There’s a reason they play football in the latter part of the year. Putting players under full helmets and pads in the spring and summer incredibly taxing on the body and in the desert heat of Arizona, you can multiply those dangers exponentially.

Kenny Dillingham, an Arizona native, knows it all too well. Thus, he granted Sun Devil football somewhat of a reprieve in a lighter Thursday practice session. Leaving the pads in the locker room and engaging primarily in individual drills throughout the session, even a football diligent like Dillingham knows not to push his players this far away from the season and this close to an intense finale of spring ball.

“Tuesday was a good, hard day,” Dillingham said. “I wanted to put them in helmets, get them back rested, not be stupid, and have a really, really good hard day Saturday. It won’t just be a scrimmage. It’ll be a half-practice, half-scrimmage setup so we can get a little more work to try and get our player loads back up a little bit (after Thursday).”

In a “you haven’t seen nothing yet” kind of way, the players were thankful to slow down a bit.

“It’s a good opportunity for us to get our bodies back and prepare for the scrimmage coming Saturday,” Keyshaun Elliott said.

While scaling things back on the physical side, the players know the mental edge can’t take any steps back regardless of intensity. “Days like this, attention to detail has got to be perfect,” Elliott continued. “There’s definitely room for improvement and we got to learn how to do that. You’re changing how you practice; it’s not full speed, but the attention to detail has still got to be high.”

It’s easier to relax in your mind when you’re relaxing your body. But when you take that step back, someone could be right behind you to take your spot.

“You can’t come out here and just relax, though,” Caleb McCullough said. “The best groups are getting better by pushing each other. There’s another gym just as good and ready to work. It keeps the competition going.”

Even with the nature of competition continuing on lowkey sessions, the physical toll of football combined with Arizona’s weather keeps guys as fresh as possible while still getting the necessary reps in. In the age of technology, Dillingham says the team uses devices on its players that track their total output, and the staff does its best to create practice plans to hit its target exertions. With these metrics increasing over the course of spring ball and the weather becoming a factor, Thursday was taken as a slow-down day ahead of a final ramp-up.

“We monitor every movement in our player loads,” Dillingham said. “Our player loads have been 11 to 13 percent higher per practice. The last player load was a little higher than what we wanted. We wanted to de-load them a little bit and take some helmets off before we have a great, long practice on Saturday.”

But what goes into that “load,” coach?

“Load is a combination of yardage moved, distance moved, accelerations, and top speeds. It all gets put together to see how hard you’re practicing. That’s why we have those metrics. We can literally see this practice in the same structure, which was 14 percent higher than last year. All the spring practice combined was 11 percent higher. We have all of that monitored.”

Another question one may have is where the barometer is set on these metrics. Obviously, such technology doesn’t have an extensive rack record. So how does one know if they’re practicing too much or not enough? While Dillingham mentioned target exertion, he’s gone by the philosophy of gradually increasing the intensity, strengthening the fortitude of his players mentally and physically. Scalebacks like Thursday are needed once in a while, but the path to success goes rung-by-rung for Dillingham.

“These practices should be in the low 600 player loads,” he said. “We’re in the 570, 580 mode. It’s still a huge step for us, but it’s still not where we have to get to. It’s not going to just (*snaps fingers). Going and hitting these elite player loads that some of these elite programs do with this amount of time on the field and similar practice structures is not how it’s going to happen. It takes time to build that up, and we are.”

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