LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Soaked in sweat after lifting weights Thursday at Halas Hall, defensive tackle Dusty Dvoracek walked into the locker room at Halas Hall with a big smile on his face.

Plagued by injuries throughout his first three NFL seasons, the 2006 third-round draft pick has fully recovered from a torn biceps tendon that forced him to miss the final four games last year.

Dusty Dvoracek led Bears defensive lineman with 40 tackles at the time of his arm injury last season.

“My bicep feels great,” Dvoracek said. “My whole body feels great. It was somewhat of a long rehab, but it wasn’t very strenuous. My bicep is back to full strength. I have no restrictions whatsoever. I don’t wear any type of brace, nothing. I’m as strong as I was. I’d say I’m 100 percent.”

Dvoracek intends to remain that way, though he realizes he has very little if any control over injuries. At least the law of averages should be on his side after he missed his entire rookie season with a foot injury in 2006 and then suffered a season-ending knee injury in the 2007 opener.

“It’s frustrating and I’m sick of it, and that’s why I feel this is going to be a year of injury-free football,” Dvoracek said. “It’s obviously not the way I wanted to go about my career in Chicago, and as frustrated as I’m sure the fans and the media seem to get with me, I get just as frustrated.

“But that’s over. That’s already happened. I’ve been hurt. I’m healthy now and that’s how I’m looking at it. If I dwell on it, nothing good’s going to come of that. I’m just excited that I’m to a point where I’m healthy and ready to go and I have a great coach like Rod Marinelli to make me become the player that I’ve felt I always could be and that I’m going to be, so I’m just excited about that opportunity.”

Dvoracek has enjoyed working with Marinelli, who is considered among the NFL's top defensive line coaches.

“He’s the best teacher of football I’ve ever been around in my life,” Dvoracek said. “He’s so knowledgeable and he does such a good job of explaining what he’s talking about to players and breaking everything down. He tapes every single thing we do, goes over it and teaches us how to be better players.

“He hammers the pass rush like nobody ever. We work pass rush every day over and over. Not that the coaches before hadn’t done a good job. I just think he’s amazing.”

At the time of his injury last season, Dvoracek led all Bears linemen with 40 tackles. He registered 17 tackles in a four-game span, but acknowledged that he then struggled in back-to-back losses to the Titans and Packers.

“Everybody has a few bad games here and there,” Dvoracek said. “But as a whole, I felt that I’ve played at a pretty high level in the NFL when I’ve been healthy. One thing I take as a positive is that I’ve started 13 games in three years. I haven’t taken three full seasons of the pounding.

“I finally have tape of me in the NFL that I can go back this offseason and look at, critique myself and see how I need to get better. In years past, I haven’t had that. I’ve had no body of work to look at and say, ‘OK,’ this is where I’m weak, this is where I can get better.’

“You can look at it as a negative, but I’m going to take it as a positive and I’m going to take what I’ve done and get better and go from there. Obviously I have to stay healthy this year, there’s no question. But if I stay healthy, I think I can be a really good player.”

While others seemingly have written Dvoracek off because of his injury history, he has confidence that he’ll return as a regular contributor in 2009. For incentive, he has two Chicago newspaper articles taped up in his locker. The headline of the first one reads: “Bears future cloudy for injury-prone Dusty Dvoracek,” and the second is titled: “Dvoracek’s season ends early again.”

“I could probably pick 100 out,” Dvoracek said. “Some people have already given up on me and I come in every day at work and I glance at it. I haven’t given up on me and I don’t think that the organization has given up on me. 

"I love proving people wrong. So when people write negative things about me and say I need to be let go, that’s motivation for me. I’m going to use that to fuel the fire.”