BATON ROUGE — As efficient and seamless as LSU football’s new recovery center is in terms of layout and flow, it’s equally as complex, thorough and layered.

From standard treatment rooms for the players to now suites for cryotherapy, red light therapy, multiple rooms for various massage chairs, a nutrition department, weights, all along the way educating them on how to adequately take care and prepare their bodies, LSU head coach Brian Kelly and the program left no stone unturned among the more than 10,000 square footage in the team’s operations building on campus.

“It’s in an integral piece to the LSU operations center — it was the missing piece,” Kelly said. “We now know that this entire football operations building is a high-performance center.

“With this addition, we believe we have the finest operations building the country.”

The expansion project cost roughly $20 million, financed through the Tiger Athletic Foundation, and features all of the latest technology to allow LSU football players to not only recover from a hard day’s practice but also expedite the healing process for a number of consistent injuries that take place on the football field, such as strained muscles and more.

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“Everything is thought out,” LSU head athletic trainer Owen Stanley said. “This building is about recovery.”

Stanley took media members on a tour and showed all of the new devices at the players’ disposal. There’s massage chairs that relief lactic acid buildup. There are sleep pods that are designed to promote 20 to 45-minute REM naps with music, as achieving deep sleep following learning anything allows for a higher percentage of retention, he said.

Cryotherapy and red light therapy are all about cellular regeneration, helping LSU players bounce back faster on the cellular level.

“We’re taxing our student-athletes both physically and mentally every day, so the point of this is the get everybody’s body back at a cellular level back to status quo, or even better than it was before then when it went into that activity,” Stanley said.

Brain function was of high priority for LSU’s sports medicine staff as it pertained to the recovery center as well.

LSU now has zero-gravity saltwater beds, which Stanley has seen results of players who have suffered concussions not only healing from them quicker but also a decrease in chances of the player suffering from another concussion.

“It helps that brain healing a lot quicker and more thoroughly,” he said.

LSU receiver and returner Zavion Thomas said his favorite part of the new recovery center is the massage chairs.

“(The recovery center) impacts all of us a lot. You know, we have tough practices and after a tough practice, going in there and they have everything in there,” Thomas said. “There’s not anything not in there that we need. We love it.”

As the operations building now flows, players go from the various treatment stations to the nutrition bar, where LSU athletics director for sports nutrition Matt Frakes and his team do blood work the day guys arrive on campus as freshmen to begin the process of cultivating meal plans and supplement regimes that will allow them to perform their best.

Signs like “Feed the Beast” and “Fuel for the Work” are spackled all over the walls.

“We do sweat test and beta testing and a part of research and studies to make sure our players and how we’re improving their performance and recovery,” Frakes said. “We want to assess the middle point between athletic development, sports medicine and straight to the field.

“You always have to come to the center to know that you’re fulfilling the work required. We’re always educating.”

LSU has rows and rows of weight racks, dumbbells and medicine balls, among many other pieces of equipment for its players to use while working out. Director of athletic development Jake Flint teaches “S.W.A.T.,” or Spring/Summer Workout Accountability Team. These particular players hold themselves as well as others accountable for filling out wellness questionnaires, which Flint and Kelly use to track any given player’s progress on and off the field.

It all works hand-in-hand. From practice to recovery, nutrition and athletic training, each plays a role in the other innately.

In return, Kelly and LSU hope the new recovery options lead to healthier football players who thrive in any given situation on the field, because they're mentally and physically able do to what’s available every day.

“It allows us now to keep our players in a position where they can recover and we can get our players to perform at the highest level all year. That’s what this is about,” Kelly said. “We’re talking about the potential of 17 college football games (thanks to the College Football Player expansion), which is equal to an NFL schedule.

“The real focus here was recovery.”

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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: How LSU football's new recovery center helps players play their best