USC’s Nyck Harbor is changing his body for track. Why he’ll keep new look for football
Exactly eight minutes before he dug his white Nike spikes into the blocks for the 60-meter final, Nyck Harbor strolled to his bag sitting on the wall of South Carolina’s indoor facility.
He shed his warmup shirt, exposing a body built for a CrossFit commercial. One has to wonder what’s going on inside Harbor’s stomach, if all the muscle has banded together and killed the fat. He is 6-foot-5, 230 pounds with a chiseled eight-pack that peeks through even when he throws on his sleeveless track jersey.
As he transitions to track, Harbor is transitioning his body from football season. He’s eating less, eating healthier. He’s not worried about how much weight he can lift but how explosive he can be. The result is a leaner, faster Harbor who feels just as strong. As he runs down the track, he thinks about how much better he’s going to be on the football field next season.
Meanwhile, those watching him are thinking about never touching another carb. Let’s just say if Michelangelo was born 500 years later, tourists might be flocking to see the Statue of Nyck.
One only brings up Harbor’s sculpture-esque physique because his means for attaining it will make most of us want to hurl our celery sticks across the room and curse the genes and metabolism we were dealt.
“When I came to Carolina, I had never touched a weight,” said Harbor, not trying to be hyperbolic. “I was 230 (pounds) and when I touched a weight. I went from 230 to 245.”
Harbor, the South Carolina freshman who played wide receiver for the Gamecocks in 2023 and is now a sprinter on the USC track and field team, said he never needed to lift. Even in high school, Harbor said, he turned into a five-star wide receiver and one of the fastest prep sprinters in the nation without needing to participate in any weight-lifting regimens.
But there has to be some secret. Right? Must’ve been doing 1,000 push-ups a day?
“Nah, I didn’t,” he said.
Had to be on a great diet then. Protein and veggies?
“No,” he said with a smile. “A lot of bad fast food.”
“It’s just a gift,” he added. “I’ve never fully unlocked it but I’m going to.”
Harbor is already excelling on the track
The South Carolina freshman wide receiver competed in his second collegiate track meet on Saturday. The former heralded recruit arrived in Columbia as a football unicorn and a track phenom, winning state titles in Washington, D.C., and running the 100 in 10.32 seconds.
After a freshman football season at South Carolina, where he caught a dozen passes for nearly 200 yards and a touchdown, Harbor began training with the Gamecocks track and field team as it geared up for the 2024 indoor season.
“This is week five for him (after) coming in off the gridiron and he’s really adapted well,” USC track and field coach Tim Hall said Saturday. “He still has his football legs. … Once he gets into track shape, this kid is going to be one of the best in the country.”
During Saturday’s indoor meet, Harbor finished fourth in the 60, bolting through the line in 6.67 seconds — the exact same time he recorded in the prelims.
A little bit later in the 200, Harbor clocked the eighth-fastest time in South Carolina history (20.86 seconds), finishing third and not far behind the champion American sprinter Christian Coleman (20.67), who should be running the 100 in the Paris Olympics this summer.
“Everything (in the 200), it’s not really complex,” Harbor said. “You just have to get out and run and whoever is the strongest is gonna win. … (I) just wanna work my way down to Top 10, Top 5 in the nation so I can really compete and get titles for the Gamecocks.”
The speed. The raw power. The sheer spectacle of watching someone that big run that fast held up. But track is a sport built on details. Great races and awful races are determined by milliseconds. Harbor knows it. So, too, does Hall.
“Today in the (60) final, he just missed his timing,” Hall said. “When he took off, his arms did this (Hall pulls his arms up quick) and kind of picked him up and then they swung. It’s all about rhythmic swinging, timing so you continue with that acceleration pattern. Continuing with that horizontal velocity instead of vertical.”
Hall wasn’t shocked with Harbor’s time on Saturday. It’s an incremental improvement from his 20.97 last week at Arkansas and track is really just steady improvements The goal for Harbor and South Carolina is to run to peak during the SEC meets.
“When we put this together, he’s gonna be a top contender,” Hall said.
Added Harbor: “We just have to get more reps at it. As the season goes on and I get more reps, I’m gonna get it down.”
Track makes Harbor a better football player
A normal Monday for Harbor these days begins with a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call. He’s got football weight training at 6 or 7 a.m., depending on the week.
“He wants to be in the meetings. He wants to be around the football team,” USC football coach Shane Beamer said. “We had a 6 a.m. workout two Mondays ago that he didn’t have to be at because he wasn’t participating in it, but he came at 6 a.m. to be there with his teammates.”
Then he runs across campus to his BIO 102 lab, which keeps him in the classroom from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m.
After a one-hour philosophy class that lets out at around 1:20 p.m., Harbor heads to the football facility to check in with the coaches and go over whatever he missed from the morning. He’s been sitting down with new wide receivers coach James Coley to go over plays and film to “make sure when I step on the field, it’s like clockwork,” Harbor said.
He stays in there for about an hour before trekking over to track practice, which runs for almost three hours and lets out around 6 p.m.
Finally, after all that, Harbor heads home to shower and eat dinner and finish up any homework he’s got. But he’s still not done with football. Around 8:30 p.m., he said, he’ll head over to the football facility with a friend and catch passes from the JUGS machine.
“Probably catch 300 to 400 balls,” Harbor said. “Then going to sleep (around 10:30, 11 p.m.) and doing it all over again.”
He continued: “At first it was kind of hard, but now it’s just a normal day. I signed up for this. This is what I wanted and I’m getting the full distance of it.”
Harbor was speaking to The State on Saturday after what had been an exhausting meet that had Harbor inside the facility at 8 a.m. and there past 7 p.m. If there was any moment for Harbor to question why he was running track rather than focusing all his effort on potentially being an NFL football player, it was this.
And, yet, when asked why he runs track, Harbor doesn’t hesitate.
“I do need to run track,” he says matter-of-factly. “I say this because right now, I’m probably one of the fastest people in college football. Track really gets me in shape for football. So I’m coming into football more in shape than actual football players because we do more running. All you’ve got to do is add some pads, and that ain’t that bad.”
If anything, it seems, college track is teaching Harbor what peak performance feels like. Which is a crazy thing to say about a 6-foot-5 five-star athlete who looks like a fitness influencer and runs faster than 99% of the world.
When he arrived on campus preparing to play in the SEC as a true freshman, gains were the goal. Eat as much as possible. Lift as much as possible. Gain weight and get your body ready for punishment.
Track is more about explosions. It’s doing Olympic lifts and doing them with speed. The weight doesn’t matter as much. Neither does the muscle. It’s about health and nutrition and getting your body to the weight that allows it to move at its most efficient.
“I’m working down in weight to where I can finally be a track sprinter. Changing my diet. Drinking more water. Eating less,” Harbor said. “I see how my body feels now, so I’m going to keep this the whole time.”
Harbor said he expects to drop down to 225 pounds, then keep that weight for football season, which would be about a 20-pound drop from what he played at in his freshman season.
“I can be a better receiver at (225 pounds) than I was at 245,” he said. “I’m going to get a little smaller, but I’m still going to be as strong as I was when I left the field.”
This story was originally published February 6, 2024 at 7:20 AM.
