Training Facility Tour: Part 3

Well, it has been a little while since our last trip through the Miami Dolphins training facility.  So long in fact that here is part 1 and part 2 to refresh your memory.  So after you do a little catching up, here is part 3.  The Photos that are posted along with this article are the property of Michael Brothers and ShedDawgs.com.  Thank you to Michael for the great photos.

As you leave the main hall of positional team meeting rooms,  you make a right that passes by the QB meeting room and into the locker room.  Above you on the wall is an over sized 3D football crashing through the wall above the doorway.  The locker room itself was at one time a series of position cubicles designed in a maze fashion, the Dolphins, in order to promote team unity, lined the walls with the lockers themselves and opened up the center of the room in a player lounge style.

Couches and chairs and yes a table with Domino’s sits spread out among laundry hampers, equipment carts and of course, a carpeted logo on the floor.  In front of the individual lockers are steel framed fold out card table style chairs with the Dolphins logo imprinted on them as well.

On the pillars are HD TV’s and above the shower room door are the words “No Excuses”.

The showers are simple enough, reminiscent of a high-school gym shower, the tiles on the wall are simply teal and orange without the team logo.  As you enter to wards the shower and bathroom areas, the whirlpools sit.  Two metal tubs with jets on one end.  The odd thing was that there was little room to maneuver around the first to get into the second.  I wondered how some of these big lineman could make it over or around the first one.  They also sit on a small step, which may be a reason that Joe Toledo slipped getting out of the one he was in, injuring his ankle.

We leave the locker room and as we pass through the door opposite the one we came in, we see the bathrooms across the hall, we turn right and enter into the trainers rooms and the weight room.  If you have ever seen a “Golds’ Gym” or something on that line, you have seen nothing.  The weight room is a sight to see, and as you walk into it, you realize how undersized you really are.

The middle of the room is lined with leg press machines, but the real kicker is what you see on the left.  A wall of mirror.  Lining the mirrored wall is a wall to wall row of dumbbells.  Not “your” kind of dumbbells, but the NFL kind.  The kind that start with 175 and end with 225 Lbs.  Needless to say, I couldn’t move them.

At the end of the mirror wall, a door to the outside takes you into the swimming pool area.  A standard hotel style pool with a covered screen.  Past the squat stations and the myriad of other equipment stations is a second room of treadmills and stationary bikes.

You leave out the way you came, making a right and down a short hall to the glass doors leading out into the practice field.  As you approach the doors, to the left is a small cafeteria lounge set up for the players.  Drink machines, cereal machines, donuts, cookies, juices, and so on.  On the far end a catering counter for hot foods.  Tables with chairs and an extension room that provides more seating.  (this is where Ricky Williams was reported standing watching the team practice on his return).

You exit the doors and step outside with the two football fields in front of you.  Bleachers line the right side.  Their aluminum steps go up the near side and they resemble more of a small high-school seating than a pro teams.  But this is a practice field.  There is a cement base with aluminum benches and a Dolphins tarp above the top row.  Staring out onto the same field that Marino, Shula, and so many others walked and practiced.

As you near the seats, the practice bubble looms to your right.  A long cement drive that ends in a parking area and the teams Pro-shop greets you as it shoots behind the seats.  Doors open along the left building wall for various offices belonging to the grounds keepers and trainers.

The practice bubble is exactly what the name implies, but not likely something you imagined.  As you stand in front of it, you notice large bolts and tie downs, you reach over and place your hand on the bubble itself, it is harder than you thought and does not give as you might imagine.  Two sets of rotating doors grace the front and as you enter into the temp controlled bubble, you are greeted with a hollow echoing chamber the size of a football field.  It is a football field.

The dome crests in an arch from sideline to sideline while the goal posts on either end hang suspended in air, a resemblance to a child’s blow up bounce house.  No posts are on the ground.  In the center, the Miami Dolphins logo appears and the end zones have smaller logos on either side with Dolphins written in the middle.

It is a weird sensation to be this enclosed yet so open.  You feel no grass beneath your feet, only the softness of padding beneath a artificial turf.  It is soft.  You wander around and take in the feel, the emptiness of their being no activity and you wonder aloud to hear the echo of your own voice.  Much like the feeling in the weight room, you feel small.

As you leave the bubble, you are hit with the outside temperature and as you stare ahead at the practice field end zone, you notice an almost octagonal shaped room with windows that look out over the fields.  That is the head coaches office.

And that, is the Miami Dolphins training facility in Davie, Florida.