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Having access to the same bodywork that helped FSU win a national championship with no season-ending injuries has helped Villani's NFL hopefuls recover faster so they can train harder. "Normally, we would have more pulled hamstrings than we have now," Villani says. Christie concurs: "It's been great. We've seen a decrease in injury rates and an increase in players recovering from injury sooner. We have a bigger class this year, so to see so few injuries has been really nice." It's this symbiotic dance of training and recovery that allows the athletes to push themselves further than they ever have before, while avoiding the soft-tissue injuries that typically come with overtraining. For a professional athlete, coming back from a major injury is an uphill battle. If Stanley and his team can prevent those injuries from happening in the first place, their clients will have longer, more sustainable careers. They call the approach prehab, not rehab, and it's aimed at identifying, assessing, and treating potential issues before they become major problems. "A lot of these athletes have never been through this intense a level of training," Stanley says. "They're pushed to the absolute limit. They've never experienced this level of soreness in their body, so having unlimited access to a high level of bodywork, where they can get bodywork every single day, has been a unique experience for everybody involved." 56 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k m a y / j u n e 2 0 1 6 THE STRUCTURAL BODYWORK TABLE Kousaleos uses the Storable Mat table from Oakworks when performing structural work on athletes. He says, "The Oakworks Storable Mat structural tables are wider (33–40 inches) and can be set significantly lower (16–20 inches) to allow for better leverage, especially when working with a large client in side-lying position. I use an Oakworks Proluxe electric table in my private practice, allowing me to quickly adjust the height of the table during the session, depending on how I position the client." Kousaleos and Villani developed a program in which Kousaleos would train therapists in his modified CORE Myofascial Therapy in the morning while the athletes were training for the Combine. In the afternoon, the therapists would put what they learned in the classroom into hands-on practice on the athletes. Kousaleos tailors his instruction around the work the athletes will be doing that day or the next: for example, if Villani needs his athletes' legs to be fresh for a big day of running and leg work, Kousaleos and his team of therapists can loosen up the athletes' hips and glutes the day before. Villani says, "We have a program that George has built around our day to day training program. But at any given time, if an athlete has a problem area, they can get it worked on, on demand." The bodywork Kousaleos brings to XPE is not aimed solely at assisting in recovery from training, but also in making adjustments to the athletes' bodies so that they are able to perform at a higher level. Bill Welle, a former mentor of Villani and now one of Villani's XPE Master Trainers, explains, "Speed is based on stride length, stride frequency, and power. Stride length can be improved. If you have a short, choppy stride, you don't have a lot of power. With this type of bodywork, we can open up the stride so that everything is looser. Even if the athlete is able to drive his knee up just an inch more, that's going to allow him to develop more power into the ground." 73" 29" 24"—34" 78" 35" 16"—25" Standard table Structural table