NEW YORK (AP) — Without stretching Kaleb McGary Jersey , New York Giants offensive lineman Chad Wheeler folds his 6-foot-7, 317-pound frame over far enough to place his palms flat on the ground. His knees are straight but not fully locked, because that’s poor form, and he can comfortably hold himself there — he’s that flexible.That’s nothing for Wheeler. Like many NFL players, he does yoga.“It’s funny doing it as a team because a lot of guys haven’t done it,” Wheeler said. “It makes me feel proud in a way. Like guys that are way more athletic than me, I can bend better than them in certain positions.”Football players don’t fit the mold of a yogi , someone who regularly practices yoga. They’re large athletes with sculpted muscles from countless hours of lifting and conditioning. Most do not look capable of the contortions required of the ancient discipline, such as standing on one foot with the other propped up on their knee in a tree pose for an extended period without falling over.Yet in recent years, the presence of yoga has grown in the NFL. The fast-paced, hard-hitting sport has accepted the more calming practice that emphasizes conscious breathing and body flow. Much like yin and yang, the two complement each other both mentally and physically.“Obviously (yoga) helps with flexibility, what we call join integrity, discipline, focus and balance,” said Los Angeles Chargers Director of Football/Medical Services James Collins, an NFL athletic trainer for 31 years. “It has a lot of different entities to it. And one thing about professional football players is that if you explain something to them and give them the science and reasoning behind it, you can get them to buy into it.”Many teams haven’t adopted yoga, but their players practice it individually, including Denver Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall, Buffalo Bills placekicker Steven Hauschka and New York Jets quarterback Sam Darnold.The Giants, Jacksonville Jaguars, New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears offer it to their players on recovery days. Others make it a team activity: the Chargers, Cleveland Browns and Dallas Cowboys.“I was going into it expecting to tell them all the reasons why they should be practicing yoga and why it’s so beneficial,” said Kaleen Lugo, the Chargers’ yoga instructor. “They’re just like, ‘You’re preaching to the choir, girl. We know.'” PHYSICAL BENEFITSGetting ready in his pass-rush stance Kendall Sheffield Jersey , New York Jets defensive lineman Leonard Williams has his legs spread, knees bent and feet staggered. He leans forward with a hand on the ground.That’s how he stays until the ball is snapped, holding his 6-5, 302-pound body in the three-point stance.“For my position, you can get knocked off,” Williams said. “When we’re playing double teams, we got to stunt and do stuff, so it’s like sometimes we have to be on one foot, plant and go somewhere. I feel like yoga helps with that, when we’re doing one-legged poses and stuff like that. It helps with my balance .”Yoga helps with so much more than balance, and flexibility.Collins, who’s also the Professional Football Athletic Trainers’ Society president, said yoga is great for multidirectional joints such as the elbows, wrists, ankles, hips and shoulders. Regular stretching is linear and doesn’t help strengthen those areas .Yoga also keeps muscles pliable and allows them to recover faster.“At minimum, doing it helps maintain what you have,” Collins said. “Especially as an athlete and a football player, as he’s going through a season and his bodies getting beat up, everything starts to shut down — ‘Boy, I feel stiff. I’m sore. I can’t do this.’ But if you’re doing things throughout the season, like yoga, to help maintain what you’ve established with your body, that helps you get through the season, helps reduce your chance of injury and things of that nature.”Each player — position, really — is different, too.Gwen Lawrence, founder of Power Yoga for Sport John Cominsky Jersey , has been teaching athlete-focused yoga for 25 years and taught the Giants for more than a decade under former head coach Tom Coughlin. While she would work on arm and spine strength — spinal rotation — for a quarterback, she would focus more on the neck, hips and wrists for a lineman.It comes down to releasing tension and building strength in overworked parts of the body.“I didn’t realize once I got the hold of it how much stronger I felt,” Giants linebacker Jordan Williams said. “I wasn’t doing anything but using my body weight, and I felt so much stronger.”MENTAL BENEFITSBending to the side, Detroit Lions running back Ameer Abdullah reaches for a block on the floor . He then lifts his other legs straight out so he is parallel to the ground and extends his free arm upward.Each limb is stretched out straight, as he breathes through the difficulty of holding yoga’s half-moon pose.That’s where the mind-over-matter mentality comes in.“They need to be trained when they’re in a tough situation, they can’t just bail,” Lawrence said. “A lot of times they’ll be like, ‘Ah, this is too hard. This hurts,’ and they’ll jump out of that. You can’t do that in a game, and you can’t do that in yoga.”Mental toughness is one of the six facets Lawrence teaches in her yoga class, along with strength, flexibility, balance, focus and breath. But she also has a six-week mindfulness course Coughlin had the medical staff and players go through. The well-being of the mind is just as important as the well-being of body.“We spend a lot of time paying attention to the psychology of the athlete,” said National Athletic Trainers’ Association president Tory Lindley, who’s also the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Health, Safety and Performance and Director of Athletic Training Services at Northwestern University. “That mind-body connection is critical.”On the field and off it.In 2003, Jacksonville Jaguars linebacker Keith Mitchell sustained a career-ending injury . It came after seven years in the NFL, mostly spent with the Saints. He was lost, saying he showed signed of depression and had suicidal thoughts, until he found yoga.Mitchell credits meditation and conscious breathing for getting him through the tough time. Now, he’s a yoga instructor and hopes the practice grows in the NFL because he wishes he had done it as a player.“The game, I always say, is 80 percent mental,” Mitchell said. “So anything we can do to reboot the mind — I call it a meditation and I teach it as a mind practice — that’s just going to make you even more impactful Qadree Ollison Jersey , more effective on your endeavors.”Many players do it for the mental aspect alone, saying yoga gets their mind right and prevents overthinking. It forces them to be in the moment, otherwise there’s no way they’d be able to accomplish some of the poses, which make them feel better physically.One thing leads to another, much like the flow of a good sun salutation — moving from one pose to another.“When you feel good, you play good,” Lugo said. “When you play good, it’s all good. They know that comes from so much more than just keeping your body in peak shape and condition.” ROSEMONT, Ill. (AP) — There were times when George Halas was so strapped for cash that he had to borrow from his kids to help keep the Chicago Bears going.That’s what his daughter, Virginia McCaskey, remembered.The Bears were struggling to stay afloat in the late 1920s and early 1930s, so much so that Halas, the founder of the franchise, had to turn to his children. He did that just to pay the family’s groceries and rent.“I often use the word survival because of what was involved,” McCaskey said. “Fortunately, for us and for so many people now, it all worked out.”McCaskey mentioned her dad, Halas, holding part-ownership in a commercial laundry company, working in real estate and selling cars as he tried to keep his other businesses going.The Bears and the NFL both have come a long way since then.The Bears held their 100th anniversary celebration over the weekend in what was billed as the franchise’s largest gathering of stars past and present.Stars such as Mike Ditka, Dick Butkus, Mike Singletary and Dan Hampton were on hand this weekend. Even Gale Sayers, weakened by dementia, made the 130-mile trip from his home in Indiana to attend the opening ceremonies on Friday night, getting a rousing ovation in an emotional moment.“This weekend has been like a happy dream that keeps going on and on,” McCaskey, the 96-year-old team matriarch, said Sunday.She recalled the tough times after the Great Depression hit Ed Oliver Jersey , with her father working various jobs and even borrowing from his children just so the family could eat and keep a roof over their head. Their money was in savings accounts established by Grandma Halas, who would send birthday and Christmas checks each year.When she sees the gleaming, expanded suburban headquarters that bears her father’s name, it’s almost difficult to believe how far the franchise has come.“It’s hard to imagine these days with all the millions and millions of dollars that people are talking about,” McCaskey said. “Each time I go up there, I think, ‘Does this really belong to us? Is this really part of our organization?'”McCaskey touched on a wide range of topics, from the history of the franchise and the NFL and her father’s legacy to the current state of the team.Though she was too young to remember it, she was around when the Bears signed Red Grange out of the University of Illinois in 1925 and embarked on a 19-game barnstorming tour that helped legitimize the struggling NFL. She saw the “Monsters of the Midway” re-establish themselves last season, winning the NFC North at 12-4 in fun-loving coach Matt Nagy’s first season. And she has witnessed just about everything in between.She was asked what her favorite game was when the Bears played at Wrigley Field. That would be a 14-10 victory over the New York Giants in the 1963 NFL championship game.The Bears intercepted Y.A. Tittle five times on the way to their sixth and final title with Halas as their coach. Chicago has won it all just one time since then, when the 1985 team shuffled its way to the Super Bowl and the ninth championship in franchise history.“Even though it wasn’t against the Packers, it was the culmination of a championship season and my dad’s final championship,” McCaskey said. “We had beaten the Packers previously in Green Bay and in Wrigley Field that season.”Her favorite Bears player? Walter Payton.McCaskey also talked about the 1985 team, one of the greatest in NFL history. The Bears went 15-1, the lone loss coming on a Monday night at Miami in early December after Chicago outscored Dallas and Atlanta a combined 80-0 the previous two games.“That was a very unusual team and a very unusual season because so much of the normal stress of game days seemed to be disappearing,” she said. “We could go to the game and not be completely knotted up inside. There was so much confidence in everyone. Except for the game at Miami, everything turned out very well.”As for Nagy, McCaskey is a fan.He helped set the tone as the Bears returned to the playoffs for the first time since the 2010 season. He won more games than any other rookie coach in franchise history, and he did it with an approach the city and team embraced. He ran trick plays with fun names and turned the locker room into a nightclub — “Club Dub” — after victories.“My dad, George Halas, certainly celebrated every championship,” McCaskey said. “But all through the season, it was very serious work and very concentrated situations. There are pictures of him in the locker room after the various championships and I love them. But our present day coach has made each game and each week a possible celebration. And I think that is a very excellent difference. The season is so much longer, it’s so much harder to get to the final game and win the final game. But we’re hoping for a lot of those ‘Club Dub.'”