Editor’s Note: I had a chance to catch up with UVa’s director of football development & performance Shawn Griswold on Thursday. Now in his third year in Charlottesville, the California native is tackling an even bigger challenge than the one he had when he arrived, and it’s certainly going to be the strangest offseason in more than two decades he’s been on the job.

In the first part of this Q&A, Griswold talked about the offseason work players completed prior to being forced off Grounds, the challenges of continuing the offseason program with guys spread out across the country, and the solutions he and his staff were able to come up with in an effort to keep everyone moving forward.

In this second half, we discuss where things started once guys got back, how difficult it is for the training staff to get the full team in for workouts given social distancing and other protocols, and just how challenging this year has been overall.

Yeah, I would say the energy is good but obviously if you have 35 guys in there and it's cranked up and it's heavy lifting, it's probably a little bit different. The thing that we did find out through this small-group training is, yeah it’s basically got to go at 6 a.m. We get here at 4:45 and we’re going toby6:15 or so. And that's just what it is, right? It's work. And you’ve got to pour into your kids and the kids do an unbelievable job of adapting. I think in a lot of ways, this has had some serious benefits to it as well because it's showing the committed. It's showing how committed guys are, why in the time away we could trust them to do things they need to do to come back. And then being in a small group, it’s different. So, I have one, you know, five to six guys, Coach DC has five to six guys. We’re in here together and then Tyler and Nate are outside with their five or six guys, same thing. And then we flip it. We totally clean everything, everything gets wiped down, sprayed, wiped, every single piece between every single group. So we're doing that eight times a day to keep them as safe as possible and us safe as possible as well. But the small groups, man, it was the right call to make because you can manage your kids the right way. Let’s say [during quarantine] you had a full gym but all I had was the sandbags to lift. How do we balance that? We were able to really, really do a better job of assessing and then just truly adapting every single day because of the small group. Like Coach says here, we call feedback a gift. So every day I'm getting this feedback, right? Like, okay, where are we truly at? And so, we can adjust and that workout probably got changed as many times as I looked up at the clock, just because it's like, you’re wrestling with what's best for our guys. You don’t want to push too hard but you’ve got to push enough because if you don't push enough then nothing changes. So, it's been really good. It's been a good learning curve for all of us. I think our kids will be healthier just because of the fact that they've learned different ways to sanitize and clean and those kinds of things too. There's a lot of positives that have come out of it as well.

So 'hit the ground running' is a little bit misleading. In our first two weeks, we've really taken our time with them to do a lot of pause things, time under tension and that kind of stuff, mostly straight-line running. They're not ready to change directions and put stress on ligaments, tendons, and muscles quite yet. So we'll start implementing that next week. Based off the first week, I would say we were about at 50 percent of what we might want to do and then the next day you’re like ‘Okay, well, they're able to do a little more’ and then this week, we've ramped it up quite a bit. We've added a little bit more in the weight room but they're still one day on one day off, one down on one day off. So that's given us two weeks and two days, so that that part's been really good. Now we can kind of implement more. Monday we'll start doing a little bit of some speed work or plyometrics, change of direction, start introducing that and getting them more ready to play football rather than just being in cardiovascular shape. We’ve taken our time. My whole goal the whole time has been, from the time we were started with the pandemic forward based off of us playing September 7th and still working with that date, we've got to get every kid to the gate. And we’ve got to get them to the gate healthy and fit. To push too hard? Things will break. So that has always been the goal, to try to be the best we can be and give these kids the best chance they can have to succeed.

Yes, exactly. I mean, a lot of my colleagues around the country were thinking you’d get guys back and then you wouldn’t be able to do hardly anything. And I was pleased we were able to start doing things, more of what we would mainstream do and not just bodyweight. ‘Okay, here we go. We have to do just some general prep stuff, right?’ So, we were able to start further ahead than I thought, which is key. And again, it is a race to get fit but you also have to be very mindful and safe about everything that's going on too.

Yeah, it's been good. I mean, like I said, I've been doing this since 1996 and I’ve been very fortunate to work with great coaches, great players. But again, in our realm as far as strength coaches, there's always changes to what happens, whether it’s scheduling, whether it’s workouts, whether it's whatever it may be, you’re always kind of dealing with chance and like I said, "any challenge" is my thing. You have to be audible ready. So, I don't always have multiple plans of like, ‘Okay, so they want to throw this in? That’s just fine.’ It doesn't really stress me out. I think you just move forward and figure it out with your staff and you take it to your guys and their great minds, experiences, and thoughts, in putting together what we call a masterpiece around here. And I think that, by the grace of the big man upstairs, my staff has been unbelievable. They've put together just unbelievable plans and input and feedback and they've researched and done a ton of professional development. We've really dug into some Catapult numbers and how it ties in and they’ve done an unbelievable job with that, with body weight losses and how that ties into gameplay in the first six games and the last six games and our practice plans and how we practice. So, again, I know it's a weird time for the world with everything’s that's going on and it’s sad in many ways. But I hope that it’s given people a chance to reflect on family and what's important and in bonding together and sticking together and kind of having that mindset that whatever challenge comes up, we figure out how to figure it out. We adapt and, you know, that's life.

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