Who belongs at your athlete's table — and how do you build it? In this conversation, I sit down with Nick Valenti, a registered dietitian and founder of a sports nutrition practice working with athletes from youth level through the professional ranks, to talk about one of the most important — and most overlooked — questions in athlete development. Most families think about individual pieces. The hitting coach. The strength program. The mental side. But rarely does anyone step back and ask who's at the table, who's talking to each other, and whether the right team is actually in place. Nick has been at those tables. He knows what it takes to earn a seat — and what it takes to keep it. He knows how to work alongside coaches, parents, and other professionals to build something that actually serves the athlete at the center. He also knows what it feels like to be the athlete. He was a catcher at Mercy College and Queens College, tore his ankle on the first play of his college career, transferred, and tore his labrum a week before the season. Those years in the rehab room didn't just lead him to nutrition — they taught him how to think about what athletes actually need. If you're a parent trying to build the right support system for your athlete — or a high school player wondering who should be in your corner — this episode gives you a clear, honest, and experienced answer.
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Introduction
01:30 – The #1 challenge Nick faces working with young athletes: consistency, not knowledge
03:30 – How Nick structures the initial intake meeting
06:00 – Getting athletes to buy into the "why" behind the plan
08:00 – Experimentation and the A/B test approach to building habits
10:00 – Building trust — and playing mediator between athletes and parents
12:00 – Earning your seat at the athlete's table
14:00 – The counseling side of being a dietitian — and why it matters more than the science
18:00 – Parents texting at 2am — and what Nick does with that
20:00 – Nick's background as a college baseball catcher at Mercy College and Queens College
24:00 – Two serious injuries and how they led him to nutrition
27:00 – Florida State, interning with Eric Cressy at CSP, and spring training with the Blue Jays
30:00 – Why young athletes can spot someone who doesn't care — and why it matters
33:00 – Starting with the school day: building structure where it already exists
36:00 – Adapting to weekends, tournaments, and travel
40:00 – Progress isn't pass/fail — it's an investment
43:00 – A Division I catcher, one flat week, and Nick's response: "And?"
46:00 – Finding motivation for the next goal after goal A is achieved
51:00 – Autonomy, competence, relatedness — and why all three have to be present
54:00 – What mental performance and nutrition have in common
55:00 – Nick's final message to every high school athlete: don't wait
🧠 SHOW NOTES
In Episode 92, I sit down with Nick Valenti — registered dietitian and founder of a sports nutrition practice — to talk about what it really means to build the right team around a young athlete.
Nick calls it the table.
It's the sports coach, the strength-and-conditioning coach, the mental performance coach, and the dietitian. Everyone talking. Everyone with a role. And at some point, each person has to be willing to step into the lead — and trust the others to do their job.
Nick has earned his seat at a lot of those tables. And this conversation is about what that actually takes.
He was a catcher at Mercy College and Queens College. Tore his ankle on the first play of his college career. Transferred. Tore his labrum a week before the season at his new school. Two years in the rehab room, watching PT guys work, asking questions, learning how the body responds to stress and recovery. That experience didn't just change his career path — it changed how he thinks about athletes and what they need.
After Florida State, an internship with Eric Cressy at CSP, and a spring training stint with the Toronto Blue Jays, Nick built a practice that now works with athletes from youth through the professional level.
We discuss:
Why consistency — not knowledge — is the real challenge in working with young athletes.
How Nick earns trust before he builds a plan — and why the first few weeks are never about the scale.
Why athlete autonomy is non-negotiable. If they feel like you're just another adult telling them what to do, they'll tune you out, too.
What it means to play mediator between athletes and parents — and how Nick navigates that without losing either one.
The counseling skills Nick developed as a dietitian — and why he believes they're 10x more important than the nutrition science itself.
How autonomy, competence, and relatedness show up in nutrition the same way they show up in mental performance.
Nick also shares the story of a Division I catcher with a pro future who walked into a weekly meeting devastated — because his weight stayed flat for one week. After months of consistent gains. Nick's response: "And?"
It's a small moment. But it says everything about what it means to truly be in an athlete's corner.
If you've ever wondered what the right support system actually looks like for a developing athlete — and what it takes to build one — this episode is an honest, experienced answer to that question.
🤝 CONNECT WITH NICK VALENTI
📷 Instagram: @valenti_nick
🌐 Website: 👉 https://limnt.com/
Michael Huber (00:00.972)
Hey Nick, what's going on?
Nicholas Valenti (00:02.467)
What's going on? How we doing?
Michael Huber (00:04.972)
I'm doing great, man. It's always good to see you. Thanks for taking a little time to join me on the podcast here. So we've never done this before. We've talked a lot, but we've never talked on camera. hopefully this works out as well as it usually does when we're behind the scenes. First question I have for you is, what's your biggest challenge as a dietician working with young athletes?
Nicholas Valenti (00:19.535)
You
athlete nutrition, sports nutrition for high school athletes, registered dietitian for athletes, fueling young athletes, athlete development, how to build a support team for young athletes, nutrition for high school baseball players, sports dietitian for youth athletes, how to get a teenager to eat better for sports, mental performance and nutrition for athletes, Nick Valenti dietitian, LIMNT nutrition, athlete's table, buy-in for young athletes, self-determination theory sports, autonomy competence relatedness athletes, mental performance coach for athletes, parent support for high school athlete, baseball player nutrition, college baseball preparation, athlete confidence and consistencyNicholas Valenti (00:29.551)
I mean, it's consistency. You know, our job as dieticians is to educate and kind of give them the structure to address some holes in their diet, their performance plan, their recovery, right? You know, we can give a high school level player every tool in the world. You know, when to eat it, what to eat, what are some substitutes, you know, but the buy-in.
the foods in the fridge, you these kids aren't food shopping, you know, these kids aren't kind of packing their bags all the time. You know, it's how do we get it to where it's the easiest way every day to be repeatable? You know, and it takes buy-in from the parents, it takes buy-in from the kids, you know, sometimes it takes buy-ins from the siblings, you know, like there's a lot of stress put on some of these high level guys or girls and we need to just make sure that whatever we're doing.
is as easy and as repeatable as possible.
Michael Huber (01:31.382)
Okay, yeah, and that's very consistent like with what I see. like, what are some of the things, some of the things that you do as a dietician to sort of build those systems on top of the educational piece?
Nicholas Valenti (01:45.785)
So how everything starts with us is we usually start with an hour initial meeting. During that initial meeting, we kind of break it into two halves. The first half, the first 30 minutes is we go through the foundations of nutrition. Macronutrients, micronutrients, hydration, timelines, and how to build your plate. We're going to give this kid a lot of information, a lot of resources. But if they don't understand why we're giving the recommendations,
It doesn't usually follow through, you know, so we have to give them a little bit of education on day one. And then that second half is where we kind of address what their day to day looks like. How much they're traveling, what's their sleep schedule, what's their travel team look like, you know, how intense are their practices? How long is the bus ride? You know, when do they have lunch? We talk through every little thing. So when we put a plan together for them, we can know exactly where they are and what they can have equipped for that moment or that meal.
Once we move on from that plan, then we kind of go into our weekly meetings. know, our weekly meetings consist of adjusting that plan. You know, those are usually 30 minute follow ups. First 15 minutes, we go into, hey, how was your week? Were our goals met? How did the tasks go? You know, is there anything we need to switch? The next 15 minutes is we usually cover a new education topic a little bit more in depth. You know, so when they're going through our program,
I want to make sure that they're as educated as possible within the nutrition field. We might only see some of these kids for a few months. We want them to leave with the structure and the education. So long after they hang up their cleats that they know how to eat and they know how to structure their day around food.
Michael Huber (03:33.132)
Okay. All right. So what are some of the ways you explain to them? Why? What I mean by that is like sort of what would be some of the reasons why you would tell them this is a good idea to eat the way that I'm kind of describing to you? Like what are the outcomes? Like how do you sort of get them to buy into that? Why?
Nicholas Valenti (03:54.159)
You know, so every kid, every parent, every family comes to me with some sort of goal. You know, it could be weight gain, could be weight loss, it could be a performance goal. You know, a lot of guys are coming now, I want to throw harder, I want to lift more, you I want to be faster. You know, so letting them understand that what we put into our body impacts how much muscle we put on, how we recover, you know, fluids handle lot of our flexibility or cognition, you know.
Michael Huber (04:07.405)
Sure.
Nicholas Valenti (04:22.721)
If we're not properly fueled, can't perform at the top level. And we need to make sure that every day they step on the field, they're at 100 % of their capabilities. And the biggest uphill fight we have is a lot of these kids under-fueled. And if they're under-fueling every day, they're leaving a lot of performance on the table. It could be a five, 10 % of what they could have got. Over a month, over a year, that's a lot of development we're leaving on the table.
Michael Huber (04:30.973)
to change.
Nicholas Valenti (04:52.481)
And we usually hammer that in, in those first few weeks together. So they understand why they have to work in that extra snack, why they have to work in that extra meal, you know, why they have to hydrate in the morning when they wake up or why they have to pack stuff for school that other kids don't. know, young athletes need to eat a lot more than their peers, you know, and sometimes they don't want to, you know, and it's kind of explaining to them, well, you came to me with goal A, you know, this is how we reach goal A, you know, goal B.
we could talk about it another day and what kind of path we could take to that objective as well.
Michael Huber (05:27.255)
Okay, so how much experimentation is there in your process? So what I mean by that is trying one new food or trying like, I want you to eat at these times throughout the day, do it for one day and let's see if there's a difference, right? Almost like an A-B test. How much of there is it? I wanna say coercion, right? But you're, cause I do this a lot in my work was like, go try this one thing.
Nicholas Valenti (05:37.227)
yeah.
Nicholas Valenti (05:53.7)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (05:56.215)
and see if it makes a difference. And when they come back to me and say, yes, I did that one thing you asked me to do, it made a difference. Now I'm willing to do it again, or I'm willing to do the next thing because I have proof versus, just go do all these things. And now it seems overwhelming. Like how much experimentation is there in your process?
Nicholas Valenti (06:04.526)
Right.
Nicholas Valenti (06:09.081)
Yeah.
Nicholas Valenti (06:13.741)
a lot. I would say that every plan, there is like levels to what we need accomplished. There is, hey, this needs to happen. This should happen. And let's try this. You know, like that's kind of how when we're writing up these plans is how we attack it. You know, you'll talk to kids and they'll be like, I won't eat anything green. I hate vegetables. This is all the foods that I will never eat. You know, and
Sometimes you gotta give to get, know, so in the beginning we steer clear, you know, and then we'll start slowly kind of trying to push in some additional habits. You know, I don't like to push so hard in the beginning because you we want to establish some trust and like you said, they have to see some difference. You know, so I, my normal process and like every kid's different, but like, I like to hammer down the school day first. You know, it is basically eight hours.
where they have the same structure every day. So most kids now pack lunch, right? You I like for them to include two additional snacks. You know, I usually do a high protein snack in the morning before lunch and a high carb snack after lunch, you know, so they're usually fueled up before they got to practice. You know, if they're not bringing fluids to school, bring some sort of fluid. You know, like that's usually what I hammer down first, right? And then once that's kind of established is how do we...
How do we win the after school meal? Or how do we win the after school pre-practice snack? And then we start moving towards the end of the day. Because normally when they get home, most of the families that come to us, their parents are already implementing some structure. Because if they've gotten to me, they know that it has to be something that they're putting value into. So lunch and dinner when they're home are usually solid. But when the kids are alone and making their own decisions, that's where it can kind of.
steer in the wrong direction. that's usually the first place we start.
Michael Huber (08:13.61)
Okay, yeah. And listen, anytime somebody, and this goes for, this is true of all of us as human beings, forget about what age we are, right? Like sometimes we're skeptical of trying a new thing if we don't know how it's gonna help us, even if somebody who's really smart tells us that's the thing, if you do this, you're gonna get that result, right? So there's a lot of, you didn't say this, but I'll say it because I think we both know this through our conversations and our work.
There's a lot of relationship building in that, right? So talk about the relationship side of what you do in terms of getting to know these kids, like getting them to buy into the idea that you're not only a smart guy who's gonna help them with their food, but that you really genuinely care about them so that they can achieve their goals.
Nicholas Valenti (08:59.203)
You know, and it's always the parents that are like super, super pushy in the beginning of like wanting those results. And like, when I talk to them and I try to give them that, that buffer of, listen, you know, the first few weeks we're talking, you know, we can't be putting value into the scale, the metrics. You know, I, we need to establish some rapport, you know, because I will be the first kid cheering for your son or daughter as they win their competition and get their first hit.
You know, but they need to understand that I am not the food police. I am not somebody that's going to reprimand them for not doing the wrong thing. You know, I am like an educator, you know, a counselor, you know, somebody that they can lean on, you know, when they're struggling, you know, I'm not the guy that's going to say, Hey, you didn't do this today. Go run laps. You know, I'm not, you didn't get your shakedown today. You know,
we need to do X, Y, Z tomorrow to make up for it. There are days where I have my higher level guys where I'll be a little bit more stern or like, what are we doing here? What's the point? But in those first few weeks, I think of myself as a buffer sometimes between the kids and the parents. And a lot of our intro meetings happen to full family. I'll be sitting with mom, dad, the child, and maybe a sibling or two.
Michael Huber (10:17.421)
Yeah.
Nicholas Valenti (10:26.383)
You know, we talk about the structure of the house, the foods in the house, you know, building out the scenario for success. usually it's, I'm playing mediator.
Michael Huber (10:37.87)
Like I was going to say that like in my work, like I'll build in parent family check in meetings. And I've been in meetings where it's either the parents and the athlete who are not seeing eye to eye or sometimes the parents who are just there not seeing eye to eye mom and dad, right? But I think ultimately what you said there is important, right? Like the athlete has to have some autonomy in the process, right?
Nicholas Valenti (10:56.301)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nicholas Valenti (11:06.702)
Yes.
Michael Huber (11:07.574)
in order to be motivated. If they feel like they're being forced to do something and you're just another adult in the process forcing them to do the thing that their parent wants them to do or their coach wants them to do, they're gonna tune you out too, right? So being that buffer is really important to be like, hey, like I get it. I understand. I'm not gonna beat you over the head with this. I'm gonna be a little bit more gentle and understanding because I want you to be the one.
who sees the difference and buys into it and feels like you have a sense of control over the process versus feeling like I'm just somebody else telling you what to do. So like, I guess I'll go back to what you just said there. Like, if you're being that buffer and the parents want you to be something else, how do you handle that situation?
Nicholas Valenti (11:53.465)
I pick and choose who I work with, you know, and it's, you know, I, there are times where I've had to explain to the parents that they're bringing me in to do what I do, not what they want to do, you know, and I'm going to get their kid to a healthy point, you know, to get them educated. And, you know, sometimes it takes a little bit for them to build up trust too, you know, like the parents need to trust me as much as the kids, you know, and I try to give them that full explanation in the beginning of my process and like,
Michael Huber (11:55.694)
Okay.
Michael Huber (12:05.359)
you
Nicholas Valenti (12:22.669)
what it takes to kind of get into the point where I'm a part of their table. You know, and like, I know me and you have talked about this extensively is how do you build your child's table? You know, it's going to be their sports coach. could be their strength condition coach, their mental performance coach. You know, now they're introducing registered dietitian. You know, everybody is talking at this table, right? You everybody is telling the parents and the kids what they think is the most important.
Michael Huber (12:30.404)
Yes.
Nicholas Valenti (12:52.417)
know, and I've told you before is everybody has their time and place to have that lead role, you know, and by the time they come to me, you know, I need to have that lead role for a few weeks. You know, they need to give me some autonomy and what's going on. You know, I mean, of course, you know, we're cloning in on every decision, you know, everything that's going like through is run through them. There's not something I would recommend to the kid that's not approving, you know, but I am going to give them my truest opinion on where they're at and what I think should happen.
But I'm not going to get a recommendation from a parent that they want to do. if I don't feel that it's the right thing, I am not going to recommend
Michael Huber (13:31.514)
Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's consistent with the kinds of things that I say. Listen, the thing that I was thinking about when you were giving that answer, it's very similar. My situation is very similar, where parents will come to me with a perceived challenge that they perceive. One, it doesn't always match the perception of the athlete in terms of what their challenges are. And then it's, gosh, I lost my train of thought. Right?
Nicholas Valenti (13:55.321)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Huber (14:00.911)
But then it's like, oh my God, I'm going to have to edit this out because I completely got stumped there. But that perception of, hey, this is what I think should be. Oh, this is what I was going to say. Sometimes parents get really emotional. I don't know if you get this. You'll get an email or a text message from a parent who's panicked or freaking out about something that's happening in their kid's lives. And then you'll never hear from them again because they just wanted somebody to be.
Nicholas Valenti (14:30.937)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (14:31.001)
a sounding board, right? They want to go to you and be like, John, your Mary didn't have their shade today. And maybe there's something going on in their life or the kid's life that's actually driving that. But they're saying it's the nutrition piece that they're like panicked about. And then you never hear about it again. They just come, they dump it on you. Right. You feel like I got to, I got to help fix this. And then you never hear from them about it again. like,
I guess I'm sort of speaking out loud here, but do you get that? Do you get people who kind of lean on you in that way emotionally, where sometimes it's not even about the nutrition, it's about other things or like they get really like sort of focused in on one thing and then they never hear about it again.
Nicholas Valenti (15:11.207)
I get more text messages at two in the morning from parents than maybe I don't know how my life ended up like this, you know, but I do, you know, and like some of my favorite text messages are Johnny was supposed to drink 100 ounces of water today and he only got 70, you know, you know, and Johnny put on one pound, one pound this week, you know, what are we doing? And I'm like, well, he did these 10 other things.
you know, or, you know, we were traveling this week, you know, kind of like making them feel like they accomplished it. You know, it's not always going to happen in one time. And a lot of the goals, like I know we were talking about when they come to me in the beginning is sometimes I'll bring a ninth grader who's let's say 5'10 and he's 120 pounds. And I'll be like, what is your goal? And they'll be like 2'10, you know, you know, and like, I don't know, like, all right, well.
let's talk about like a three month goal, you know, and then it'll be like 190, you know, and they just have no understanding of what the structure is supposed to look like. And that's not their fault. You know, that's not their fault. You know, it's just the education behind it. When you can get to the point where the parents are the cheerleaders, the support staff, and
Everything else is just making sure the food's in the cupboards, making sure the stuff is ordered, and kind of making sure the kids are always, the products that they need or the food that they need are always around, and then the kids are making the decisions on when and why. That's when we know we've had success. And that's when you can kind of reach out to the parents and just say, listen, everything that we've kind of worked towards is gonna happen now because they're doing it. It's gonna be two to three pounds a week for the next 10 weeks.
I can tell you right now, can hang up the phone, it's good, it's done. They understand. And that's when the parents will hit me with some of those, he got sick, he broke his hands, does it change? Does all these things come into play and they might have an issue they wanna just voice and put out there and I'm happy to be that person.
Nicholas Valenti (17:33.165)
You know, like it gives me more insight about the relationship that we have. You know, it gives me more insight on if they're stressing about this, that means we're pretty good on that front. You know, like it gives me a better insight of what's going on. So I like to be that person.
Michael Huber (17:35.449)
Yuck.
Michael Huber (17:45.913)
Yes.
Michael Huber (17:50.433)
And again, analogously, I think it's very similar, right? Like having those insights and being able to sort of take that in is really helpful in terms of managing the relationship with the athlete to understand. like one of the things that when you were when you were kind of giving your answer, I was thinking to myself, we we when I say we us adults generally tend to focus on the negative, right? Like what are the deficiencies? What are you doing versus hey,
What are all the good things they're doing? What's all the progress that they've made? Maybe it hasn't been perfect, but they've come a long way, right? They've come from this to this. Did they follow the blueprint to a T exactly? No. But if we can look at where they started to where they're at now and the behaviors they've adopted and the change in their mindset or their change in their appearance or their change in their performance or whatever, just the way they feel about themselves, right? Let's focus on that.
Right? Like let's focus on the strength. Let's try to focus on the good things because that's going to give the athlete more fuel to keep going and be like, Hey, I feel really good about myself. Yeah. I didn't get it perfect, but I'm going in the right direction. Right? Yeah.
Nicholas Valenti (18:59.567)
It's not a pass fail, it's an investment. It's something that's gonna take a lot of time to kind of show success. It's not an A, it's not an F, it's an investment. And it's gonna take a lot of time to kind of show value. But if you keep putting a few cents in here and there every day, when you look up in a year, it's gonna be a lot of money. And that's kind of what we try to get across. And for parents, it's a lot easier to see sometimes.
Michael Huber (19:11.951)
Mm-hmm.
Nicholas Valenti (19:28.371)
The kids are very, it's very hard for them to see long term, you know, but it's tough, but it does take a little bit.
Michael Huber (19:34.074)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (19:37.649)
Yeah, but being able to help them stay patient and reinforcing the good things that they've done so that they want to keep going and they don't, they don't quit. Right. And this is going to be a, a little bit of a question out of left field, but this is really a genuine curiosity because I can tell you have these skills is when you're going through your training as a dietitian, is there a counseling element? Yeah, I could see the counseling skills.
Nicholas Valenti (19:43.897)
They're
Nicholas Valenti (20:02.872)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michael Huber (20:06.884)
training coming out, right? Like that, the things that you're talking about are not just about having knowledge, they're about being able to sort of counsel people through these situations, like, which I have that training as well. So I think it's really important. I think it's, it's important for people to know that about somebody like you and you specifically, like how important being that counselor is important in the process of success.
Nicholas Valenti (20:16.751)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nicholas Valenti (20:28.367)
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I usually give this kind of conversation of what's the difference between a nutritionist and a dietitian. You know, a dietitian is a medically protected title like an MD or an MP. You know, we went through school in all walks of chemistry, bio, and we're trained to kind of handle how to impact your body around disease states with food, how to handle medications with certain foods. You know, we go through a good piece of counseling as well.
whether it's motivational counseling, whether it's handling somebody, going through a tough time and trying to get that education piece across. You know, my specialty is sports. You know, this is what the lane I chose to go into, but those counseling techniques I would say are 10 X the power than the education behind nutrition. You know, I tell people all the time, know, nutrition is not rocket science for some of these kids, but it's just getting them to get behind it and do it. You know, like I said before, it's just
consistency, you know, and I think that the education behind it leads to consistency.
Michael Huber (21:33.284)
Yeah, so again, I've been sort of taking this tack, but I do try to do this for people who are listening is like, what you're describing is very similar to what I experienced as a mental performance coach, which is to say, there's a lot of really smart mental performance coaches. And most of us all learn the same things, right? We're taught the same skills. We're taught about self-talk. We're taught about imagery. We're taught about goal setting. We're taught about all this stuff, motivational theories. But the ability to understand
people, specifically young people who are very different in developmental sense. They think differently, they learn differently. And being able to connect with them is usually the biggest indicator of success, right? They buy into you, you understand them. I had a girl last night that I work with who's a freshman athlete in high school. And she said, my mom, she's really trying to help me she's really nice, but she doesn't understand sports. She doesn't understand why I'm so competitive, right?
Nicholas Valenti (22:32.143)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (22:33.283)
that genuine disconnection and understanding is often the difference between success and failure. Because you want to be seen. I have so many athletes who tell me, I just want to be myself. I don't feel like I can be myself. Right? So like that ability to let them be seen and to find those things in themselves and show up in the world that way is important. I would imagine that's the same as with nutrition, right? Like being a dietitian, like, hey, let's find the thing that works for you.
but it also works scientifically. But it doesn't have to be what I tell you to be. We can find a process. We can find a food. We can find a way that works for you so that you're achieving your goals, but it's done in a way that is, you know, that it's supported by evidence.
Nicholas Valenti (23:19.683)
Yeah, and I would talk about it's like it takes time. You know, I was cracking a joke earlier before we started about, you know, some kids have come to me and give me a laundry list of foods they won't eat. They won't touch the color green, you know, like, and of course, we need to include a good amount of vegetables. And course, we have to include different types of foods that are whole foods, you know, but sometimes in beginning, it's hey, like, what do like to eat? You know, like, let's eat more of that. You know, like, let's find more stuff that you feel comfortable with.
Michael Huber (23:46.83)
Yes.
Nicholas Valenti (23:49.299)
What's your pregame routine? Okay, let's just increase it a little bit. Let's pull it back a little bit. And then as we start to kind of build on and find some successes, yeah, then we'll introduce the quote unquote healthier options. Finding that fiber, finding those vegetables. That's a big part of what I do here too. It's not for the bottom line of performance, but it's to give that over encompassing education piece on they should be able to make these decisions for their whole life.
Michael Huber (24:19.331)
Yeah. So we haven't talked about this yet, but like, can you talk about your background as an athlete, as a college baseball player and how that influenced what you do now?
Nicholas Valenti (24:30.103)
yeah, so I grew up on Long Island. I played baseball at West Isop High School. I had the opportunity to get a nice scholarship to play as a catcher at Mercy College. I went to Mercy, loved my time there. First game ever in college. Went for a fly ball behind a home plate. Complete got caught, snapped my ankle. Basically tore everything in my ankle besides my Achilles. You know, so I spent that year in the rehab room.
going through the process of what led me here, what kind of rehab looked like, and started to really fall in love with the process. know, like I love the PT guys, the AT guys, you know, and I was thinking like, all right, at the time I was studying cybersecurity and finance, you know, wanted to do something big and bad in the city, you know, that was kind of my aspirations. And that year my coach was let go, you know, so at the end of the year, you know, didn't know if I wanted to go back, wanted to transfer.
Michael Huber (25:17.806)
You
Nicholas Valenti (25:29.547)
One of my buddies was playing at Queens. He kind of pressured me to come over there. So I transferred to Queens. Had to switch my major because they didn't have what I wanted. So I picked some finance econ thing that I wasn't in love with. Started playing ball again. Had a pretty decent fall. Was feeling really, really powerful. know, like feeling good at the plate. Feeling like I was getting my footing back. A week before the season, I doing my labor. You know, so now I'm back in the rehab room.
Now I'm at a new team, you know, was kind of uncomfortable transferring into division at the time. It was a little weird, you know, as the NCAA, the rules were a little wonky around it. So just because my coach left, gave me the opportunity. You know, that coach at Queens went to bat for me with the NCAA and now I'm hurt. You know, so that kind of made it little weird for me. Spent a lot more time in the PT room and started working, you know, like now I had to start getting a job, you know, start doing other things.
My cousins at the time had a supplement store. I started working at the supplement store and one day a lady walked in and Told me she was a dietitian. I had no idea what the dietitian was. Legitimately no clue. Never heard of one before thought it was a fancy way to say nutritionist You know and started asking her about what she did and she told me that she helped people in hospital that Couldn't feed themselves. She was helping put tube feeds in, TPNs, you know, and I was interested in it
you know, and I was interested in a way that I can have my own practice, take insurance and like go through all that realms. Switched my major, you know, finished up Queens was right about when COVID was going like happening. So I basically graduated my last semester online. Started trying to figure out how I wanted to tie it into sports. So I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn looking at dieticians. Hey, where did they study? What were they doing? You know, how did they get to where they were? Florida state.
became a clear number one spot for me. You know, I had a really good chance to go down there. I got accepted, got into their DI program and had the opportunity to work with a lot of their sports teams when I was down there. Football team, beach volleyball, soccer, you know, I was able to see a bunch of different sports and starting to like hone in my craft. While I was down in Florida State, I took an internship with Eric Cressy at his facility in Florida. So I had the chance to kind of study the strength and conditioning side at CSP.
Nicholas Valenti (27:55.834)
You know, and I went in there and not trying to come out as a strength coach, but kind of how to learn to talk to strength coaches. You know, what I, what I'm saying is the lineup of what they're doing in the gym, you know, and I wanted to figure out their terminology, their wording and the thought behind their program structure, you know, and it really gave me a good opportunity to do that. Going through, like I spoke about earlier is becoming a dietician. You have to do clinical hours and rotations. So like I said, I did a half my time in a hospital.
and then I had opportunity to kind of pick a place where I could specialize. I was able through Florida State to kind of get an access to the Toronto Blue Jays. So I spent a spring training there with the Blue Jays, kind of working on the minor league side and interning with them, studying under their RDs and kind of seeing the ins and outs at the highest level. From some of major league guys to the minor league guys and the education and kind of the role that RD plays in pro sports. And...
I basically finished that up, came home, took my test to get credentialed and I started working with a couple of my buddies who had some gyms on Long Island just doing nutrition packages, pairing it on, working with some baseball orgs, you know, and decided to open up a practice. You know, my practice nowadays is basically split half and half between adults handling GLP-1s, handling medical nutrition therapy, handling peptides, hormones.
And then the other side where I kind of run is the performance side, you know, running the youth athletes, professional athletes. You know, I have kids from eight years old to professional athletes, you know, and we really focus on the education piece. Like I've been trying to just keep advocating is you can give a kid a plan. You can give a kid a PDF. You can give a kid a 12 week process, you know, but is that going to help them longterm? You know, and I think that's what's been our separation factor is that and the accountability aspect of
the RD or we always pair on an additional coach to kind of check in on them day to day from their app or from texting, kind of really build that in and out relationship of somebody's always with you to support you. And we've had a lot of success with that. And thankfully, we've just continued to grow and add on new RDs, add on new graduate students. And I mean, I love my job. You I really, I really enjoy it. I love going to work. I love working with these kids. Yeah.
Michael Huber (30:18.287)
I know you do. Yeah, I know you well enough to know that. And I think that that is, it's really important, right? That maybe there are some people out there who can do their job and not have that love and passion for it. But I think it is really, especially work when you're working with young people, you know, this as well, if not better than I do is like, they could spot a phony a mile away, right? Like you can't imagine how many conversations I have with kids about their coaches.
Nicholas Valenti (30:39.472)
yeah.
Michael Huber (30:45.933)
and how they sort of identify that this coach doesn't really give a shit frankly about me, right? And they know it, right? And so they know when you care and they know when you don't care. And that makes such a big difference. Does it, I'm curious, does it matter? Do you feel like it matters to the athletes that you work with that you were an athlete? Does that come up a lot? Like, that a differentiator or is it not a big deal?
Nicholas Valenti (31:12.515)
Sometimes, you know, like a lot of guys put value into it. Some guys don't some some girls do some girls don't you know, it's really case dependent But sometimes yeah, you have to kind of relate to them, you know, like you have to relate to that Listen, I was in your position. I was doing what you were doing and you know this worked for me This didn't you know, and then I try to get across that just because I did something doesn't mean that you should do something You know just because that kid on your team does this every day does not mean it's the right procedure for you, you know and
Usually it could be a good conversation starter, but I try to pull back and separate everybody. I don't want to bucket somebody in the same... Because like you said before, they need to be seen and heard. And if every time I'm having a conversation, I'm like, this is what I did, they're not going to want to hear it.
Michael Huber (32:02.319)
Yeah, 100%. Yes. And that is that that's actually a really good point you make. And I've seen that before firsthand where there are coaches who are really good coaches that care, but they talk a lot about themselves, right? This is what I did. And the kids tune it out because it's the there when you're 16 or 17 or 15 developmental, you're the center of the universe. Why they also have a hard time relating to coaching.
Nicholas Valenti (32:24.651)
Yeah. It's good way to put it. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Huber (32:28.611)
Yeah, they have a hard time being epithetic to coaches who have kids and jobs and families to feed and decisions to make that are really hard and all they can think about is how does it affect me? Right? At the same time, if you're the coach telling you, hey, I did this and I did that, that's got nothing to do with me. So what do I care? So I think being self-aware enough is really important. So I want to go back to what you were saying before, because we didn't really like dive into it. And I kind of want to kind of take the conversation, finish out this way.
is you talked about the school day. I thought it was a really important and smart point about we start with the school day because the structure is already built, right? We know when we're getting up, we know when we're gonna be in school, we know when we're gonna eat, and we work around that, right? Like it's already set up for us. But then kind of taking that next step forward and transferring it to a weekend or a game day or a tournament, when that structure is different, Schedules change, fields change.
weather changes, we have more discretion in how we use our time. How do you sort of work in that? Because like as we kind of, going into baseball season, right? We're both baseball guys. We're gonna go into the summer and we have travel tournaments and all sorts of sports. How do you sort of take that like starting place with the school day structure and then start to adapt it to more uncertainty?
Nicholas Valenti (33:47.248)
The first question I will ask and it's usually to the parents is when do the kids wake up? You know, because you start your day for school 630 to 715 every day, right? You know, but most of these kids wake up at 1030 on the weekends, right? You know, unless they're playing a game and they've already missed breakfast. They've already missed their first snack of the day. You know, now they have to go through the normal routines, a little bit more of a time crunch, you know, so.
Usually the plan will shift. I like to kind of keep the structure of the plan. So a lot of the kids will start with, we break our plates into levels, depending on the levels, how much kind of carb sources or protein sources you will have. Level three is our high days. So most of the time the weekends are our high days. So a normal weekend could be like three level three plates. It could be two to three snacks.
One may be a protein snack, one might be two carb snacks. And it's very similar to what the school day looks like, but now that the time blocks move back. And that usually means that some of those late meals could be happening really late at night. And as the kids become more more dialed in, we get their sleep schedule to be a little bit more repeatable. That 1030 wake up, we try to push it to nine o'clock.
Now we need to put more time back in the day and that's usually kind of how we lead into it. I am a big proponent of our weekly meetings is ending the meeting by packing your bags, you your snack bags. You know, for school we could pack your five snack bags, put it in the fridge, you know, every day you grab it with your lunch and you're out the door. You know, on the weekend it's a little bit more of we're going out tonight, we're going here or there, but I still try to get like one or two bags in the fridge.
you know, to kind of give them some structure of all else fails that they still have these few snacks, you know, and trust me when I say that the kids will take accountability of the weekends a lot quicker than we would think, you know, because they don't, they don't want to waste the five days of hard work and blow it on the weekends, you know, and I think it's funny because my adult populations, it's a total all the way around, you know, like they spent all week working so hard and then the weekends, just, yeah.
Michael Huber (36:06.351)
The cheat meal mentality.
Nicholas Valenti (36:08.225)
Yeah, you know, like that's that's kind of how it goes. But the kids are totally opposite. And they think it's more time to work. And, you know, it's usually the time where they get to shine, you know, where they I mean, we didn't talk about a lot, but like during our, our, my process is like, the kids have to start to cook, they have to go to the grocery store, you know, like they have to. Yeah, and like, yeah.
Michael Huber (36:30.127)
I love that. think it's so critical. No, seriously. They're seeing it from the ground up. It's not just being handed to them.
Nicholas Valenti (36:37.815)
Yeah, and that's when we kind of put those blocks in. So like, we'll make a game out of it. We'll grade it. We'll give them opinions on it. Sometimes we'll make their brothers and sisters eat it. We'll try to make it little bit of a competition, like you said. All these kids that are coming to us are usually super competitive. So gaming the system usually leads to better success.
Michael Huber (37:03.993)
Yeah, I think that's really cool. Right. And that's frankly, something I think about something I struggle with in my work is like, how do I make it more fun? How do I make it gamified? How do I make it so that they feel like it's more interactive and fun and you know, like versus doing like a job, like, I got to go do this. Right. Because, but I think you're right about what you said initially, which was kids are really good about
Nicholas Valenti (37:20.867)
Yeah, it's not work. Yeah.
Michael Huber (37:32.996)
follow through once they know that it works and they know why they're doing it. We don't give them enough credit for execution, right? We assume that they're not going to do it. I think they just need the, the, the, the S the system needs to be set up. The circumstances need to be set up. The roadmap needs to be set up when you give them the road map and they understand why they're following the road. They're really good at follow through.
Right. And I think we, we, that's where one of those areas to go back to the beginning of the conversation, like really being able to, like, I, I go through this a lot with the athletes that I work with when they hit a bump in the road and they struggle or something really goes bad. All they can think about is the bad thing. And I make sure that I say, Hey, listen, let's think about where you started and where you got to, you need all the, you deserve the credit for doing all the hard work and making all this progress.
And one setback, while it feels really bad, is not an indication of how far you've come and it's not the end point. Right? It's the same with food, right? Like we might have a bad weekend. We might just step in a ditch, but we can recover from that. Let's learn from that and let's either make an adjustment in the routine or we don't need, like you said, we don't need to change the routine. We just can keep going and not focus on the fact that maybe we were
We didn't do what we were supposed to do for one day, right? And not beating ourselves up with it and just saying, hey, okay, I learned from it. Let's make sure we don't do it again or let's figure out how we change the system so we don't do it again. And I think that's really important because once they feel like they're a failure, now it's like, well, I'm gonna throw it all out the window and we don't wanna throw all that progress out the
Nicholas Valenti (39:19.799)
I had a meeting right before we got on this. I have a Division I player. is, looks good for him to have a pro career, right? You know, we've been putting weight on him, putting strength on him, and we're probably like week eight in, and he's been somebody that's two to three pounds every week, religiously. You know, and he comes to me this week and he's like, head down, shoulders down. You know, this is the kid that's usually telling me about every 12 things he did in the day, you know.
one of those kids you gotta tell to slow down. And I'm like, what's going on? He's like, my weight stayed the same. And I was like, and? You know, like, does it matter? And he was like, well, I mean, yeah. And I'm like, well, you're two exams this week. You traveled home to see your friends. I go, you came back, you, your team won X, Y, Z. I was like, you really telling me you think you had a bad week? And he's like, no. You know what mean?
Michael Huber (40:17.828)
Yeah!
Nicholas Valenti (40:18.563)
Yeah, like he thought I was going to come in there and kind of give him the works on like what we didn't do, you know, there's a lot of other pressures on your body, stress, sleep, recovery, success, you know, and they do impact kind of your daily day and your values, you know, so it was very funny, you know, such a high functioning player, you know, that just looked like the world ended and he had such a great week and
Michael Huber (40:35.823)
What?
Nicholas Valenti (40:46.415)
had to spend basically the first 15 minutes like building them back up. And by the end of it, you know, like then he's ready to run through a wall, you know, like I can guarantee you next week, it's not going to be, you know, that number is going to move.
Michael Huber (40:57.583)
Yeah, there's a lot of important stuff in there, right? One is you can only control so much. Sometimes your body doesn't cooperate. Sometimes circumstances dictate that you're not going to be able to replicate the ideal things that you need to do, right? Maybe there is an exam. Maybe there's travel. Maybe there's something going on and you can't sleep as much as you need to. Not because you're neglectful. It's because circumstances, there's a there's reasons and there's excuses, which I tell athletes all the time.
Nicholas Valenti (41:01.263)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (41:27.255)
If there's a reason, like give that reason some credit if it's an excuse that you could have done something different, right? But like what you're saying reminds me of working with two pitchers who train at RPP, right? Like, so we have sort of those, common relationship who came home in the winter after fall ball and their velocity was down at the same, the same week. And I'm like, okay, my God, I'm at, you know, I'm at this and I should have been at that. And I'm like, well, okay, one, you just got through the fall.
you're at the same time of the year, like, hey, maybe there's something going on. Like, let's maybe it's just a bad day. Let's see where the velocity is the next time you throw. And sure enough, the next time they went out and through the velocity was back up to a more acceptable normal range in their mind. The lesson in that is sometimes we just have a bad day. Sometimes we just have a bad week and it bounces back just because, right? Versus if I have two bad days in a row or I have two weeks where don't gain weight,
Now we might reassess the process and say, do we need to make an adjustment because it's now happened more than once versus it was just a bad day. I'm not going to beat myself up. I can accept it. Let's just keep doing what we're doing because we've been gaining two to three pounds every week for seven weeks. Now in week eight, we flatten out. It's like going to the gym. Sometimes you hit a plateau and you just got to work through it. It's not the end of the world as long as you're mindful of what you need to do to work through that plateau. Sometimes there's nothing different.
Nicholas Valenti (42:55.695)
100 % I had this player he's gonna know when I'm talking about it, but like so he Yeah, I'm calling him out because this kid is great He's gonna do really great things and he's been with me for I mean over a year and half now. He's put on 50 plus pounds. He's gotten my dad this he is one of the hardest working kids I ever worked with he's hitting the ball XB lows up. He's a catcher, you know his
Michael Huber (43:00.111)
You're calling him out without saying his name.
Michael Huber (43:14.159)
That's amazing.
Nicholas Valenti (43:23.471)
His velocity was the number that he didn't see take up the way he wanted. You know, every day was, he'd come in and it was work. Whether we were training together or doing nutrition, it was work and it wasn't the same fun or same hangout or same kind of vibes. And I remember grabbing him like right before he started the season, I said, call me when you smash a ball into the gap. I go, tell me how much fun you're having. And you know, like week one in starts tearing the baseball.
You know, my arm feels good. I'm throwing harder. Everything is great. I can't believe how much it like the jump took. You know, like you said, it was one week, one instance where he wasn't himself and it was getting into his head. like, you know, I, I sometimes I just want to like get in front of them and say, listen, you have one good day. You know, I'd rather you ride the good day than the bad day. You know, like let that good day drive into the next week.
You know, and every time you have that bad day, just remember this feeling of, it takes one at bat. It takes one pitch. It takes one gun guy at second base. You know, and then we're back on top of the world.
Michael Huber (44:31.085)
Yeah, well that's in essence you've described my work in a nutshell, Everything is our brains are geared toward to focus on the negative. We can do all that great stuff and we expect that we should be able to do it. And then as soon as there's one negative or sub power performance, we put all the emphasis on that like, something's wrong. What if I'm not good enough? What if whatever.
Nicholas Valenti (44:35.115)
You
Nicholas Valenti (44:43.257)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (44:59.755)
And that takes us into the, into the ditch and we stay there versus like, Hey, even if it was my fault, that one bad instance happened or that one bad at bat or game happened, it's, it's not going to stay that way. Right. Let's bounce back from it. Let's go back to what we're doing. We're here for a reason. It's, it's really hard, but it's just, that's the way the human mind works. so when you're coaching athletes, counseling them, whatever you do, right? Like that ability to help them.
give themselves that grace and show them that, there's so much good stuff that you're doing here and focus on that as much as you can. Let's find a way to keep the focus on all that positive stuff you're doing versus there's that one bad day and it seems like the end of the world and it's not. And as a former baseball player, you probably were in that situation more than once in your life.
Nicholas Valenti (45:51.16)
I was that guy. Yeah, of course. know, and that like, that's when you would lean on it a little bit. You know, I think that's the moment where you kind of give your, Hey, listen, like I, I understand, you know, like you've, you've done everything we've asked of you. You've shown up, you've done the work, you know, and then that value is still not there. You know, yeah, now that could take a lot. You know, you spent a lot of time working towards that goal, you know, and
Michael Huber (46:00.559)
Yes.
Nicholas Valenti (46:21.281)
Not seeing it the second, the first time is tough. You know, I would kind of throw this back to you and ask your opinion on, you know, once they accomplish a goal, you know, and sometimes it is that 50 pounds, 70 pound goal, you know, getting a kid to that point, it's like, what's next? You know, switching the goal to something new, maybe it's body composition, total muscle mass, you know, flexibility or
forced production. No, that's usually when we go and graduate into that next level. finding motivation for the secondary goal is usually a little bit harder. Like in your opinion, like I'd like to throw it back on you is like, once goal A is accomplished, do find it's a little bit challenging to get goal B?
Michael Huber (47:12.919)
That's a good question. think what's hard are time horizons, right? So what I mean by that is short term versus long term. Meaning, if it took me three months to achieve goal A, there's probably A, a little bit of fatigue, because I know how much hard work is going to go into starting it over. And it's easier to sort of take your foot off the pedal. It's also hard to connect goal B to
Nicholas Valenti (47:21.327)
Okay. Yeah.
Michael Huber (47:41.636)
the long term, right? Meaning like, okay, I want to play in college, but I put on 30 pounds as a junior in high school, but I'm still not there yet. Like I've got to go through another three months of going through this every single day for a result that I don't know that I'm going to get. So I guess the way I'm going to ultimately answer this question, which is probably one of the hardest things that I have to do as a mental performance coach with young people is helping them to clarify their values, right? What is important to them? Meaning like,
Nicholas Valenti (48:09.359)
Okay. Yeah.
Michael Huber (48:11.919)
not the outcome, right? Not the performance, but the who am I, right? Like, why do I want to increase my force production? Why do I want to change my body composition? What's important to me, right? Because if I know what's important to me as a human being and force production out of the ground aligns with who I want to be, no, I'm serious, right? Or body composition, right? Like if how I look to the world is really important to me,
Nicholas Valenti (48:34.435)
Yeah. Yeah, no. Yeah.
Michael Huber (48:41.869)
I'm much more likely to do the things that are necessary to change my body composition because putting on weight requires you to eat, which listen, that could be a chore in and of itself, Practically, but having to eat is probably more fun than having to sort of measure your food or measure the number of macros or cutting out carbs so that you look a certain way, right? I'm just using very general uneducated examples, right? So like that next goal might be harder.
Nicholas Valenti (48:44.878)
I got that.
Nicholas Valenti (49:06.393)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (49:10.935)
Right? Like goal A might be the low hanging fruit goal. Goal B is the one that could actually be harder to achieve, require more effort and sacrifice. And C, it might be harder to connect it to like, why am I doing this? Like if I put on 30 pounds, like I know the answer, like hit the ball harder now. But how do I know that that 30 pounds is going to lead me to the next level? I don't. Right? So it's like, I think it's helping them understand why they're doing it, who they are.
Nicholas Valenti (49:34.649)
Success.
Michael Huber (49:40.056)
And then like maybe also for me with goals, if someone tells me they want to be a professional baseball player, it's like, let's work backwards, right? Like what's the next step? The next step might be what you're saying is like, Hey, if you want to get here, the next step on that is doing goal B. Okay. Let's go do goal B. Cause it's going to be a step in the staircase up to the long-term goal. Right? So like, there's a lot of ways to skin that cat, but it is hard because I think if you've, you're a kid who's worked for three months or six months to put on a lot of weight.
and you've sacrificed a lot of things and you've adopted a new process and you've been successful, also, natural instinct, I think, is to give yourself a break and be like, okay, now I just want to go back and take some of the fatigue out of the system mentally and emotionally. I'm just going to go back to being normal because I've earned it, right? I've earned that right for a cheap meal. I've earned that right to go eat what I want because I put on 30 pounds. I did all the hard work. And that's to keep them sort of on that path upward is a big challenge.
Nicholas Valenti (50:28.239)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (50:39.279)
And I find myself being the one to catch them in the net of being like, OK, you're going forward, don't. If you take a step back, that's OK, but don't let yourself fall back to where you started, because now it's just easier to do that. So it's a challenge. And I always look at it through the lens of motivation, as I think I said, autonomy, competence, relatedness, self-determination theory. Do I feel like I'm in control?
Nicholas Valenti (50:49.38)
Right.
Michael Huber (51:06.019)
Do I feel like I am getting better or I feel like I'm good at this thing that I'm doing? And who am I doing it with? Like relatedness, who am I connected to in the process? Coaches and teammates and things like that. If we can check those three things, they usually get, you usually get a kid to be motivated to achieve that next goal or to go after it. All right, so like, as we're sort of wrapping up here, I was thinking about sort of the last question. So I'm gonna ask you two more questions.
Nicholas Valenti (51:21.217)
forward. Yeah.
Nicholas Valenti (51:34.735)
Shoot.
Michael Huber (51:35.155)
One is if somebody is thinking about engaging with Nick, dietitian, but they're on the fence or they don't understand it, like what's the one thing you'd want them to know about the process that could help them make a decision to sort of get involved in the process?
Nicholas Valenti (51:53.996)
The biggest thing is we offer everyone kind of that initial phone call, know, like test the waters. It's a free phone call. Usually lasts about 15 minutes. We really just talk about goals, aspirations and like what the process truly entails. We covered a lot of it today, you know, but there's obviously some other stuff I kind of like to put into vision. You know, it's not for everybody, you know, and if we have highly motivated kids, highly motivated families, you know, we have a lot of success. Like I said earlier, like
We pick and choose on who we work with. And it's a decision for us. We need to know the kind of person, the kind of family that we're bringing into our network. And we take a lot of pride in building a really good community of kids who talk to each other, who work together, who bounce ideas off of each other. We build it in a system that these kids might be through our program for a year, two years, or 12 weeks, but they could still go back and lean on.
me, the other dietitians, the other kids in the program. You know, we have a really good network and a good app of infrastructure. You know, when I could tell a parent that who's thinking about it, you know, we, a lot of the parents put value into the coaches, you know, the hitting coach, the pitching coach, you know, you're eating a lot more than you're playing baseball. You know, your body is something that
Michael Huber (53:13.25)
Mm-hmm.
Nicholas Valenti (53:20.995)
is gonna be with you long after you hang up the cleats. You the process and the stuff that we're teaching here is not just baseball oriented, it's not just sport oriented. You know, it's health oriented. You know, we're giving your children the equipment to run for the rest of their lives. You know, and I wanna put that into the presence of, you know, it's not just for sport.
Michael Huber (53:44.506)
Yeah, so I'm going to use an analogy because I think it's a perfect segue into like one of the things that I usually say to parents who are interested in my process working with me for their kid, I'd say like mental performance coaching for athletes is like putting vegetables in a smoothie, right? When your kids a little you put the vegetables in this and they don't realize it's there. They're coming to the process of talking to somebody about the mental side of their sport through the lens of sport because that's what matters. But it's not the
Nicholas Valenti (54:02.617)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (54:13.897)
I'm going to see a counselor or a therapist, which a lot of times they reject, right? So it's the same idea of like, hey, there's a bigger impact here. There's a longer term impact in terms of these skills. Yes, they're going to apply it through the lens of their sport, through performance, but ultimately it's going to stick with them a lot longer. So I think that that is also, that's a really important point. So last question is, if you're an athlete listening to this,
You know, if you were talking to an athlete, a high school athlete, like what's one piece of advice from your perspective as a dietitian that you'd leave with them that you think that they could take and apply?
Nicholas Valenti (54:55.575)
You shouldn't look up your junior year and say, how can I change my body? You should be thinking about this middle school, early in high school. To do this the right way takes a lot of time. Don't waste it. There's opportunity, there's education all over the place. Like I said before, what we're teaching isn't rocket science and it's not something you have to unlock or buy. You can look up on our Instagram pages, our YouTubes, our Twitters.
You you want some good goals to start with, go watch some of it. You know, I would love to work with every single kid in the whole wide world. It's not possible. You know what mean? Like it's not. And it's something that you can fully educate yourself on pretty quickly and start seeing the fruitfulness just as quick. Don't wait.
Michael Huber (55:31.279)
Yeah.
Michael Huber (55:46.127)
Perfect. All right, Nick, man, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's always great to talk to you. We actually did it with the record button this time. All right, I'll talk to you soon.
Nicholas Valenti (55:53.141)
Yeah, we crushed it.
Thank you, thank you.