NFL Trainer Harrison Bernstein: Finding a Way to Measure the Great 'Intangible'

Harrison Bernstein is a trainer to some of the best athletes in the world.  He was a starter at Johns Hopkins University, where he became a three-time All-American football player and Conference Defensive Player of the Year in 1997. 

Upon graduating college, Harrison played Arena Football and coached his high school football team while becoming certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist.

At Hopkins, Harrison was fortunate to have been a disciple under Bill Starr. Starr, former strength coach of the Baltimore Colts, authored The Strongest Shall Survive and Defying Gravity, which are regarded as the original masterpieces among strength and conditioning professionals. Through Starr, Bernstein learned the best methods to coach Olympic weightlifting and power lifting.

Bernstein became the Assistant Managing Director of the Parisi Speed School, where he coached many athletes of all ages and sports, guiding them to reach remarkable heights.

In 2004 Harrison partnered with Georgetown strength-and-conditioning coach Augie Maurelli to create SiSu Systems. Together they built a web-based multi-relational database that managed the strength and conditioning progress of all athletes at Georgetown. Eventually, Randolph Macon College and Johns Hopkins would use the system as well.

While improving the SiSu System, Harrison was simultaneously providing speed and strength instruction for all sports at Georgetown; football and basketball at Johns Hopkins; lacrosse, men’s  and women's basketball, baseball and softball at Catholic University; and the Washington Redskins.

Based on the fundamentals learned at Georgetown and SiSu Systems, he founded Satori Sports to bring the best coaching techniques to sports and fitness. These techniques stem from continual education and the influence of some of the best coaches in sports and fitness.

In 2006, Bernstein began teaching in the Master’s Program of Exercise Science at George Washington University. He teamed up with Patrick Rahm to spearhead the growth of Satori Sports. Since 2006, Satori has grown to coach many pro athletes, local high school athletes and fitness enthusiasts.

As Satori Sports grew, he accepted a full-time coaching position with the Washington Redskins. Over three years with the Redskins, Harrison learned some of the best coaching techniques from some of the great Redskins coaches.

I talked to Bernstein after a discussion with Ian Thomas, a linebacker from Illinois. Thomas had an incredible pro-day workout where he put up some really phenomenal numbers, which he attributed partially to his work with Bernstein. I wanted to know what Bernstein had done to get Thomas to produce on such a high level.

Bernstein walked me through the process. Thomas approached Bernstein for some training assistance and some help in preparing for his pro-day workout in early March.  Bernstein instantly knew that Thomas had a lot of potential as an athlete and wanted to highlight his strength.

Bernstein and the staff at Satori Sports did an initial evaluation—an in-depth look to really get a profile of who Ian Thomas was.  Bernstein said they wanted to learn “his limitations due to injury and his current physical ability. And who is Ian Thomas as a person?  What is he good at?  Right off the bat the response of his nervous system really stood out to us.”

With Thomas, Bernstein wanted the numbers to spark interest because “when people start looking at you, they end up paying a little bit more attention to your film.” He also said, “If we can just pull up the numbers to pique interest, then they really look at your film.”

Bernstein knew that the entire approach was to get Thomas to stand out somehow. From experience, he knew that he needed to highlight Thomas’ nervous system, and they went to train him to be as maximally explosive as possible.

Explosiveness, according to Bernstein, is a mindset.  He said they would do “specific exercises that would enhance explosiveness and the speed of his [Thomas'] muscle contraction.”

He continued, in detail, to explain to me what the process was. "The way we went about it," he said, "the entire time was teaching his brain to make his muscles twitch faster.” It was at this point that I had to stop for a moment to understand what I had just heard. I was very interested in hearing more about this.

He explained, “There’s a psychology behind it. So what we say in all of our workouts, if you want to get faster you have to be faster. And the nervous system, the whole muscle coordination and contraction starts in the spinal cord and in the brain. So literally, through some special coaching techniques and the things we would say and do, we would almost kind of convince him to be faster and tap into an untapped potential that we saw in him.”

He then talked about selecting the correct exercises for Thomas to do.  He told me that it wasn’t just the exercises, though, that it was the coaching behind the exercises that really accentuated his explosiveness.  Bernstein says that the area where you can most evidently see is with Thomas’ vertical jump. 

During his initial evaluation, Thomas had a 31.5” vertical jump.  Bernstein worked with Thomas for nearly six weeks. Right before the Illinois pro day, Thomas jumped 39” in training with Bernstein. That is a staggering number that put Thomas amongst the elite football players at any position in the country.

What follows is a list of Thomas’ numbers on the day of his evaluation and his numbers at the University of Illinois pro day.

• Bench Press:  two before training with Bernstein; 32 at pro day
• Vertical jump: 31.5” before training; 37.5” at pro day
• 40-yard dash time: 4.75 second before training; 4.67 second at pro day

Bernstein believes that Thomas was on track for significantly better numbers in the vertical jump and the 40-yard dash as he produced better numbers during training, but he strained his hamstring before his pro day.

All of this reminds me of the movie “The Matrix” and the scene where Morpheus gives Neo the choice to take the red pill or the blue pill. Bernstein, playing the role of Morpheus, offered Thomas an alternative, and Thomas took the red pill, to see “how far the rabbit hole goes.”

In the end, Thomas changed his body composition, got leaner, shed some body fat and wound up having a lot more energy. It ultimately allowed his nervous system to really begin to fire.

Bernstein says “I got him to really believe in himself and see his true potential and then convince him.  I showed him how to mentally become faster. That’s where explosiveness starts, in the brain and in the spinal cord, and then as he was able to control that, he had the mindset of being explosive. And once he really encapsulated that, that’s when his numbers took off.”

Bernstein and Satori Sports offer a detailed, personalized, very unique training system based on who a person is, and what kind of an athlete they can end up being.  It is a tailor-made approach that will change for each player and makes the things that Bernstein does so impressive.  The numbers speak for themselves.

For those that are skeptical of what this all means, let’s look at some successful players that have done things that scouts and teams simply did not see coming.

• James Harrison: four-time Pro-Bowler, two-time Super Bowl winner, 2008 NFL Defensive Player of the Year
• Antonio Gates: eight-time Pro-Bowler, NFL All-Decade Team 2000s, 593 receptions, 7783 yards, 76 TDs
• Wes Welker: four-time Pro-Bowler, three-time NFL Leader in receptions, 650 catches, 7226 yards, 32 TDs
• Tony Romo: three-time Pro-Bowler, 20,000+ passing yards, 149 career passing TD, 96.9 career passer rating
• London Fletcher: three-time Pro-Bowler, NFL leader in tackles 2000-2009 (1244), Super Bowl Champion
• Arian Foster: two=time Pro-Bowler, 2010 NFL rushing champion, 4411 total yards 2009-11, 29 total TD
• Tom Brady" seven-time Pro-Bowler, three-time Super Bowl Champion, two-time Super Bowl MVP, two-time NFL MVP, NFL All-Decade Team 2000ss, 300 career passing TDs, 39,979 career passing yards, 96.4 career passer rating

At the end of the say, it seems like Bernstein has found a way to measure the all-important “intangible.” If I had as much on the line as these players do, and I was willing to work hard to improve myself, I wouldn’t hesitate to get into contact with Harrison Bernstein.  The numbers he got Ian Thomas to produce are a testament to who he is as a trainer and who Thomas is as a player, not to mention who they are as people.

Scott Bischoff is a Contributor for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand.