Eric Mangini announced to his players that they had the day off from practice Monday - just five days into training camp - and the players were pleasantly surprised.

"Shoot, you take a day off and not have a practice, and all of the sudden your body feels the best it has in a long while," center Nick Mangold said Tuesday. "It was very nice to have that."

Known for being a training camp taskmaster in his first two seasons with New York, Mangini has consistently kept practices under two hours and is trying a new, research-based approach to help the players recover easier from the physical grind.

Is this a kinder, gentler Mangini?

"Yeah, I guess when it comes to practicing because we've been out here just for two hours, so that's really good compared to my first year when it was three, and last year also," running back Leon Washington said. "All the guys out here are starting to realize that we need to come out here and get it right the first time and we'll be all right.

"I've got a saying: 'Do it right, do it light. Do it wrong, do it long.' That's the plan I'm on."

Actually, the plan is one devised by Mangini and members of his staff, who spent part of the offseason looking into ways to help prevent injuries before the season starts. He consulted experts in the medical field, including doctors in Australia.

"It's breaking new ground based on research and there's still an element of seeing how it works," Mangini said.

Mangini, a Wesleyan graduate, sounded more doctor than coach when describing the theory.

"In researching the patterns of training camp and researching the trends over the years, what we've seen is a dramatic spike in injuries early on in camp," Mangini said. "That makes a lot of sense because guys go from the offseason program to a break and then they come back and they jump right into very heavy, high-intensity exercise and all the contact."

Instead of sweating through two practices Monday, the players had classroom sessions to review what the team had done through the first four days of camp. They also participated in a number of activities to help them work through soreness.

"They were all related to recovery, whether it was the different soft tissue massage, things they can do themselves in the weight room, or the contrasts of hot tub-cold tub protocol that helps get the lactic acid out," Mangini said. "There are multiple things we did - Pilates with a concentration on stretching, again, to elongate the muscles and take the pressure off the muscles - all things that, through our research, we found have been very helpful to athletes under the same type of pressures in the same type of timeframe.

"It was a good day for us, I think it was an important day. Now we're able to reload."

Mangold was happy to get the break from the work on the field.

"It was great," he said. "The idea of having the opportunity to rest your body and really focus in mentally on what's going on. We install so much stuff and you're banging, so you're physically tired and you're mentally tired, so sometimes some things get lost on the plays and everything. Having the opportunity to just sit down and let your body relax and just work your mind as we're rolling through is a big help."

To a man, the Jets expressed their appreciation for the pared-down practices, but warned against thinking Mangini is taking it too easy on them.

"We're still out here banging," Mangold said with a smile. "There's no question about that. It's just that we're always trying to find the best way to do things."

The players also shouldn't necessarily expect to be regularly rewarded with these recovery-type days.

"No, it's still at the discretion of the head coach," Mangini said with a big grin. "There's still other elements tied into it. To whom much is given, much is expected. Everybody has to uphold their end of the bargain on this one."

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