Nick Maier hopes to fill a gap in the Hunter region by providing a Youth Academy to inspire and help young athletes and teenagers.
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The Youth Academy, based at Warners Bay, has been a long-term dream of the Eleebana 27-year-old, who experienced a lack of guidance and support as “an overweight or borderline obese teen”.
Maier believes every teenager “deserves the opportunity” to improve themselves and has set up the Youth Academy based on that premise.
“There’s two core values that I’m building the Youth Academy on and that’s to teach kids that any obstacle they face in life can be overcome and that their potential is nearly limitless,” Maier said.
“When we can show them that they can do things with their body that they didn’t think possible then they start to question, ‘What else can I do in life that I didn’t really think I could do?’
“I played sport my entire life, pretty much everything under the sun, but I always battled weight.”
As a teenager, Maier played representative cricket for Newcastle and baseball for Newcastle and NSW Country before getting an opportunity to visit America in a training camp with the then Florida Marlins in 2006.
“That was where I saw the dream of becoming a professional athlete sort of slip through my fingers because I had a really, really poor mindset over there; I thought I’d made it,” he said.
“When I didn’t make it I attributed it to my weight because everyone else there was looking quite the part.”
What followed was a string of diets, supplements and misinformed advice. He lost 35 kilograms in four months then battled anorexia, orthorexia and depression.
It was from that dark time in his life that the Youth Academy was born.
Maier studied a Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle and has spent the past decade honing his skills as a strength coach.
He has also researched the importance of having a strong mindset.
“It’s about so much more than the training,” Maier said. “The training helps change the mindset but the mindset helps change the training but mindset is the most important factor by far.
“It’s the foundation for everything, even for adults.”
It was while travelling through Europe in 2013 that Maier developed his own stronger mindset.
“When I was in Europe I found out I had failed a subject in my course and I only one more chance to pass,” he said.
“I stayed longer and it was while I was over there I had that mindset shift that I really knew what I wanted to do now.
“That’s when it all changed and I set the goal that I’d have my own space. I didn’t know what it would look like, but I always wanted to do something with kids. Until then I didn’t think it was possible.
“I wanted to give these kids a place that’s pretty much their own.”
The Academy will include small group strength training sessions, nutrition advice and mindset techniques for young athletes and teens of all fitness abilities.