From specialized nutrition plans to mental skills work to experimental equipment, the quest to stay healthy and productive now takes NFL athletes far beyond the weight room. Here are some ways players keep themselves fit throughout the season.
Mental SkillsIn recent years, mental preparation has become a major emphasis across the league.
Some defensive players take part in exercises to remove emotional barriers to contact. “Snap a swan’s neck and you no longer feel bad about hurting your fellow man, for you’ve already removed beauty and innocence from the world,” said Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks.
Teams also rehearse accountability. In towel-over-head training, players practice sitting on the bench with a towel over their head after mistakes, refining the posture and towel angle needed to appear sufficiently contrite.
Some players use more individualized psychological methods, which for Giants running back Cam Skattebo means employing visual aids and repetition to get into the game-day mentality.
“Every year I make 600 flash cards,” Skattebo revealed. “On one side of each flash card is a picture of a football. The other side is blank. I go over them for hundreds of hours until I’m ready to play.”
Equipment InnovationsSpecialized equipment now plays a bigger role than ever in preparing players to compete.
A growing number of teams now train during the offseason using the Big Football, a love-seat-sized football designed to make regulation footballs feel more manageable once the season begins. Similarly, running backs increasingly use gumbo to work on ball security, carrying piping-hot pots of the soup through a gauntlet of defenders with the belief that, as one AFC South coach put it, “Any man who can protect gumbo can protect a ball.”
No offseason program is considered complete without a visit to The Cube, an advanced conditioning chamber where players spend anywhere from 30 seconds to two weeks, depending on how long The Cube sees fit. No one knows what happens inside, because The Cube wipes the memory of whoever enters.
“To compete at the highest levels, you must spend time in The Cube,” said Chiefs head coach Andy Reid. “Although sometimes a guy will die in there.”
Environment TrainingTeams are also placing greater emphasis on environmental readiness, preparing players for the conditions and distractions they may encounter over the course of the season.
Because football is played on grass, several teams now use grass immersion therapy. Players begin by looking at grass, then smelling it, then holding a bowl filled with grass, and finally walking across grass under trainer supervision. This reduces the chance they’ll be startled by grass when they encounter it in the regular season. Several clubs also use the 1992 computer game Wolfenstein 3D as an environmental-navigation tool because, like NFL football, it is full of difficult challenges.
Much of environmental preparation involves planning for a wide range of scenarios, as NFL players must be ready for whatever the game throws at them. This is why virtually all teams now teach players to speak Chinese, as this prepares athletes for the possibility that a game is suddenly played in Chinese.
Nutrition And RecoveryNutrition and recovery staffs are using more targeted strategies to keep players fueled and physically prepared throughout the season.
For linemen and other high-mass players, nutrition programs may include aggressive weight-maintenance protocols. “You know how they force-feed ducks a mixture of boiled corn and soybean fat to produce foie gras?” said Jordan Mazur, a nutritionist for the San Francisco 49ers. “That’s how we keep them big.”
In recent years, there’s been a greater emphasis on proper recovery throughout the league, and several organizations have invested heavily in time-interval metamorphic development. The recovery protocol requires players to enter chrysalises made from turf rubber and chewed Gatorade cups, where enzymes dissolve their old muscles and skin into a nutrient-rich slurry. Dormant cells then use the melted tissue to rapidly build a new, improved football body with fresher cartilage, thicker thighs, and fewer nagging injuries.
Strength And Contact PreparationStrength staffs continue to refine offseason work around lower-body power, contact tolerance, and football-specific movement.
Steelers trainers build lower-body power by having players stand up from a very deep couch without groaning. Working on individual muscles is a central focus for Lions strength coach Josh Schuler, who meets with players every morning during training camp to point at their muscles one by one and say words such as “blitz” and “coverage.” If the muscle twitches, he takes it as a sign that the muscle understands football and is ready to compete.
Some teams use controlled neurological and contact simulations. The Patriots practice facility features a state-of-the-art concussion escape room, in which players are spun in a chair until extremely dizzy and subjected to controlled hammer-based head trauma before being locked in a room where they must solve puzzles, find a key, and answer questions like “How many fingers am I holding up?” while being whacked with pool noodles and blasted with sound cannons.
Certain players swear by individualized contact routines. “Twice a day during the summer, someone comes to my house and has their Rottweiler bite me on the leg,” said Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence. “I don’t know why they do this, or what it has to do with football. Point is, it keeps happening.”
Ultimately, the goal of every program is simple: to give players the best chance to remain available and effective. In a long season, teams believe that level of preparation can make the difference.
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