Take that, Walter Thurmond. The old dog has learned a new trick.
After being accused to not embracing “modern medicine” by his former safety who is now with the Eagles, Giants head coach Tom Coughlin gave his players a chance to do yoga or other alternative treatments during their recovery day.
According to Justin Tasch of the New York Daily News, the changes are part of a bigger schedule shift by the 69-year-old Coughlin. He’s giving his players a chance at what he calls a “GPS week,” which will have them running their more strenuous practices on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by a pair of recovery days.
On those recovery days, the Giants players can choose from six recovery stations, including yoga and other alternatives to keep them fresh.
“It’s a unique kind of a day and I’m interested in the feedback that I get from our leadership counsel and also from the assistant coaches as we go through the day,” Coughlin said. “Of course, the proof will come later as to how we perform.”
Giving the players two days off before a game is unconventional, and Coughlin said its continued existence would be determined by the results he sees.
“We’re gonna see,” he said. “I’ll see what it looks like and how — again, [Friday’s] another day of this experimentation. So we’re gonna go through that and see how we like it at the end of the week.”
Players will still go through meetings and a walk-through and lift on their recovery days during the GPS week, so it’s not as if they’re taking a spa day.
But for Coughlin to make a fundamental change in practice schedules at this stage in his life shows that he’s willing to adapt, and try to do something to prevent his team from being the most-injured team in the league the last two years. But it also signals that he understands that he doesn’t have a dictator-for-life type of job, and that changing the results are important to his own longevity as well.