He shares six fundamentals he teaches to help athletes and parents make the journey productive and enjoyable:

1. Love Yourself (self-acceptance and resilience not tied to performance)

2. Love Your Club (trust the process and contribute even in competitive, scarce roles)

3. Love Your Journey (embrace ups, downs, injuries, and changing roles)

4. Love the Game (prioritize integrity and respect over winning)

5. Love the Work (understand the effort required for desired results and choose your level)

6. Love the Challenge (embrace close matches, wins, and losses as growth).

Hi, my name is Coach Wade, and I coach beach volleyball players in high school and middle school to enjoy the sport, to excel at it and to love the process. As somebody who's been playing for just under 40 years and coaching youth athletes for decades, being able to enjoy the sport is something that aligns so strongly with long-term success, with being willing to do the work, to get the results, and with just staying in the game years later.

I'm in my mid fifties. I still play beach volleyball at least once a week with other friends. A lot of us are in the same stage. We just love the sport and when I coach athletes, our main focus is to make sure that they're enjoying the sport so much that they'll be playing it in five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

Many of the sports I've played when I grew up like football are a lot of fun, but you really can't keep playing them for a long period of time without just totally thrashing your body. Beach volleyball is one of those sports that allows you to enjoy it, to keep growing, to stay in shape, and to stay fit.

And when youth athletes are focused on excelling and they have goals, or maybe their parents have goals or they want to excel. They're not sure what they want. There are some fundamental principles that we go by or we aim for at least, that help make the journey as productive as possible and as enjoyable as possible.

The first one is love yourself. This is at the core of everything we do in our club and the focus is to make sure that the athlete is enjoying and accepting themself. That they're understanding that they are an imperfect person. They're working hard. They're looking to grow. They're trying. They're going to make mistakes.

That's okay. And in doing that, that provides a level of resilience. It's not just, I'm okay, you're okay, and we're a bunch of little snowflakes. It's creating a situation where the person says, yep, I can take that hit. Yep, I can take that failure. Yep, I missed that shot. That's okay. You know why? I have the self-love.

I'm not playing volleyball or any sport to earn love. I'm playing it for enjoyment. I already have the self-love. I don't need someone else to validate me. I don't need to win a point to earn my self-esteem. I'm having that as a core piece that is there first, and I'm building upon that rather than looking at

the sport to provide that. As somebody who has had a stage in my life where I was playing sport to get approval and to get people to like me... yes, it can be effective and yes, it can get you in social circles, but the amount of stress I would put on myself to win and how down I would get if I missed a point, yelling, screaming, cursing, throwing my hat, all those different things that were creating the exact opposite result of what I wanted.

So our focus, and I'm going to suggest your focus as an athlete, as a parent, is to make sure that first you focus on that love yourself part, that has nothing to do with how well you play volleyball or not. That you just accept yourself for who you are as a human being that's doing their best. That's trying... that's a child of God,

if you happen to believe that. I happen to believe that. That is somebody that's simply doing what they can to be the best they can, and that's okay. The second thing is to love your club. This is something that a lot of people struggle with. In many sports, whether it's your club or your high school team.

Very often we're competing for positions. So some sports by their nature just have an element of scarcity to them. If I'm on a football team, there's usually only one quarterback, and that quarterback is going to be quarterback 90 something percent of the time. If I'm on a soccer team, there's usually only one goalie.

If I'm on a volleyball indoor team, usually there's only one setter, maybe two. There's maybe only one libero. So it can be very difficult to really, truly want the other people in your team or your club to do well... if you know they're in the way of your promotion or of you getting where you want to get. And that in and of itself is a difficult journey in life.

One of the things that we find that's at least a little easier with beach volleyball is it's a two-on-two sport and in club competitions, in college competitions and high school competitions, you might be not the highest ranked person, but there's usually a number of pairs, let's say five pairs that are playing.

And so you can still want everybody to do well. You can still love your club, and even if you are in a sport like indoor volleyball... that has an element of scarcity. There is the concept of contributing to your team, of being the practice person that helped the starter play awesome and win the championship.

And again, that's some of the tougher stuff to be able to do as an athlete and come to terms with. Sometimes that's part of the progression. Sometimes when we're younger in a club, we're that person that's helping others excel. And hopefully maybe later we get to be that person that gets the main spotlight.

But regardless, there's a sense of trusting the club, the team, the school, the process enough to say, I'm going to go all in. I'm going to trust the people that are guiding me. And there's a lot of trust put there. And sometimes that trust is well rewarded. Sometimes we might need to redirect even the people that are guiding us,

because we're all humans. But overall saying, I'm going all in. I'm not tiptoeing in and saying, well, when you go all in, I'll go in. Because as a coach, that's one of the toughest things to deal with. The player that's saying, well, when are you going to all go all in on me coach? And the coach is like, I'm already all in.

You might not be able to see it. You might not be wise enough, but I'm already all in. So when you come in all in, it's easy. And when you're all in for the club, even on the days when you have to serve and not be the person, that's the center, that's something that's very powerful. Love your journey. This goes right with that saying fall down seven times, get up eight times.

It's the idea that your journey is this hopefully it's trending upward. It's not always going to be perfect. There's going to be bumps. There's going to be bruises. There's going to be disappointments. There's going to be the first time somebody asks you to play with them in an awesome tournament, and you're like, yay.

And then there's going to be the first time that person says, oh, I'm playing with somebody else. Like, oh man. There's just this whole up and down rollercoaster, like in any sport. And yet if you can again, love yourself and your love your club, loving the journey is going to be easier because it's going to be part of just what you do to trust that.

Okay. There's going to be times where I'm the star. There's going to be times where I'm the bench player. There's going to be times where I'm the supporting person. There's going to be times where I'm healthy, times where I'm injured, times when I'm fatigued and I'm crashing out and I can't complete the match.

And there's going to be times where we're about to win the finals and my partner crashes out medically and they need a medical time out and they can't finish it. And I'm actually learn to accept that. So again, this is all part of the journey, especially in a sport that requires endurance... and physical fitness... and the ability to withstand the elements... and patience and the ability to coach each other up.

So being able to do that is so huge. Being able to love that journey and in loving the club, also, love your teammate well enough that you support each other and be okay with that. It's going to make it easier for you to be more successful to enjoy the journey and stay in it longer. Loving the game. This is one of the toughest things for many athletes to do at any age. And I'm going to give you a definition what I mean by loving the game.

Loving the game so much that you respect the integrity of the game, the purpose of the game, the system of the game. More than you do your winning. In other words, that you call the net on yourself... that you call hands on yourself... you call the foot fault on yourself... because there's such a level of respect for the game that you say, this is how I respect a game.

It's up here. And yes, I really want to win, but not at the expense of my integrity... not at the expense of hurting somebody else by cheating them out of something that they might have rightfully worked for... not at the expense of simply just really turning something that can be so joyful into a job. I've watched some of my friends over the years turn volleyball into a career, and that's an interesting thing. For some of them they've done successfully and they've enjoyed their journey at all different financial levels, and then some of them, when they made it into something that they had to pay their bills with,

they started getting more angry when they'd lose. I'd watched them not make calls that were obvious. I'd watched them cheat. I'd watched them really just lose their joy for the game. And so in loving the game, part of it is going to be for you to decide where does it fit? Do I really want to be a D1 player and do the work that comes with that?

I chose to watch some of my friends go play professionally, and I played semi-pro. I'd win against them maybe one out of four times, one out of five times. That was enough for me. I found it stressful to go all in on the training. I didn't want to, and it made the game not enjoyable for me. Others friends of mine, they've gone all in.

They've won at the highest levels, and they've loved that process. There's not a right or wrong answer, but there's understanding yourself well enough that, you know, yes, I'm going to enjoy this. And I can still, again, love the game so much that I hold the sacredness of it up there. Especially in a sport where the world is very small, pretty much everybody knows each other even from a worldwide perspective.

And if you're the person that doesn't call your touches, that cheats, that argues, that screams and yells at people, people just aren't going to play with you. So it's more than just a great way to live. It's also something that's going to help you stay in the journey longer and enjoy more and have more success. Loving the work is one of the toughest things to do in any sport, and it's what seems to separate the highest level pros from those who wish they were. It's that ability to say, yes, I love the work because I see how it's helping me go to another level. I had the pleasure and the privilege to interview Holly McPeak, one of the most decorated women's volleyball players, indoor and outdoors of all time for one of my podcasts.

And she just talked about how much she loved doing the practice and doing the work, because in her mind she saw how that connected to the results. So she loved the work. And if you don't love the work, that's okay. You can still love the game. I find myself sometimes loving the work, sometimes not loving the work.

And I just honored that. And again, because I was able to love myself, love my journey, and love the game, I was able to find my slot. It wasn't D1. We didn't have college or high school beach volleyball when I played. We did have open tournaments and I played in those and did well in those, but I didn't play pro.

And yet here I am in my fifties and enjoying the journey, coaching youth athletes, having fun with it, and being part of a process that is so much fun. So I've loved the level of work that I did. But when it got to be too much, I'd slow down. And I've watched athletes do that. Different athletes I've coached find that nice spot, and I've watched other athletes be really frustrated by the fact that, well, how come I'm not getting these results?

And you say, well, hold on. The people that are getting those results, they're working at this level to get this level result, and you're working at this level, but you're still expecting this level result. So a lot of it is about understanding what are the best at doing. What does it take to be at a certain level? And then decide, do I really want to be that or not?

You might not want to, because again, the work is going to be required to get to that level. The last fundamental is loving the challenge. Loving the wins and the losses. Loving the close games. Being happy for the person that beats you because they played really well... and enjoying that you had an awesome match with them even though you didn't lose (win). Look, if you always won, if you won 21 to three all the time, or 21 to five, it wouldn't be fun.

It would be like playing Mario Brothers at level one over and over and over. You'd say, I, I'm bored. I want a challenge. And so part of the challenge is accepting that sometime you're going to lose and actually embracing that and being grateful for that, that somebody helped push you to a different level.

Somebody helped challenge you and helped you become a better player because again, you love the game so much that you want to get better. You love the work that it requires to get better. You love the journey of getting better, and you love yourself enough that you're not measuring yourself off of your win or your loss.

You're looking at your commitment to the game. You're looking and seeing, yes, I'm doing the work. I respect and honor myself for that. I'm going to love myself whether I win or not. And regardless of what anybody else tells me. If one of my friends or family members still judges me, well, you lost and you're horrible.

That's their stuff. I know I'm there for the challenge and I'd rather play awesome volleyball and lose than play mediocre volleyball and win. I hope you find this helpful in this podcast, this show, this video, these social media clips. I'm going to do my best to share with you wisdom that I've learned from some of the best people in the industry of beach volleyball or the sport of beach volleyball,

the work that I do as a business coach, a life coach, pulling on my psychology background sometimes and looking to share with you things that will help you. And whether you're a parent or an athlete, or just somebody that enjoys the sport... to enjoy your process and your journey as much as possible. Please let me know

whatever I can do to serve you. Feel free to send questions. I look forward to helping you... Love yourself. Love your club. Love your journey. Love the game. Love the work. And Love the challenge. Thanks for listening.