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Author’s note: This isn’t a faith post, and the void of Scripture is intentional. For now, I’m just sharing something I’ve observed in myself that I think others may experience too. A follow-up will eventually dig into the faith side and some practical “AI fatigue treatments.” The Machine Can Keep Going. We Can’t. My AI assistant (Greg the Shark) is doing exactly what I asked it to do. It helps me research, organize my student session notes, work through projects, build bette

“No job is so simple it can’t be done wrong.” –Unknown That quote stings a little, doesn’t it? Not because it’s harsh, but because it’s true. Most of the time, the things that go sideways in our lives don’t start with one massive, dramatic mistake. They start with small things done carelessly. Little corners cut. Little details ignored. Little moments where we tell ourselves, “It’s not that big of a deal.” And that’s exactly why Colossians 3:23 is such a perfect companion ver

There's a difference between an athlete having a hard day and an athlete making every hard day everybody else's responsibility. Sports put people under pressure, and pressure exposes insecurity, fear, frustration, and self-doubt. Athletes are human, and coaches should never expect them to become emotionless machines. There should be room for disappointment, anxiety, tears, frustration, and asking for help. But there also comes a point when constant reassurance, repeated emoti

We live in a culture that celebrates speed. We want faster results, faster promotions, faster growth, faster relationships, faster recovery, and faster answers, and we've gotten so accustomed to immediate access that waiting can feel like something has gone wrong. That mentality can creep into our faith just as easily as everything else, leaving us frustrated when God doesn't move according to the timeline we've created. There's nothing wrong with working hard, pursuing excel

When discussing discipline and consistency, the parallels between personal struggles and biblical narratives are striking. Just as I, like many of you, push myself to go to the gym every morning despite the temptation of comfort. The discipline required to maintain a routine echoes the importance of vigilance in our spiritual lives to prevent moral lapses. In the story of King David's complacency (2 Samuel 11), we see a pivotal moment when his decision to stay back from battl

College athletes live in environments where their bodies are constantly being evaluated. They're measured for strength, speed, power, conditioning, body composition, recovery, and performance, while also being surrounded by mirrors, uniforms, social media, comparison, and expectations about what somebody in their sport or position is “supposed” to look like. That doesn't mean athletics causes body dysmorphic disorder, and we shouldn't use “body dysmorphia” as a catchall term

Recovering from anterograde amnesia or a traumatic brain injury can challenge almost everything a person is used to relying on. Memory, concentration, emotional regulation, judgment, communication, physical ability, and independence can all be affected depending on the location and severity of the injury, and no two recoveries look exactly alike. Anterograde amnesia specifically refers to difficulty forming or retaining new memories after the event that caused the memory impa

One of the greatest privileges of coaching is getting a front row seat to who athletes are becoming. I get to see the talent everybody notices, but I also get to see the insecurity, frustration, failure, growth, and work happening underneath it. Psalm 139 has always been powerful to me in that context because it reminds us that our value begins long before anybody measures our height, vertical, statistics, playing time, scholarship offers, or wins. Psalm 139:13 through 14 (ES

I've witnessed my fair share of teams lose matches they probably should've won. Sometimes they underestimate an opponent, sometimes execution falls apart, sometimes preparation wasn't good enough, and sometimes a team walks into a match believing talent alone is going to take care of business. Joshua 7 records Israel suffering a shocking defeat against Ai after the much larger victory at Jericho, but if we're going to use that story in athletics, we have to be careful because

There are certain things we understand more clearly because we've experienced their opposite. We appreciate discipline differently after we've seen what happens without it, perseverance means more when we've been tempted to quit, and courage becomes real when fear gives us every reason to back down. I think that's what people are often trying to describe when they use the phrase “spiritual polarity,” but we need to be careful with that terminology because spiritual polarity i

The more time I've spent coaching, the more I've realized that some of the biggest responsibilities we carry have very little to do with what happens on the scoreboard. Matthew 12 and Ezekiel 34 both deal with care and responsibility in very different contexts, and when I put those passages alongside the military principle of refusing to leave someone behind, I see a challenge that hits coaches pretty hard. If we're going to call ourselves leaders, we don't get to care only a

Anybody who's spent enough time around athletes has probably heard some version of “hydrate or die drate.” It's funny until you've watched somebody try to practice in the heat after barely drinking anything all day. Athletes know hydration isn't something you think about only after your body starts shutting down. If you wait until you're completely depleted to decide water might be important, you've already made the job a whole lot harder. I think there's a pretty strong spir

Ever heard the phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson were both onto something, although I’m guessing Nietzsche didn’t expect his philosophy to eventually become a pop song. In athletics, weakness isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes the areas where you struggle are exactly where the most growth needs to happen. The key is being honest enough to identify those weaknesses and disciplined enough to work on them instead of hiding them, ma

Today's post looks at the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 21:28-32, and the message underneath it: sincerity matters more than saying the right words or making promises you don't keep. It's a parable about actions outweighing words, and about what's actually in someone's heart mattering more than what comes out of their mouth. That lesson lands hard on a college volleyball team, where a player's actions and her actual commitment to the goal are what determine whether the team

Every coach has felt it. A team that's clicking, reading each other without a word, feeding off each other in a way that's hard to explain to someone who's never been on a court or a field. Players and coaches call it having "energy" together, being "in sync." I don't think what's actually happening there is some kind of energy transfer between people. I think it's something more specific than that, and Scripture actually gives us better language for it than "energy" does. St

I've watched enough injured athletes go through recovery to know the tape and the swelling are rarely the hardest part. The physical pain is real, but it's usually just the opening act. What follows is harder to see from the sideline: depression, anxiety, a fear of failure that wasn't there before, a loss of identity that can blindside even your toughest player. Guilt creeps in. So does loneliness, especially once the team keeps practicing without her. Confidence can drop fas