07/29 — Eric Mangini welcomed his players back to practice this morning, then explained to reporters at his midday news conference why their scheduled two-a-day workout from Monday was canceled.

His message to media and players: It may have been a day off from practice, but it wasn't a day off, and it may or may not happen again this camp.

"Guys go from the off-season program to a break, then they come back and jump into very heavy, high-intensity exercise and all the contact," Mangini said of the Jets' recent research. "Between fatigue and all the elements that go into it, you have a lot of injuries really early in camp. We looked at the different things related to recovery and planned the day out accordingly."

There were classroom sessions in which the players reviewed the first six practices of camp. And there were a variety of recovery-related physical activities the players could participate in.

"Soft-tissue massage things, the hot tub/cold tub protocol that helps get the lactic acid out, Pilates with a concentration on stretching, to elongate the muscle and take the pressure off the muscle," Mangini detailed. "These were all things we found through research to be very helpful to athletes under the same type of pressures in the same type of time frame.

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

My good friend Dave Hutchinson from the Newark Star-Ledger wondered aloud that "This seems like the kinder, gentler Eric Mangini" and wanted to know what happened from his first two years at the helm.

"Like did I get hit in the head?" the coach said, adding that when he announced this unexpected (to them) change of plans Monday morning, "Shaun Ellis said, 'OK, what's the punchline?' And Thomas Jones was looking for Ashton Kutcher, you know, from 'Punk'd.' "

Mangini smiled at the question from my other good friend, Erik Boland of Newsday, about whether this canceling of a double session "will happen every X number of days."

"It's still at the discretion of the head coach," the coach said. "To whom much is given, much is expected. Everybody has to uphold his end of the bargain on this one."

But the elements of the program, Mangini said, "are all designed to get the team to the best possible physical and mental levels for the start of the season."

Footnote: The time for this morning's workout was 1 hour, 55 minutes, which is also the average of the first seven practices.