Every coach wants their players to be strong, fast, and agile. It doesn’t take fancy equipment to achieve to achieve athletic greatness—think Rocky III when Stalone is training with concrete blocks and farming implements, while Dolph Lundgren is using all of the modern technology that Russia has to offer—but technology is nice. It’s also nice to have enough space to be able to strategize and hold meetings comfortably and effectively and to have ample area for your players to recover.
Today, lets have a look at a few of the best team training facilities in that the NFL has to offer.
The Denver Broncos
The Denver Broncos have had a couples years of slump after the Payton Manning era. But they won’t be lacking while working out and at practice. The Broncos just recently renovated their practice facilities. The upgrades are astounding. A few of the highlighted features are::
- A new training room.
- Recovery room within the training room.
- A defensive auditorium
- Expanded team metting room
- Cryo Machines
The team meeting room was expanded from 85 seats to 136. Now training camp meetings should run more smoothly as each of the 90 players and all of the coaching staff can be comfortably housed in the room. All in all, the Broncos added 5400 square-feet of meeting space to their facility. The defense also finally has their own auditorium which is a huge upgrade from the breakout rooms that they were using before.
The new training room is state-of-the-art and includes a player recovery room with six tables and five zero-gravity chairs, and two cryo machines which came at the behest of players such as Von Miller who has been going off-site for cryo treatments for the last couple of years. They also tripled the size of their tubs and added a hydro-therapy Swim-X tub for rehab. The therapy tub comes complete with a lift that will lower an injured player into the pool.
Before the upgrades, the Denver Broncos already boasted one of the top-ranked weight rooms in the NFL. The room is expansive with dozens on sideboards and machines so that players are not cramped and don’t have to take turns or slow down their routines by waiting too long.
The Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings recently received a brand new practice facility, the Twin Cities Orthopedics Center in Eagan. The new facility is beautifully put together. The indoor practice field has hanging goalposts so that the players are never in danger of running into the base while practicings. The new weight room is massive, and they spared no expense when it comes to strength and conditioning.
The Vikes now have ten treatment tables in the recovery room, with two articulating, high-low tables and five taping stations, plus twelve more in the. The hydro station is the highlight of the athletic recovery room. There is a hot tub, cold tub, and underwater treadmill, all inground. The treadmill has alterable depth levels, up to six feet. So shorter players can use it together, and taller players can utilize the deeper mode for maximum water resistance. They also installed an electric cryo chamber.
The Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys used to do their training in Oxnard, California, just outside of Ventura. But in 2016 they built “The Star,” a state-of-the-art facility in Frisco, Texas. The indoor practice field is so massive that Ford bought up the naming rights and it is now called The Ford Center. The indoor field has seating for 12,000. The seating isn’t really for the Cowboys players benefit, but it helps the local area high school teams that get to use the field and will be ideal for future scouting combines.
The billion dollar project also has a really set the standard for the rest of the league. Players and staff can “Fuel Up” at the Dallas Cowboys Training Table, a full cafeteria and dining lounge replete with chefs and nutritionists. In addition to the biggest indoor field in the NFL, there is a pair of outdoor fields as well
Lake Landry is a giant, 20-foot, by the 14.5-foot hot tub that the entire offensive line can fit into. The recovery area also boasts an HydroWorx underwater treadmill system with jets to provide varying resistance. And perhaps coolest of all, is the football-shaped locker room with 72 ventilated lockers that pulls moisture out of equipment helping to sanitize. The locker room also has a clean air system that helps to remove allergens and fungi so that the typical locker room smell won’t be a factor at The Star.
The 2018 Season is in Full Swing
The 2018 NFL Season is fully underway, and the outcomes are not exactly what training camps projected. But with sports betting now legal in a few states and being on the cusp of legalization in many more, more people than ever are putting their football knowledge to the test by playing against the odds. But just like the different team facilities, sportsbooks are not all created equal. Be sure to research the best ones, like this Bovada review, before placing any action.