CHARLOTTE — NFL training camps are infamously hard and draining. Long days, longer weeks, and the most intense practices teams conduct all year. Pads are popping during a string of consecutive days, with coaches demanding ultimate physicality.

Janelle Teal knows she could get through an NFL training camp with ease.

"With ease," she laughs. "So easy, so easy."

It's hard not to believe her. Teal has seen up close what it takes to get through an NFL training camp, thanks to her husband, former Carolina Panthers safety Quinton Teal. She's also been through some of the most rigorous training in the United States military and flew through the gauntlet.

Teal served in the United States Army for five years, from 2011-2016. She served four years Active Duty as a Sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division, in an airborne field artillery regiment. Her unit, as she puts it, "worked on weapons and we jumped out of airplanes very often."

During that time, she became Air Assault certified, which meant rappelling out of helicopters at a couple of hundred feet, conducting what is called sling loads, often delivering weapons and artillery…down the rappel rope, at 200 feet.

"Considering all the training that we do, it's fairly safe," Teal says with the confidence most can only dream of having. "As long as you are locked in and paying a lot of attention to what you're doing."

Janelle and Quinton met while in school at Coastal Carolina. She finished her education at the University of South Carolina, and while there, decided to join the Army as a way to pay off her student loans. As Teal went on to become a member of the Panthers, Janelle went through basic training, where she excelled so much, superiors suggested Airborne school as a next step.

"I took the challenge without really thinking like that, I would have to jump out of airplanes. I just took it as a challenge of like physical fitness," Janelle Teal recalls.

And it was there she went through a training process that gives her the confidence to know she'd dominate an NFL camp.

"They basically just run you to death," she shares. "You have to run everywhere you go, you run for weeks straight, you run to get your chow, your breakfast, lunch and dinner. We will run over half a mile to get our meal, we would have five minutes to eat our food, you would have to run immediately after eating, stuffing all this food on as fast as possible. You would have to run all the way back to your barracks area. For three weeks straight."

There's something to be said for someone who will face down a challenge just to see if they can do it. It's a testament to the kind of self-discipline and self-motivation few have and even fewer can tap into time and time again. But that's what Teal did in the army.

"I tell people all the time, like joining the military was one of the greatest things I've ever done," Janelle says. "It just kind of like, taught me how to tap into my own potential and to do hard things. And made me realize, kind of like what a badass I could be.

"For me, it really was just like a challenge of whether or not I could pass the school and then as a byproduct, I realized that I had to jump out of an airplane. It was pretty fun though."

Fun is certainly one way to describe it.

Quinton and Janelle got engaged towards the end of her first round of active duty. When it came time to decide whether to re-up or join civilian life, she elected to come home and marry her longtime partner.

Today, the couple have two young daughters. Janelle remains incredibly active, running a race in Dallas on Saturday and then hopping straight on a plane so she and Quinton can be in attendance on Sunday, when the Panthers take on the Chiefs, and honor those who have and are serving in the US military, for the Salute to Service game.

It will be a special day for the Teals, both getting to honor something that meant so much to who they were and became.

"When I was in the military, that's where I learned how important it is to be a part of a team," Janelle explains, "and like the camaraderie that you have with my soldiers and my up-line, everyone, the people are what makes your experience so great.

"I never played any sports growing up. For me, the closest thing that I have to a team experience was when I was in the military."

And if Quinton and Janelle run into any of his old teammates, he'll issue the same good-natured warning he does to everyone.

"You don't have to worry about me," Quinton laughs. "You have to worry about her."