Inside the New York Jets’ revamped performance facility and player development strategy

EXCLUSIVE: The most important feature of the New York Jets’ next-generation Player Performance Center may be that no single feature defines it.

Jets owner Woody Johnson has invested in growing the facilities by more than double for this upcoming season, as the team looks to turn the page on the 2025 season and make strides in 2026.

“We are investing in an exceptionally dynamic, innovative training staff with experience designing and utilizing advanced performance systems to support our players. Our new facilities will be 250% larger, allowing us to increase training capacity and centralize strength and conditioning, recovery, and nutrition,” Johnson said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“We have already implemented state-of-the-art equipment in our temporary facility, granting our team access to some of the most advanced training resources in the league.”

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There will be new technology: vibroacoustic recovery pods, multimodal wellness chambers, pneumatic resistance equipment, computer-vision tracking and a custom-built, AI-powered player performance app.

But when Jets director of player performance Erik Korem describes the project, he repeatedly returns to a broader idea.

“We’re building a holistic health and human performance ecosystem,” Korem said. “We’re taking some big steps in our strength and conditioning, nutrition, sports science and recovery departments. The use of data and AI will be part of this, but I think it extends beyond that.”

That distinction is the center of the Jets’ Phase 2 renovation at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center. The team is not just replacing an aging weight room with a larger one. It is redesigning the way players move through the daily cycle of assessment, training, practice, fueling and recovery, all while giving the practitioners responsible for those areas a shared environment in which to work.

The planned two-story performance center will expand the former space by 250%, according to the Jets’ official construction announcement. Its four stated priorities are player performance, recovery, efficient daily flow and the integration of new technology. Dedicated zones will support strength, power, speed and mobility work, while expanded nutrition and recovery areas are intended to make individualized programs easier to deliver.

The investment is already affecting the current roster. During construction, players are working in a temporary training structure with a footprint more than 70% larger than the former weight room. The Jets moved equipment into the interim facility after mandatory minicamp, and demolition of the old space was completed in July. New equipment and technology have been installed in the temporary building rather than held back for the finished center.

That approach reflects an instruction Korem said has come consistently from chairman Woody Johnson, general manager Darren Mougey and head coach Aaron Glenn: The long-term project cannot compromise the team’s short-term preparation.

Korem credited Johnson for his investment in the facility, as they look to translate that investment into on-field results for the 2026 season.

“It just is a reflection of Mr. Johnson’s investment,” Korem said. “It’s only going to help them as individuals and as a team.”

From group programs to individual prescriptions

The promise of the new center is personalization.

Football teams have never trained every player identically; a 300-pound lineman and a 180-pound defensive back have different jobs, bodies and physical demands. Korem’s goal is to make those distinctions more precise. More frequent assessments, he said, can help the staff identify whether a player needs additional mobility, strength, power, speed work or a change in training volume. The team’s custom app is designed to help organize those inputs and deliver more individualized recommendations.

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“The more tools you have and the more appropriate data you have from a serial perspective, you can then develop more specific training programs and interventions for each individual athlete,” Korem said. “To me, that’s really where data collection and AI is going to help the field of human performance in general.”

The key word is “serial.” A force-plate test or motion-capture assessment offers a snapshot; repeated measurements can reveal how an athlete is changing across a week, a training block or a rehabilitation program. Korem said the Jets will expand their use of 3D motion capture, force plates and other telemetry tools to better understand movement and physical readiness.

That approach reflects a wider development in elite sport. A 2025 scoping review indexed by the National Library of Medicine described force plates as one of the most commonly used technologies for monitoring acute changes in athletes’ neuromuscular function. The practical value, however, depends on reliable testing and sound interpretation. Data is useful only when it changes a decision.

The same principle applies inside the rack. Computer vision can track a bar’s path and speed, while connected resistance systems can record ranges and angles and adjust loading as fatigue develops. This is part of a training method often called velocity-based training: Instead of prescribing work only from a previously measured one-repetition maximum, coaches can use the speed of the current lift to judge the quality of the rep and the athlete’s readiness that day. A systematic review of elite-athlete research found that velocity-based resistance training can support strength and power development, while also noting that protocols and results vary.

For the Jets, the technology is meant to sharpen the judgment of coaches, not replace it. The facility can capture more information, and AI can help sort and present it, but the performance staff still has to decide what matters for a particular player on a particular day.

The project also fits a broader organizational move toward analytics. Mougey said in July that the Jets are using AI to automate time-consuming work and help staff digest large amounts of information in scouting and personnel. In that context, the performance app is another expression of the same idea: use automation to make information easier to act on, then leave consequential decisions with football and performance professionals.

Designing the recovery arc

Korem describes training and recovery as an arc. Players must first rise into the highly activated state required for lifting, practice and games. Then they must come down from it.

“The recover part is how quickly can they go from being in this highly active state, or what we call a sympathetic state, to getting in this rest-and-digest state,” he said.

One of the center’s most distinctive tools, the TERSA SAVA Sound Pod, is designed for that transition. The memory-foam pod surrounds the user with music and low-frequency vibration. TERSA describes the system as combining spatial audio with vibroacoustic frequencies to encourage deep calm. Korem said players have been able to enter a relaxed state quickly in the pod, making it a useful option after demanding work.

The Ammortal Chamber takes a different approach, stacking several modalities into one session. The manufacturer lists red and near-infrared light, pulsed electromagnetic fields and vibroacoustic sound among the chamber’s components. Korem’s interest is partly logistical: If a player can use multiple recovery modalities at once, the intervention may fit more easily into a tightly scheduled NFL day.

These systems are the most futuristic pieces of the renovation, but Korem presents them as additions to a much larger recovery program—not substitutes for foundational work. Training load, sleep, hydration, nutrition and the ability to downshift after practice still form the base. The devices expand the menu available to players and staff.

Nutrition as performance infrastructure

The same individualized philosophy carries into the kitchen.

Under director of performance nutrition Carmen Spencer, the Jets’ nutrition staff works with team chefs to provide protein, carbohydrates, healthy fats, fruits and vegetables in forms players will actually want to eat. Korem described menus that might include salmon, several chicken preparations and action stations serving items such as poke bowls.

The objective changes with the player and the moment: A whole-grain option may make sense in one meal, while a fast-digesting carbohydrate may be more useful immediately before practice.

“What undergirds all this is: What fuels performance?” Korem said. “What are the things that we need to deliver to the players to help their bodies recover, to help fuel in-game performance and practice performance, and hydration?”

It is an area in which the organization has something to prove. In the NFL Players Association’s 2025 team report card—based on responses from players on 2024 rosters—the Jets ranked 29th overall. Players gave the club a C-minus for food and dining, a D-plus for the locker room and a C-plus for the weight room. They were more positive about the nutritionist/dietitian category, which received a B-plus, and 87 percent said they received an individualized nutrition plan.

The Jets have not publicly characterized the renovation as a response to that survey. Still, the sequence is significant. Phase 1, unveiled in 2025, replaced the locker room with 92 custom lockers and added a redesigned wet area, a larger sauna and a barbershop.

Phase 2 directly addresses the scale and function of the old weight room while expanding nutrition, recovery and performance services. Whatever the motivation, the work creates a visible standard against which players can judge the club’s promise of improvement.

The hardest work still happens outside

For all the technology going into the building, Korem is direct about the most difficult and important workout of training camp: practice.

The purpose of camp is to prepare players for game demands. Depending on position and role, that can mean building toward 65 to 75 snaps while reaching the necessary speed and volume benchmarks. The weight room supports strength, power, speed, endurance and mobility, but it cannot become the main event once football work intensifies.

“Think about the weight room on the field,” Korem said of practice. “There’s qualities that you’re developing on the field. What’s happening in the weight room is you’re supporting” those qualities.

That is also the most realistic way to understand what the Player Performance Center can—and cannot—do. No recovery pod, data platform or force plate can guarantee wins or prevent every injury. What an integrated center can do is give coaches and practitioners more chances to identify needs, individualize work, recover efficiently and keep players available to develop their football skills.

Korem ultimately measures the investment less by the sophistication of the equipment than by the quality of the system around it. Johnson, he said, has supported not only new tools but the hiring of practitioners who know how to use them.

“You can have tools, but do you have the people behind those tools?” Korem said. “It’s the whole ecosystem of the people and the resources that make any type of building come to life.”

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That may be the defining ambition of the renovation. The Jets are building a much larger performance center, but the competitive bet is on something harder to photograph: better information, shared more quickly, turned into better daily decisions for every player.