Getting athletes to bounce back after a turnover, weather delay or penalty isn’t the easiest task for any coach. Including sudden changes in your practices can aid in preparing your athletes for those situations on gameday. 

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Adding sudden changes in practice is not a new concept. The Coach and Coordinator podcast host Keith Grabowski remembers his father, a high school defensive coordinator, using the idea in practice from his early childhood. “They had this drill and they would do it a lot early on and they would throw it in throughout the year,” says Grabowski. “What they were trying to do was to get it into their mentality that there [were] going to be swings in the game. Some things that feel like very emotional swings that you have to deal with, and you have to have the right approach from the mental standpoint.”

Recognizing that teams operate a little differently now, Grabowski continues with how he saw his dad’s squad go through the practice of sudden changes. “Think of a team lining up and running ten 40s at the end of practice,” starts the former high school coach. “That would signal the end of [practice], they would call the team up and those guys would kind of take a deep breath, relax, catch their breath, they’re taking their helmets off. Then, all of the sudden, that whistle would blow and it was sudden change, get back on the line. [The coaching staff] would usually give a situation, ‘The offense fumbled the ball! We have got to get out and have a stop.’ … It was kind of that mentality. Something happened, now we need to respond. What’s our response going to be?”

Andy Ryland, USA Football’s senior manager in education and training, admits that he had never heard of the idea prior to speaking with Grabowski. The former Penn State linebacker immediately sees the mental benefits of implementing this into practice. “[It’s] kind of this complete relaxation takes over your mind,” says Ryland. “The players unleash that deep breath, they kind of let practice go, they come in, they hear your final words. And what you’re doing is unattaching them from that psychological level of focus. Then, we’re asking them to get back in … But it goes back to gameday. It’s that super quick psychological switch.”

Specific situations can be addressed in sudden changes, especially with two platoon teams. “It might be great to do as a little competition,” adds Ryland, the former U.S. Rugby Team member. “All the sudden, you’re going to say, ‘Hey, first and goal on the ten,’ after this big mental break, you see which unit maybe adapts better. The key is it has to be unplanned. It can’t be on the practice schedule because that’s the only way to mimic the psychological aspect that they’re going to go through.”

Ryland adds that this can be applied to special teams as well, not just the offense or the defense. “What if after you called off practice all the sudden you yelled, ‘Hurry up field goal! Hurry up field goal!’ and the [special teams] had to sprint out there and hit a field goal, and you start to put the pressure on,” says Ryland. “Now we’re scrambling to get this fire field goal off, and the guys have to react.”