“You good, coach?”
Ask anybody who’s been around me long enough and they’ll tell you my answer before I ever open my mouth. Fantastic. Wonderful. Those are the only two settings I’ve got. I don’t own a third one.
What “Fantastic” Is Covering This Fall
This fall, “fantastic” is covering a lot of ground. Five o’clock lift before the sun’s up. A full day of teaching, Monday through Friday, no gaps in the schedule to hide in — and now four-on-one work with my high school guys built into those days, plus the whole team meeting together once or twice a week at lunch. Straight from the classroom into girls’ flag football practice three afternoons a week. Wednesday I turn around and put in four hours of travel baseball. Saturday’s two more hours. Sunday’s four more on top of that. Squatober starts in a few days, which means the one part of my week that’s supposed to be recovery is about to ask for more, not less.
I’m not listing all that to complain about it. People are depending on me — my flag football girls, my travel guys, my classroom, the guys in my lifting group heading into Squatober with me — and when people are depending on you, complaining isn’t really on the table. What’s on the table instead is this: my sleep, my recovery, my diet, my actual training have to match what I’m asking my body to do, or none of the rest of it holds up. Some mornings I’m tired before the alarm even goes off, and I still have to find a way to make the lift work, because that’s the job. The same is true for the classroom, the practice field, and my own house. You don’t get to opt out because you’re running low. You find the version of the workout, the lesson plan, the practice script that still gets done.
Here’s what I noticed doing that for weeks in a row, though. I got so good at finding a way to make the tired version work that I stopped telling anybody it was the tired version at all. Somebody asks how I’m doing mid-lift, mid-practice, mid-anything, on a day when the honest answer is somewhere south of great — fantastic. Wonderful. Every single time. Not because it’s always true. Because I’ve spent my whole coaching life being the one who supplies the energy, not the one who asks for it, and “fantastic” is the fastest way back to work.
Fantastic Isn’t a Color
Ken Ravizza built a framework I’ve leaned on for years for reading pressure in real time: a mental traffic light. Green means confident, focused, in control. Yellow means distracted, frustrated, doubt creeping in — the signal most people miss entirely. Red means the anger or the fear has already taken over, and your performance, or your leadership, is compromised.
His insight isn’t that the goal is staying green forever. Nobody stays green forever, and chasing that is its own trap. The insight is that the whole skill lives in catching yellow before it becomes red. Recognize it. Release it. Refocus. The Three R’s aren’t complicated. They’re just easy to skip when you’re moving from a 5am lift to a classroom to a practice field to a Sunday tournament, and you’ve built an entire identity around never once being the guy who says he’s running low.
Here’s what I missed for longer than I want to admit: “fantastic” and “wonderful” aren’t on that light at all. They’re not green, yellow, or red. They’re the words I reach for instead of picking one, because picking one means admitting something, and admitting something means somebody might ask a follow-up question I’ve trained myself not to need.
That’s the real function of those two words in my mouth. They’re not a status update. They’re a door closing, dressed up as enthusiasm so nobody thinks to knock twice.
The Tax Collects Either Way
I’ve written a lot about the Red Dirt Tax — the hidden cost of tying your identity to the scoreboard, and how it collects from the people who love you most. Most of those stories are about the loud version: the blow-up, the ride home nobody wants to be on, the apology that comes too late. But the tax doesn’t need volume to collect. A coach who’s running on fumes and calling it “fantastic” is still paying it. He’s just paying it in a slower leak instead of a blowout — a shorter fuse he doesn’t notice, a conversation at home he’s technically present for but not actually in.
A personality report I had run on myself a while back named something I didn’t expect to see written down: my growth edge isn’t giving more. I’m already wired to do that — I’ll find a way to make the workout work, the lesson work, the practice work, every single time, because that’s what I do. My growth edge is learning to receive. The counselor’s note that stuck with me: assign yourself to receive, not just to give. Ask who takes care of the guy who’s always fantastic, and the honest answer, most weeks, is nobody — not because nobody’s willing, but because he never once told anybody the job was open.
You cannot receive help for a color you never named. “Fantastic” doesn’t just close the door on the follow-up question. It closes the door on the help that question might have led to.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18, ESV
That’s not a verse for when everything’s already fallen apart. It’s a verse for the guy still lifting at 5am, still coaching two sports, still saying he’s wonderful — who could use knowing that naming the truth isn’t a crack in his leadership. It’s the doorway to the help he’s been outrunning for weeks.
This Week
Stop answering “fantastic” or “wonderful” on autopilot. Tonight — after the lift, after practice, after whichever four-hour block you just put in — before you give your spouse or your assistant or yourself the automatic answer, actually check: green, yellow, or red. Pick a color. Name one specific reason you picked it. That’s the whole drill. It takes fifteen seconds, and it’s the difference between broadcasting energy and actually knowing what’s left in the tank.
If you land on yellow or red, don’t stop at naming it privately. Tell one person. Not the whole staff, not a speech to the team — one person who’s earned the right to hear it straight. You don’t have to solve it in that conversation. You just have to stop being the only one who knows the real color.
Run that check every night this week, through every lift, every practice, every four-hour Sunday block. You’ll be surprised how much less often “fantastic” shows up as a reflex once you’ve got a more honest word available — and how much stronger it sounds the times you actually mean it.
Greater Together
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