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The Bills haven’t gotten what they wanted from defensive end Shaq Lawson in his first two NFL seasons.

Lawson has missed 11 regular season games and the Bills’ first postseason game since 1999 as injuries have kept him from being a reliable part of the lineup. Lawson understands that’s not what the team is looking for and said that he’s approaching this season by coming “in every day like my job is on the line” and working to cut the injuries out of his game.

“Sitting back and watching our playoff game I was like Mike Condon Jersey , 鈥業鈥檝e got to stay on the field. Whatever I have to do to stay on the field I鈥檓 going to do it,鈥?#8221; Lawson said, via the team’s website. “I’ve got to be the best I can be and what they drafted me to be.”

Lawson believes the best he can be calls for a lower weight and has dropped to 263 pounds after playing at 275 pounds last year. He hopes to drop three more pounds by the season and he has also been working with former NFL pass rusher Chuck Smith on ways to up his production from the six sacks he’s notched so far in his career.

Success in his bid for a better third season would serve Lawson and the Bills well while anything like the first two years may not buy him much more time to turn things around in Buffalo.

NEW YORK (AP) — Without stretching, 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 Anders Bjork Jersey , 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 BENEFITS

Getting ready in his pass-rush stance, New York Jets defensive lineman Leonard Williams has his legs spread Womens Philip Rivers Jersey , 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 Terrell Owens Jersey ,” 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, 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 BENEFITS

Bending to the side Marquez Valdes-Scantling Jersey , 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 mindfu Youth New England Patriots Jerseys