Matias Raymaekers Shares an Insight Into VolleyBrains!
We’ve been chatting to Matias Raymaekers about the fantastic work himself & his wife do, to support the volleyball community!
Hi Matias! So, do you have a background in volleyball personally?
“Both my wife and myself are former pro's. I retired 7 years ago, she retired 11 years ago (when she got pregnant with our son). Combined we played pro for 30 years and been blessed with decent careers.”
(If you’d like to find out more about Matias & Marta’s volleyball careers, click on the links below)
Marta Szczygielska: https://women.volleybox.net/marta-szczygielska-p7548
Matias Raymaekers: https://volleybox.net/mathias-raymaekers-p85/clubs
What is your role within the volleyball community?
“We do a few things in volleyball. We help out a limited number of talented players to make, hopefully, better choices selecting their club teams, very focused on the top teams and long term career planning. This all happened rather organically. Players we knew, or had played with, needed help and didn't find an agency they trusted. We purposely are not building out a big agency, this isn't a scalable business in our opinion...but we are very passionate about offering the best service out there (we've been on the other side).
BUT...the next thing is our PASSION PROJECT. Over 2 years ago we started VolleyBrains.
Out of our own interest for the game and for the agency we run, we talk year round with the best coaches in the world ('Best' is a dangerous word, but they should be capable when they coach a pro team, right?). We hear a lot of great stuff and insights that doesn't get spread or shared with the general 'coaching' public, and that’s a pity. We also hear some totally misguided opinions, but that's part of the game, I guess. So, we started to interview coaches and put these Q&A's on a website (the questions are slightly deeper ones, not common ones). You can go click here for a few examples - https://volleybrains.com/expertquestions/.
From one thing came another, and before we knew it we were doing video calls with coaches around the globe, editing these calls, subtitling all of it and making long form 7000 to 10000+ word articles. Every article became a chore, in a positive sense though, because we want all this info out there, and if we do something, it needs to offer a lot of value.
As of today, we feature 350+ coaching video clips, and we add 20 new long form articles a year and add to the video library as we continue. It’s probably best to go over our 'landing page'...there you can find all the info about VolleyBrains - https://start.volleybrains.com/.
As of late 2022, it's a mix of long form Masterclasses (the edited long video talks with the coaches) and Training overviews. Another important factor is that we don't limit ourselves to just Euro coaches, our sport is one of the few global sports, so the best college and pro coaches were and will get featured on VolleyBrains.
We are very passionate about this process of continuous self development, for volleyball coaches that's were VolleyBrains comes in. There is a lot of content online, snippets, quick fixes...we want to be the source where you can sit down and listen to a 1 on 1 with a top coach, hear them talk about their failures, lessons, how they handle their teams, what they learned about themselves and what they do in the practice gym.
We aren't pro coaches, we don't aspire to be, we have our own very strong opinions about anything volleyball, but volleybrains is not 'about us'“.
How long have you been doing this role?
“289SPORTS (the agency) since 2018 & VolleyBrains (the platform) since the start of 2021”.
What is your favourite thing about your job?
“For us EVERYTHING any coach does is a part of forming the future of volleyball. We all have a part in this...for us, we are just getting started. Sometimes a little piece of content can impact the coaching career of a coach...the VolleyBrains members really develop a broad foundation, a great toolkit to be able to work on all issues they can face”.
Any fun facts about yourself?
“Our son has type1 diabetes and he is our biggest driver. That's not a fun fact...but it's a fact!”
Thank-you so much for your time, Matias!
The VolleyBrains socials:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/volleybrains_com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/Volleybrains/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/volleybrains
They have also launched a weekly newsletter, as an add-on to the VolleyBrains content, take a look!