Nick Garcia is the strength and throws coach at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California. He has coached five CIF champions and 60 CIF finalists since 2003. Coach Garcia has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Kinesiology, he’s a Level 5 IAAF coach, and he holds CSCS and USAW certifications. He is also a faculty member with the Gambetta Athletic Improvement Network. Garcia was a two-time Big Sky Champion in the shot put in his time at Cal State–Northridge.
Coach Garcia is an expert in the Bondarchuk system of training. He goes in-depth on this method and how he uses it to program for his own athletes. Nick explains how to monitor an athlete’s pattern of adaptations to progress the method, and he compares various aspects of the Bondarchuk method to traditional methods and explains the differences. Coach Garcia discusses the employment of velocity-based training in his programming, including how he uses VBT to program cycles of barbell training and to assist him in his athlete readiness program.
In this podcast, Coach Nick Garcia discusses with Joel:
- How his programming has changed since adapting the Bondarchuk method.
- His thoughts on using parts of the method as opposed to the entire program.
- His insight into programming and applying the Bondarchuk method to track-only athletes.
- His methods to transition athletes using VBT, as well as what adaptations to watch for that signal it’s time to progress in load.
Coach Garcia has written multiple pieces for SimpliFaster: Click here to read them.
Podcast total run time is 47:57.
Keywords: Bondarchuk, throwers, velocity-based training, VBT, training cycle
