We’re now in the thick of postseason play. The word playoffs in football has plenty of connotations to it – hard work, grit, toughness, etc. Addressing how one’s players will react to and play in the cold of the postseason isn’t the first thing that coaches generally think to prepare for.

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Knee-jerk reaction to chillier temperatures on game day is to simply layer up, not taking into consideration that during game play, body temperatures rise a significant amount due to increased blood flow and how that clothing could get in the way of effective play. So how do coaches and teams properly prepare for the colder months of playoff time?

Andy Ryland and host of the Coach and Coordinator podcast, Keith Grabowski, came together in a recent installment of the “Deliberate Practice” series to discuss preparing for the playoffs, with preparation for the cold being a major talking point.

Ryland points to the fact that this topic of conversation can be applied to nearly every member of the team on a Friday or Saturday night. “If you’re a guy that plays on the team and you’re a special teamer, with the average drive maybe you’re only on the field for one play 6 or 8 minutes of real-world time … you may need to do a little bit more to stay warm,” says the former Penn State linebacker. “If you’re a never-come-off-the-field guy on a small school team, you’re going to have to probably dress completely different.”

There are a multitude of tactics Ryland has observed for players who attempt to stay warm. “You start seeing guys in the locker room with the handwarmers,” starts Ryland. “All the sudden you think, ‘Have you ever worn that before?’ You’re stuffing those footwarmers into your shoe, have you ever ran around and tried to run a route with those before? What if you get some big, nasty blister by the end of the first quarter? … The hooded sweatshirt stuff became popular a couple years ago I think until the NFL banned it. So, what are you going to wear? Our rule was always you can’t wear anything on game day you haven’t worn to practice so that people were comfortable with the material. Whether it was because it was slick, because it was wicking, or it was a big old hooded sweatshirt that retained the moisture and didn’t breathe like some of these newer fabrics. I think it’s worth addressing and letting the kids wear some of that stuff so that they’re comfortable on game day.”

In order to determine what was best for himself in his playing days, Ryland maintained a temperature cutoff that would determine the type of extra gear he would wear. “For me it was going to be 60 degrees. Any time it was under 60 degrees I was going to wear the same thing, and if it was over 60 I was going to wear the same thing. I kept it in big buckets and made it easy for myself. It’s probably a great time early in the week to make sure you tell your players, ‘Hey, it's supposed to be this, it’s supposed to be that.’ Let’s get the base layers right, even if that means experimenting a couple days this week.”