diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index b0d288f7ef..c2b5ca5c7a 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/).
 
 ### Fixed
 
--
+- Avoid calling `average_parameters` multiple times per optimizer step ([#12452](https://github.com/PyTorchLightning/pytorch-lightning/pull/12452))
 
 
 -
diff --git a/pytorch_lightning/strategies/ddp.py b/pytorch_lightning/strategies/ddp.py
index 3e4742f0fc..67b8a22c8a 100644
--- a/pytorch_lightning/strategies/ddp.py
+++ b/pytorch_lightning/strategies/ddp.py
@@ -280,11 +280,8 @@ class DDPStrategy(ParallelStrategy):
         if not _TORCH_GREATER_EQUAL_1_10 or self._model_averager is None:
             return optimizer_output
 
-        for group in optimizer.param_groups:
-            for param in group["params"]:
-                if param.grad is None:
-                    continue
-                self._model_averager.average_parameters(iter(param))
+        params = [param for group in optimizer.param_groups for param in group["params"] if param.grad is not None]
+        self._model_averager.average_parameters(iter(params))
 
         return optimizer_output