ATHENS — Kirby Smart knows what his Georgia football players are going through.

Smart once practiced on the same fields and faced the same sort of challenges when he was an All-SEC safety for the Bulldogs in the 1990s.

Back then, there were double sessions — and no climate controlled indoor facility.

Smart took mercy on his players on Wednesday, taking them out of the hot sun and inside William Porter Payne and Porter Otis Payne Indoor Facility.

“They’re starting to hit that camp wall where it’s like ‘Coach, I’ve done this, I’ve hit this guy a lot,’ “ Smart said. “That’s when you worry about complacency or guys getting bored. So we changed some things around today, had good competition, kind of changed the order of practice and tried to place some of the emphasis on special teams.

“I think we had good juice.”

Smart said that wasn’t the case in practice on Monday or Tuesday.

That could explain why Smart was patrolling the Tuesday practice like a mad hornet.

“I didn’t think we had good juice on Monday and Tuesday, a lot of poor me, school starting and a lot of excuses,” Smart said.

Wednesday marked the first time Smart moved the team inside without weather being part of the reason.

“It’s easy to have good spirits inside,” Smart explained. “We tried to change practice up today and have a lot of competitive drills an environments, kind of a change of pace.”

Georgia football coach Kirby Smart