80 - Nolan Harvath: WVU Strength & Conditioning

Bio

• Current WVU Strength and Conditioning Coach
• Former Strength and conditioning coach at Glenville State University while serving as assistant athletic director
• Former Intern at WVU, working primarily with the football team where he assisted in all team lifts and run and broke down all strength and conditioning activities
• Harvath also served as a consultant for the University of Charleston baseball team from 2016-20, designing all strength and conditioning programs for the team. He tracked, monitored, and assessed all data obtained from each macrocycle.
• Harvath got his starts in high school serving as S&C coach for Morgantown and East Fairmont HS
• Develops the whole person
• Extremely Passionate

 

Notes

• Life is all about growing as a human and being who you are allows you to grow and be the best version of yourself
• Once a week staff meeting to go over the whole program and culture is a part of that
• Greatness from yourself before you can get greatness from someone else
• Respect yourself, your teammates, and others
• Representing 1.8 million people in WV
• Intent!! You need to have intent in everything you do 
• Trust yourself, your preparation, and your teammates
• In the weightroom you get to see each others sweat equity
• WHOOP bands that monitor load, recovery, sleep, and their strain for the day
• Live to fight another day
• Develop the athlete centered approach!
• Ask questions based on WHOOP data can open up great conversations
• The body cannot distinguish between athletic stress and academic stress
• Quality if movement rather than the quantity of weight on the bar
• The plasticity is great during the high school level and is so valuable at their age more than ever
• Force plate testing and movement test when they first get on campus
• General physical preparation (GPP) “tissue block” 
  • Circuit for two weeks to help with guys movement patterns and teach everyone and slow cook athletes longer than need it
• Its ok to regress the movement to get a better movement
• Have everyone on the same page so you can see where to make modifications
• You cannot be married to a exercise, you need to be married to a stimulus!
  •  
• Meeting the athlete where they are at to chase what our team needs and individualize to the players needs 
• There are some carry over in some of the movements, and movements is a skill, and if an athlete can practice it more they will be better at it
• Sprint based model with acceleration performance
• Thursdays are performance days - time to compete and post times
• Back map from when you need win a ball game
• 22 out of 36 PR the week of big 12 tournament
• Develop a relationship with them to trust when the conversations are real and they say they are sore and can’t work out
• The movement that made you sore, you should do it with less intensity
• We don’t focus on what can’t do, we focus on what we can do. Focus on the solution, not the problem
• We want athletes that want to find a way and find an edge
• Daily performance feedback
  • Grading on intangibles that every human has control of
  • 1-5 - color coordinated 
  • Gold
  • Navy
  • Gray
  • Existent
  • Resilient
  • Defiant
  • Difference between gold and navy is how you helped someone else, servant leadership, and buy into each other success
• You need to coach each athlete at least one exercise to show you care to show they are a human
• ABC - Always be coaching
• “Blue collar” jersey - old school, bloody knuckle jersey
• Consistency is the greatest gift of any humans
• Constant evaluation to earn the Iron Mountaineer
• Velocity based training during in season and depending on the athlete and what they can handle
• Sleep is the most paramount durign the summer with the long days 
• Some olympic lift and some don’t
• Quality of strength last +-30 days
• In season is lower volume higher intensity
• More weight and less reps and focusing of velocity of bar
• Fundamental movement patterns
  • Knock them out
  • Quality and execution of movement
  • 3 days a week
  • Progressive overload
• Gain knowledge
  • Eric cressey
  • Alex simone
• Simpler things savagely well
• Slow cooking the athlete!!
• Taking the small wins, celebrating the 5 lb PR just like the 100lbPR
• Velocity based training is a piece of the weight lifting program
• Velocity based training on a compound lift
• Sprint progression
  • Uphill running
    • Karaoke
    • Side shuffle
    • Sprints
    • Resisted 
    • Fly end runs
  • Tues - acceleration
  • Thurs - max velo
• Red flags of running
  • Arms crossing
  • Looks like swimming
  • Long swooping lever
  • Knees across the body
  • Hyper extended back  - do A march, A skip, boom booms
• Stop poles, and running 100 yards
• For every 10 yards we give them 60 seconds rest
• Starter recovery day
  • Don’t blow them up - get them moving, temp runs, 
• Training baseball players and take that in consideration, and meet them in the middle
• nolanharvath@gmail.com
•