Training days: the NFL's offseason workout programs are in full swing, and teams are using everything imaginable--from 'The Beast' to martial arts to steel chains--to give players the physical edge they'll need this fall. (NFL).

Maybe so. But when it comes to building bigger, stronger football players, there's still room for the kind of innovation that has less to do with software and more to do with hardware--the Home Depot variety, that is. Pick up some scrap pieces of lumber or steel chains and you have the latest training devises in Denver and Chicago. Place a couple of trash cans at each end of a 40-yard field and you have the setting for a workout in Nashville. Or just face off against a martial arts instructor in Cleveland--no special equipment necessary.

Each team has its own variations on the best ways to increase strength, endurance and flexibility. The only constant is that ...