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When the 50th season of Survivor premieres on Wednesday, February 25, Benjamin “Coach” Wade will be one of the many familiar faces washing up on the beach. Known simply as Coach to the entire Survivor community, the 54-year-old now has four seasons of the award-winning show under his belt. While he, obviously, couldn’t reveal how long he lasted this time around, or the details of what happened over the summer as season 50 was shot, he was able to divulge things like his pregame schematics, his methods for warding off camp stink, and the mental approach he brought to this edition of the beloved competition show.
One of the program’s true eccentrics, Coach has ruffled more feathers than the oceanic winds that constantly whip through Mana Island. With his signature pony tail, a penchant for giving his tribe mates nicknames, and tattoos depicting symbols from foreign languages and a red dragon, Coach is certainly one of more unique characters CBS has ever cast. His varied background as a collegiate soccer coach, a symphony conductor, and a trumpet player in the New York Metropolitan Opera—bleeds into his confident on-air persona as well. Through it all, Coach has remained in impressive physical shape, something he attributes partially to his own self-conceit.
Benjamin “Coach” Wade: First of all, at 54, it’s a heck of a lot different than going out there at 38. I have a saying that I've put out there to every soccer player I’ve coached and every person that I’ve mentored: you’ve got to take off the mask and recognize your weaknesses. Once you really discover your weaknesses, whether it’s physically or emotionally or character-wise, you can work on those weaknesses until they become your strength. Then you can take your existing strengths and go out there and slay dragons.
My preparation and training for my first season was, really, so bad. I mean, I’m a college soccer coach. I should know better. But I figured I’m strong in the gym, which means nothing. I want my body to look good. So, I was doing the most absurd workouts. I was on the elliptical machine for an hour at night with a trash bag. I was lifting heavy weights and I went out there and I got my ass handed to me. I was really, really bad.
That was kind of my weakness in challenges, and I wanted to rectify that. Over the course of four times out there, I started honing how I was going to prepare. This last time, I got turned onto these 100-hour fasts about a year ago. I’ve fasted my whole life. I think it’s important that our mind tells the body what to do instead of our body telling the mind what to do, because our minds are pretty freaking sharp. But knowing the high that comes on Survivor, knowing the glow that comes on Survivor that everybody talks about—my wife was absolutely convinced that they give the girls makeup because of how everybody looks before we start cannibalizing our bodies and using the muscle and everything else for energy.
Anyway, so I got turned onto these 100-hour fasts and I thought to myself, you know what? This is going to be something that I'm going to incorporate into [season] 50. That’s the biggest change that I made. Yes, I had a trainer—but with my schedule and being a father of three kids and being the guy that cooks all the dinners and prepares all the lunches and takes them to school like I do now—I don't have time to just fully commit. These 100-hour fasts were absolutely incredible. No matter what I prepared for in the past, I would go out there and just hit a wall because it’s so draining. You just don’t have any food.
This time I was flying, and the other times I feel like the pain, the hunger has really come to me. I struggled by thinking about food at home, whereas this time my mind was like, “This is temporary. It's not going to last forever.” There’s these beautiful things that happen from autophagy, to cell regeneration, to just complete immune reset at about 100 hours. I was doing these huge 100-hour fasts once a month to prepare for Survivor. That was a big part of it, and also just being in the gym and doing interval training and doing sprints. No 54-year-old man wants to be sprinting. My whole life, I’ve hated running, but you’ve got to get out there and you got to find a partner—iron sharpens iron—who’s willing to do it with you. That was my nine-year-old son. He loves to run. Three months before I left, I was on the fence if I was going to actually say yes. Before I left, he was whipping me in races. Then by the time I left, he was like, “Man, dad, you’ve really gotten faster.”
I think it also depends on your vanity, right? We got one shot at this life, so we might as well take care of our bodies. If you got 10 extra pounds or 20 extra pounds or 30 extra pounds, that’s cool. But some of these old timers show up and they got like 50 extra pounds. I’m just like, man, that's crazy. That was a great motivator for me to see other returners come back on Survivor.
I didn’t want to show up like I’ve just completely let go. I’m in my 14th year of marriage and it’s still like the honeymoon, and part of that is that we haven’t given up. I haven’t given up on my style. I haven’t given up on my diet. I haven’t given up on my exercise. I haven’t given up on my romance. I’m going to give her a massage and have a little rose waiting for her. You got to work at life to be successful, whatever it is. Everything that I do, I try to be successful at, but it means that you got to work for it.
I’m different than some people because they get sick of coconuts. I love coconuts.
You get off a Survivor, your body’s trying to adjust. I wasn’t motivated to be in the gym. So I went to the store, bought a bunch of cartons of coconut milk and I’m like, “I’m going to do this for a week so that I get all slimmed up for the premiere.” It's really silly, right? But I actually failed at it. I started it for one day and I’m just like, screw it. I started eating again. But anyway, I love coconuts out there. It was really weird because this time I did not sit there and have these weird cravings.
I have tried all the diets. I did carnivore last year. I felt horrible. Everybody’s body is different. My mom is 81, she doesn’t have any fat on her. She’s super stylish. She's my piano accompanist for my choir and she also plays piano in my symphony. We work together every day and she’s always dressed well, and her mom was dressed well. My dad would wear suits all day. So, I think it’s just something that I grew up around—taking care of yourself. But my mom figured it out. I said, “You eat whatever you want to eat.” My mom said a long time ago, “I started paying attention to what makes my body feel the best.” She eats potatoes, like white potatoes, all the time. She does cook with healthy oils, either olive or avocado, but I think just pay attention to your body to know what works because we’re all created differently. I feel the best when I fast.
I do love to snack, but snacking is actually teaching your body to store fat. So, I just really love to fast. My favorite thing is mushroom coffee in the morning, and that has made all the difference. I tried it and I didn’t like it, and then I tried it again. I love the morning time. Looking at that [regular] coffee, I wasn’t inspired by it anymore. I tried all different types. I tried the pour over, I tried the carafe, I tried the Italian espresso, tiny pot, salt the grounds, put cinnamon in, it just wasn’t doing it for me. That’s kind of why I made the change. This time I just really paid attention to how my body felt three hours after I’d drink it. And I really like mushroom coffee. You think you want a ton because I love my coffee really strong, but with the mushroom coffee, I do exactly one tablespoon and that’s it. Then it doesn’t get too sweet.
I start the day with mushroom coffee and I’ll usually give myself a reward to do a real cup of coffee around noon. I wouldn’t eliminate coffee altogether. For me, coffee is very therapeutic in terms of my digestion. One thing I noticed when I went strictly mushroom coffee is—this is too much information—but I was not going to the bathroom in the morning. Then the next night I’d be like, “I got to go to the bathroom,” and I was just having very liquid stools. The balance of mushroom coffee in the morning—so that there’s not a crash—then coffee at noon seems like that’s the good balance for my body.
And I cook all the meals at home. My father was a cook. My grandfather owned a restaurant, so the men in my family have always done the cooking, and I cook all the meals from scratch. I cook a lot of chicken. I used to cook a lot of fish. My wife was like, “It makes the house stink.” I got to wait for summer to cook it out on the grill. I just try to eat what my body wants to eat. I need to eat more vegetables. I try to stay away from the breads and the pastas. But I like cooking with a lot of herbs and spices. I like cooking Indian food. I’d like to eat Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups all day, but that’s going to make me feel like crap. You just kind of pay attention to what your body needs, it will tell you.
For sure. The first Survivor, the doctors were like, “Please eat on Exile [Island]. Please don’t have no food or water. They were really getting on to me. I was like, “No, this is where I need to be.” They’re always taking your vital signs. This is behind the scenes, but back then they would do your blood pressure all the time, and now they don’t. The doctor now is like, “Get the fuck out of here, man. You’re fine. He’s an old Australian army doctor, and he couldn’t give two shits.
But back then they used to take your blood pressure and they’d listen to your heart, and that was routine. The doctor said, “Coach, you’re the only contestant that we’ve seen that the farther we go on this show, the better your vital signs.” And so I've always felt that way. Me having nothing, my body really thrives.
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. You’re just out there. It is pretty miserable. I’ve been around the world, man. I have been in the bush, and I’ve been in some nasty environments. But sleeping on the dirt—I was 53, I’m 54 now—sleeping on the dirt at 53 sucks. I’m just like, “I’m too old for this. I can't believe I’m doing this again.” Those thoughts go through your mind. There’s never ever a thought that you’re going to quit, but it is certainly far more miserable on your bones. I can see why people move to Florida when they get older.
I had read in a book one time, a fiction book, about this ancient Tibetan thing that could only be passed down by word of mouth called Chongg Ran. When they asked me about it, I said, “Well, you can’t figure this out because you can’t Google it.” Jeff [Probst] got a kick out of that. I came back and everybody was going nuts on the internet. I think somebody even contacted the author and said, “Is this even true?” The guy just chuckled and said, “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you can’t find it anywhere.”
Of course, I love to meditate and to breathe. In, out, that kind of stuff. I love Tai Chi. I woke up one morning in Tocantins and I just wanted to slap somebody. I was playing with a bunch of idiots that didn’t know how to build a shelter, but they thought they did. They didn’t know how to build a fire pit, didn’t know any of this kind of stuff for basic survival. It was driving me freaking nuts, plus all the cattiness. I grew up in Tennessee. When we snap, Southern men, somebody’s going to say something to me and I’m going to snap, and I’m going to slap them. If I do that, I’m out of the show. So I’m like, “You got to get centered.” I go down to the water and I start doing these movements. I just start breathing in and out and then I start thinking, okay, so Bruce Lee did this. I started incorporating all these things. The Chongg Ran talks about these Tibetan monks that would visualize a braided rope in front of them and they would untie it in their minds for hours a day. At the end of it all, after 10 years of doing this, they could actually untie the rope. That’s how the legend goes.
You breathe in, you breathe out, you kind of feel that center. You feel that connection with the universe. You feel your feet grounded, you’re breathing in, you’re breathing out. Then you start moving. It’s some qigong and it’s some Tai Chi, which are very similar. When I would get into a pose, I would flex. I flex my forearm—this is what Bruce Lee did—then I flex my bicep, then my tricep, then here and then there. By the time you get to the other side, you’ve relaxed that first part. Bruce Lee never worked out with weights, but this is how he kept this phenomenal muscle tone. By the time you get to the other side, you’ve got to reconnect the first muscles that you did. Then you go through your abs. You’re holding this pose for about a minute. That’s when you would see me shake, because I’m really focused on my full body being flexed. Then you go down through your legs and into the ground. Then you take a big breath and then you let it out and you come back to warrior pose and then you do that a few times.
Another thing, I studied with Shaolin monks. The Shaolin monks talk about this tiger breathing where they’re pushing the air around them and they’re breathing in violently. Then they’re breathing out when they’re actually shaking, pushing. I do tiger breathing with my choir. It’s really cool, actually, because you’re basically partially hyperventilating. Then you’re just like, man, I’m feeling something here. Any type of meditation is good. Any type of just existing in the moment and doing a body scan is frigging awesome. Even the naysayers that have done it are just like, “Oh wow, this is pretty cool.”
Yeah, I think so. You never stagnate. From the blood in our veins to the stream that runs in the front of my property, when you stagnate, you will wither and die. I’ve always been pushing for this evolution of self. I think it’s very important. There’s four things that make us human beings. There’s emotional, there’s physical, there’s spiritual, and there’s mental. If you’re not honing all four of those, then you’re going to start to lose progress.
When I look at this next season, it really reflects who I am in life. The first time you saw me, I was an NCAA soccer coach. You can never be wrong in front of your players. We are running this system. Here is why we’re running it. I studied this in Cameroon. I executed it. The second time, I was like, I don’t have a soccer career. I’m in this position in life where I’m shooting some pilots, but I don’t really know what I’m doing.
I just want people to say, “Man, this guy’s just a regular guy.” Not a regular guy. I’ll never be a regular guy. But, I do have feelings. I am sensitive. At that time, I was like, let’s put that out there. Then the third time I was actually back to coaching, but it was at a junior college. I was pastoring a church up at Eagle Lake. You really saw that—I hate to say religious side, because I’m not religious, I’m spiritual—but that came out. I’m playing from the bottom in terms of everyday [life]. I wake up, I take my kids to school, I make them breakfast, I get their lunches packed. I’m on the bottom in my family. If you’re a family man and you put yourself on top, you’re doing something wrong. I love to be an inspiration to people. I think that’s always been the case, but my foundation is rooted in this incredible journey and adventure of raising these three beautiful children that have changed my life.
And so you’re going to see this joy that you’ve never seen before. I’ve always been happy. I wake up every morning, I'm happy to be alive, my glass is half full. But man, I think you’re going to see that, being comfortable playing with anybody, being comfortable in my own skin, being joyful to just experience this thing one more time. When I was meeting with all the producers before the game, all of them [said], “How you doing? How are you going to play?” They want to get a feeling of what’s up. I breathed in and I just smiled and I said, “I am branding this moment on my mind because it’s never coming back and I want to soak up every second.” They smiled. They were all nodding their heads like, “Yes, he gets it. That’s what we’re here for. Let’s really just revel in season 50.” So, I think you’re going to see that. This time, it’s just like one giant victory lap for the dragon slayer. I don’t need anything to add to my legacy. That knowledge that you’ve accomplished—and this is just like the icing on top—is very liberating.
Hands down, Tyson [Apostol]. We went through casting together and I hated him. But Tyson is an awesome competitor.
You just know it’s temporary. You know that we’re all in the same boat. Make sure that you clean your backside every time you use the restroom, and make sure that you’re breaking the palm fronds down into skinny little pieces to floss your teeth and you’re picking at your teeth every day. But I think the key to staying clean on Survivor is sand. Sand in the fingernails, sand in the butt crack, sand every place that you can go. I mean, the salt water is a natural cleanser. If you use that right with the sand, it’s a recipe for the glow.
Oh my gosh. Do you want to know the truth? I came back from [season] 38 and I had to call a plumber at least every two weeks. I was so malnourished that my hair was falling out in chunks and it would clog the drain. I lost 60 pounds that first time. I still haven’t gotten that muscle back. I mean, I was emaciated. And so I had to call the plumber to unclog my shower. So, I got on Rogaine then.
I hate Rogaine. I don’t really want to be on it, but I got on Rogaine. I used a special shampoo. It’s still falling out. I joke with people, I’m like, “You know what, man? I got that ponytail for a reason.” You’re supposed to go bald or gray, but not both. But at the moment, both of them are happening to me. I used to have such a lovely head of hair. Even before Survivor, in my early 30s, it was like a mane. But you know what? I got to tell you, I’m not putting in a marketing plug, but I got one of those infrared caps. I’ve been using that, man, and I 100% see the difference.
So, I don’t have a full head of hair, but at least it’s hanging on with modern medicine. So one day when I shave it off, man, nobody will recognize me. That’s when I just go ride off into the sunset, because I don’t give two shits anymore about my hair. But that day has not come yet. I’m still too vain for that.
In Real-Life Diet, athletes, celebrities, and other high performers talk about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.