Jonathan Brainard joined the Mountaineer Football staff as the director of sports nutrition in April 2025.
At West Virginia, Brainard develops and oversees the nutritional needs for the football student-athletes. He counsels individuals and groups on daily nutrition for performance and health. He researches the most recent scientific evidence and turns it into practical sports nutrition recommendations and tracks and documents the outcomes of nutrition services. He serves as a food and nutrition resource for the program, providing education and maintaining professional competency and skills required for practice.
Brainard also develops and counsels in hydration protocols, addresses nutritional challenges to performance, evaluates nutritional supplements, develops all menus and oversees fueling and refueling stations.
Brainard came to West Virginia after serving as a special forces’ performance dietitian for KBR Inc., for the past year. He provided care and was the regiment dietitian for four battalions. He developed and implemented individual nutrition strategies for more than 500+ special operations personnel, enhancing recovery, mission readiness and performance under extreme circumstances.
He also developed, designed and implemented comprehensive guidelines and strategies for fueling, hydration and recovery during travel and long work hours.
Prior to KBR Inc., he served as the vice president and director of nutrition for NU-U Food Company for two years, was the director of performance dietetics at Wyoming for six months, assistant director of sports nutrition at Tennessee for two years and was a performance nutrition intern at Georgia for a year.
Brainard is a certified registered dietitian, a certified specialist in sports dietetics and a certified strength and conditioning specialist.
The Terre Haute, Indiana native, graduated from Indiana State with a bachelor’s degree in exercise science in 2016 and a master’s degree in dietetics in 2018.
