If You Can Dodge a Wrench, You Can Give a Speech

It’s New Year’s Eve, 2025. This is when most people start making resolutions: snack less, hit the gym more, express gratitude so it feels more like a habit than an obligation.

It’s also a big moment for businesses. A new year brings new opportunities to motivate teams. And as I work with executives on taking their speaking to the next level, I keep seeing the same patterns come up again and again: confidence before speaking, discipline during prep, and flow once they’re actually in the arena.

So let’s hit the public speaking gym with three drills to help keep things on track.

Drill #1: If You Can Dodge a Wrench…

I love the early-2000s comedy Dodgeball. The best line comes from the unhinged coach who throws wrenches at his team to improve their reflexes.

It hits the same note as watching Dragon Ball as a kid, where the hero trains in weighted clothes so real battles feel easy by comparison.

Kaio-what?

That’s the mindset here: practice with weight on. Make things harder than they need to be so the actual performance feels light.

Start by writing your talk word-for-word. Then strip it down into a cheat sheet with one sentence fragment per 15–30 seconds. Deliver from that.

Once the timing feels solid, add friction. Walk on a treadmill; if you mess up, increase the speed. When I coached a high school team, we called this “running your speech.” It works.

Drill #2: You Talk Pretty One Day

There are dozens of rhetorical techniques out there. In practice, you only need a few.

First, the rule of three. Most memorable communication works in threes. Sometimes that means three main points, with the third carrying the most weight. Sometimes it’s a joke where the third beat breaks the pattern. (SNL even lampooned this with James Austin Johnson’s meta-Trump impressions.)
Yes, I’m aware I’m ending this paragraph without a third example.

Second, anaphora. This is repeating the same opening phrase across sentences.


“A man dies when he is forgotten.


A man dies when he is abandoned.


A man dies when he gives up on his dreams.”

Third, epiphora. The mirror image. Same ending, different beginnings.


“When we strive, we win.


When we fight, we win.


When we dream, we win.”

You only need to use one of these once or twice in a speech to sound noticeably more polished. Try inserting one into a recent talk and feel the difference.

Drill #3: Water Off a Duck’s Back

A former national-level speaker once told me about losing focus during a big round because audience members were making faces. It threw him off his rhythm. He lost the round.

Distractions happen. Hecklers happen. Even well-meaning audiences can throw your timing off. So train for it.

Practice with interruptions. Have someone toss in random comments. Take one word from what they say and fold it back into your point.


“This is a waste of time.”


“I heard ‘waste of time,’ and you’re right. We’ve wasted time on the wrong metrics. That’s why this new dashboard matters.”

Or have someone say “new choice,” forcing you to rephrase your last sentence before continuing. It’s awkward at first. That’s the point.

When you get used to disruption in practice, real-world noise stops mattering. The storm rolls off you like water off a duck’s back.

Every time I tell clients about students literally running while delivering speeches, they laugh. Then they try it and stop laughing. And eventually, once it works, they laugh again.

Good luck with your speechmaking success in 2026.