The team around the team: Bears tackle physical, mental health with holistic approach
Story by Gabby Hajduk
To wrap up Mental Health Awareness Month, ChicagoBears.com spoke with members of the Bears football operations staff, including staffers in player engagement, nutrition, sports science, athletic training, wellness, equipment and strength and conditioning to learn how their teams work seamlessly to provide players with tools to succeed on and off the field.
The saying "it takes a village" when referring to raising a family or making a change in the community is cliché, but it's the truth in the sports world, including when it comes to supporting a professional athlete in both a physical and mental capacity.
For the Bears, that village consists of dozens of staff members that focus on aspects of health and wellness, like high performance, athletic training, equipment, player engagement and strength and conditioning. While there are several other departments throughout the club that also support the players, these specific groups have the most daily, hands-on and personal experiences with those on the roster.
They're the team around the team.
"The players are the number one priority in our organization," general manager Ryan Poles said. "Our goal is to assist them in their pursuit of the mastery of their crafts and we do so by taking a holistic view with the various departments that make up our support staff. Constant communication between our players, the coaches and our performance staff helps our athletes know where they are and where they are going in order to help them achieve their goals. It's imperative of this group to provide excellent support while maintaining the vision of the coaching staff."
That entire staff is in Chicago for the same reasons — to help each player on the roster be the best version of themselves and provide them the best environment possible at Halas Hall.
"We want them to look back and say, 'wow, the Chicago Bears really did a nice job,' and always have something good to say about what we were able to do for them," longtime director of equipment Tony Medlin said. "It's not about us, this is just how the Chicago Bears do what they do. I always say it's the 'Bears Way.' We're professionals, and that's what we do, and we just try to display that in every way we can and make sure the players feel comfortable."
Although a lot of their work focuses on physical health, whether it's rehabbing a player to return from injury, challenging them in the weight room, fueling their body through the correct nutrition plan or altering the type of helmet they wear, none of those tasks are possible without assuming responsibility of the players' mental well-being.
"I always start from the neck up since I've been doing this," Andre Tucker, senior director of sports medicine and player health, said. "If your mind is not where it needs to be, the rest doesn't matter. It truly doesn't."
When Bears offensive lineman Kiran Amegadjie began his NFL journey last April after being drafted in the third round by the Bears out of Yale, he was in the process of recovering from a quadriceps injury he sustained in college. He felt the Bears' wraparound support instantly.
The first day Amegadjie was at Halas Hall, he met 1-on-1 with Tucker and head strength and conditioning coach Pierre Ngo to begin setting his rehab plan. Within days, he connected with director of sports nutrition Blair Hitchcock and director of player engagement Erika Marmolejo. By the end of his first week, director of wellness Carla Suber and mental performance and leadership coordinator Andy Riise had reached out to set up check-ins.
"Coming from college, where you have a couple of trainers for the team, and then after that there isn't as much support, especially at Yale compared to maybe some bigger school, I thought that I would be on my own a little bit," Amegadjie said. "I was very pleasantly surprised with how it runs here. I felt like from Day 1, I had a plan from all the different departments. They had everything laid out on exactly how everything was going to go. That gave me a lot of confidence."
That seamless coordination Amegadjie experienced as a rookie is by design. The bulk of that fluidity stems from health and performance meetings that occur daily or weekly, depending on if it's during the offseason, training camp or in-season.
Those meetings include Tucker and his team of athletic trainers, Suber and Riise, Ngo, Clyde Emrich director of high performance Brent Salazar and his staff — assistant sports scientist Adam Sundh, Hitchcock, director of sports science AJ Lamb and sports nutrition coordinator Carly Collins — as well as Medlin, Marmolejo and assistant general manager Ian Cunningham.
Over the course of 30 minutes, the team discusses every player that is dealing with an injury. Tucker and his team start by providing updates on what the exact injury is, where they're at in the rehab process, what limitations they have in the weight room and on the field and their projected return to play timeline. Throughout those discussions, Ngo will occasionally chime in to note how much a player in the rehab process bench pressed that day. Suber will add in reminders about how a player may mentally handle their injury. Cunningham will ask for personnel updates to gauge if a player will be available for training camp.
After each player is discussed, Medlin will provide any updates from an equipment perspective, whether that's which color jerseys players who will be limited in practice will wear, new footwear a player is trying out or flagging a helmet change. Ngo then gives an overview of what's happening in the weight room over the coming days, whether it's focusing on power versus max strength or noting that tomorrow is a big squat day.
All of those small nuggets and notes that the team gathers through those sessions help maximize their time with each individual player, especially when it comes to those who are injured.
Whether there's a physical issue or something happening in a player's personal life, having each department in the know is crucial to them executing their roles, and as a result, takes pressure off the player.
"It's crucial because that's where we come in and fill in all the gaps," Suber said. "Physically we're all spread out, so when we all get in one room, it's like we're able to put all the puzzle pieces together, and then also see where there may be some gaps and where people can fill in. We kind of wrap around the guy, so everybody has a touchpoint with them, and it doesn't have to be a super long meeting or session, but everybody at least has a touchpoint and knows what's happening. So it's a very holistic approach."
While the cross-department communication is key, an equally important piece of the puzzle is each staff member taking ownership of their role in enhancing the player's health and helping injured players return to action.
In the training room, the athletic trainer's main responsibility is helping players recover from injury and return to play. Before introducing any of the physical rehab, Tucker ensures the player is educated on his injury, what the return to play process will entail and who will be working with them along the way.
"I think the more we can educate and forecast a little bit on what they're going to be going through, it shows a little bit more onus and understanding, Tucker said. "And then it clicks. If I say, 'hey, by the third day you should be feeling X,' and they start to feel that, the trust gets a little bit stronger because you've shown that you've taken the time to give them a heads up, which everyone appreciates. And then when it comes to fruition, then I think things to start to click on all cylinders."
For Ngo in the weight room, it's about educating the player on the reasoning behind his individual program, preparing players for the demands of the game and strengthening their bodies to help them further their careers. When it comes to injured players, Ngo focuses on themes of the day, like working on pure strength or doing restoration work, versus the outlook of returning to the field, which helps the player mentally check off goals that aren't related to on-field achievements.
Before and after practices or lifts, players also work with the high performance team. The sports science department tracks data points like their speeds inside the weight room, how fatigued they were after certain movements and body composition. First, the group identifies any areas for improvement, then finds the proper solutions, one of which is nutrition.
Hitchcock describes players' nutrition as "fuel in their gas tanks." A player's diet can often translate to their performance because of how crucial nutrition is to the physical demands of football. Through building relationships with the players to learn their nutrition backgrounds, their likes and dislikes and their caloric or hydration goals, Hitchcock develops custom meal plans or fueling timelines to support each player.
In the equipment room, the focus is on player safety to help prevent injury as well as help a player feel ready to return to the field. Medlin and his team work with each player to find the most comfortable helmet type and size or the most supportive footwear.
Even if each person across the health and wellness team executes their role perfectly, there can still be a caveat to a player achieving his peak physical health or returning to play: mental health.
"If your mind is not set to attack your rehab that day, you're probably not going to get the results you want," Tucker said. ""If your mind is not ready to go back to battle, back to practice, back to playing the game, you're not going to be able to perform. So it truly starts with your mind."
If a player is dealing with a personal issue, a new stressor in their life or the emotions of being injured, it can dramatically affect how they show up in the training room, at the fueling station or in the weight room. Rather than pushing a player to simply overcome those challenges, the Bears focus on meeting the player where they're at, providing the correct resources and knowing when to take a step back.
That's where Marmolejo, Suber and Riise come in.
From the moment a player is drafted, traded or signed by the Bears, Marmolejo is in contact with their inner circle, whether it be parents, siblings, a significant other or an agent. She serves as a resource to both the player and their circle on things like financial literacy, professional and personal development, learning the Chicagoland area and helping them succeed as men, not just football players.
Building that trust with each player helps Marmolejo stay in tune with outside factors that could impact their well-being inside Halas Hall and gives her a platform to help the player find the proper support.
"Talking about anything personal and then bringing that into the workplace can feel uncomfortable, nerve wracking," Marmolejo said. "You might feel like it's going to affect your performance or your job or pay or perception. But it's teaching them to lean on us so that we can help them with that and provide them the tools and resources that they need, because life happens all the time. So it's just being able to talk about those things and saying, 'we have resources internally where we can refer you.'"
Whether Marmolejo provides support herself or she directs the player to Suber and Riise, the necessary information can then be passed to the rest of the team to provide awareness, which is especially important considering how much a personal matter can impact a player's performance. Salazar has seen it happen even with positive experiences, like a player becoming a father.
"Even think about an individual where their significant other just gave birth," Salazar said. "That's a new stress. We need to know about that because with what they just added on, their stress bucket is now overflowing. We need to look out for them and say, 'okay what is our normal load? We've just increased that load. Do we need to cut down just a little bit, especially like during the training camp periods?' We may not necessarily know all the details, but we know this player is going through something, so we may need to do other things to help affect the recovery."
Suber, now in her fifth year with the Bears after starting as the team clinician in 2020, has seen how the growth of the health and wellness team has impacted the players.
While Suber and Riise — who work with the athletes on performance goals, leadership development and fine-tuning the mental approach to football — are the experts in the mental health field at Halas Hall, the trust built between the entire staff over the last few years has given players a plethora of people they can confide in to discuss their mental well-being.
"At the very least, they feel our support," Suber said. "I've had guys tell me that have never met with me or have never come to my office, they're like, 'it's just good to know that you're here.' So sometimes it's not even about engaging in the resources, it's just at least knowing that the resources are there can provide some kind of comfort, some kind of security to know that if and when something pops off, I know where to go."
That support is exactly what players like Amegadjie have experienced during their tenures with the Bears. During his entire rehab process, Amegadjie remained in constant communication with Ngo, Tucker and Hitchcock. He also met regularly with Suber and Riise, both of whom helped him adjust to the brand new NFL lifestyle he was living in.
These resources allowed Amegadjie to put trust in the detailed process that had been laid out for him and gave him the opportunity to learn more about himself and his goals on and off the field. He spoke with Suber and Riise about finding his identity outside of football.
Without the team around him, none of that might have been possible.
"It honestly gave me a family away from my family," Amegadjie said. "I knew that I was being taken care of, and that there are people that are looking out for me and for my best interests and giving me guidance on things that I don't know about. Normally in life, your family can tell you if you're making the wrong decision or just give you advice and guide you on how to live your life. But my family and my friends have no clue what it is I go through in the building. So, they gave me a lot of comfort and really helped me to be able to try to focus on learning the playbook and getting my body ready and trying to get back to football."
