and tactical training is what teams do here. But that’s about it. You show up, you put in your work and then you leave. I believe it’s up to the coach to organize some team building at the beginning of the season. I’ve seen too often team building attempts when it’s already too late, when shit hits the fan. But not all coaches understand team cohesion. Not all players are emotionally intelligent to care for another human being. So we also have to try to take some of that burden onto our shoulders. Even though your coach and the management should care about it the most, that doesn’t mean that I can’t do anything to help the process of team building, right? I can take a look around, see all of my teammates, and even though they might seem like strangers at first, we do play for the same team, we do have the same goal. So why not ask your teammate to go grab a coffee before practice? Why not talk about life outside of the court? That’s what team bonding at the beginning of the season should be for, in my opinion – let’s all go camping, let’s heat up the barbeque and talk about life. Because if you do those kinds of things you feel so differently when shit hits the fan on the court. You still feel supported, you don’t lose faith in your teammates. You’re unlikely to create true friendships among everyone on your team when most of the players are on one-year contracts, but we want to try to figure out a way to create some meaningful bonds during that time nonetheless. And to put a bow on this conversation: this is about being curious and having the awareness that this actually matters.
-Long story short: Stay curious out there, people. Thanks for this talk, Cam, I appreciate you and your time.
-My pleasure, bud, I can talk about that stuff all day.
I really wanted to thank Cam for sharing his time with me. You can go visit his website – www.branchsportsperformance.com or follow him on Instagram @branchsportsperformance.
What are your thoughts on this conversation? Did you have a moment of big transition in your sport? What was it like? Are you a Student of Life? What do you think about individual approach in coaching? Let me know in the comments, Dear Reader.
Court of Wisdom 