Former cop now coach trains youth to be strong for life

Lee Bailey is better equipped than most of us to prepare anyone, mentally and physically, for the rigours of modern life.

Lee was a NSW police officer for 27 years, which included stints in specialist groups, and has experienced more “trauma-related stuff” than anyone would care to imagine, including moments during which his life was in danger.

After almost three decades of extreme on-the-job trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder plagued Lee and he left the force in 2019 as a detective sergeant after concerned colleagues discussed the situation with him.

“From my perspective, I wasn’t that well, and I was basically pulled aside by my workmates. They said: ‘It’s time for you to go.’ 

“And in the time I left to where I am now, I’ve dropped 26 kilos in weight, I’m barely drinking, all that sort of stuff.”

A life-long fitness buff – he surfs, snow-skis, spearfishes and has played rugby union – Lee recognised the countless positives of physical training after leaving the NSW Police and so earned a Cert IV in Fitness, and he’s been in the fitness industry since 2021. 

“It all comes down to a healthy exercise and healthy routine and life in general. So it makes a massive difference, a massive difference.”

Lee is also president of the Helensburgh Stanwell Park Surf Life Saving Club and has been coach and fitness trainer of many of his three daughters’ sports teams.

But it’s as owner-manager and head trainer of the Nine0Two Group that he’s having a wide-ranging positive impact on the youth of Helensburgh and the northern Illawarra.

The group, based at the Burgh Healthy Hub, is nurturing a a new generation of fit and confident kids and teens who are able to cope with the challenges of everyday life in the 21st century.

The group is named “Nine0Two”, based on the P902 form that Lee had to sign before leaving NSW Police. It hosts several classes including PrimaryFIT (for primary school students in years 4, 5 and 6), StrengthFIT (for students of all ages), CircuitFIT (for high school students in years 7 to 12), RunFIT (for students who want to improve their middle- to long-distance running), BallFIT (“for young athletes looking to gain a competitive edge in their chosen sport”), and KidsFIT (for years 1, 2 and 3). 

Classes are an hour long and include a warm-up (which may be a game depending on the age of participants), then a demonstration of the movements for that class, then a circuit of five exercise stations (in PrimaryFIT, for instance), then a warm-down.

“There’s six primal movements,” Lee said. “We’ll pick five of those primal movements each class. And then we’ll demonstrate those five exercises with no weight.”

Primal movements include squats, lunges, pushes and pulls.

“It’s just your basic stuff. We’re not doing anything too fancy because a) the kids aren’t really at that stage mentally as well as physically.

“It’s all your movements – isolated and compound movements – that you use during the course of any sort of workout.

“And we’ll do that for about eight to 10 minutes, purely just technique. So they’re just nailing down their technique.”

The safety of the young participants is a priority, Lee said. “We’re telling them why they’re doing it [the exercise], what they’re doing it for, what muscles they’re working, all that sort of stuff. So that’s purely educational and technique and demonstration and stuff. 

“And then we go into the workout proper, which is normally five rounds of those five exercises, which generally goes for about 28 and a half minutes.”

The class then finishes with a warm-down session, which in PrimaryFIT might be tug of war. 

“Then we spend 10 minutes warming down. And during that warm-down period, we’ll talk about other things like nutrition and stuff like that, how to deal things.”

Lee highlighted the efforts of his coaches, including top-level soccer player and exercise physiologist Jamie Beaufils and champion ultra-runner Paige Penrose (“she’s trained Olympians in America and she’s writing programs for our kids”).

“Then there’s probably my favourite class – I get a lot out of it myself – and it’s what we call StrengthFIT, that’s year 7 and up, and it’s a more serious class. 

“That’s not to say I’m taking the fun element out of it, but there’s no games or anything in that class. Because the kids, they have to get invited to come to that class because their technique is good. 

“Because we are lifting weights and it’s purely – as the name suggests – about strength. And that follows the same format as the other classes: warm-up, technique, demonstration. 

“Everyone’s nailing the technique down for all the movements, all the exercises we’re going to do. Those are demonstrated by all the coaches, every single exercise, how to walk into the racks, how to pick up the weights – it’s pretty regimented, safety wise. 

“And then they go through the program itself. The class ratio is four kids to one coach. So we’ll have groups of four working together and there’s one coach with them the whole time.”

He said resistance (in the form of added weight on the bar) is gradually increased and positive progression is obvious for participants. 

“It’s awesome to see them change and get their strength and you can see their confidence coming through, but also the feedback I get from the parents is unreal. 

“We do have elite athletes – a number two motocross rider, a number one or two mountain-bike rider, one of the kids in our RunFIT class is currently the 1500m Australia champion – and you can see them get stronger and their parents say, ‘Yeah, it’s definitely helping’. 

“But we also have the kids who, you know, ball sports aren’t their thing, so they come in and they’re just getting stronger and stronger and you can see their confidence coming through.

“Basically we’re teaching the kids how to move and we’re teaching the kids to build that confidence and build that fitness.

“At the end of the day, and it’s happened a lot – we’ve certainly seen it this year – a few of our year 11s have moved on from us and they’re in the gym proper, which is awesome, which is what we want. 

“You know, they’re going to the gym and they got that foundation from us. They’re good, they’re not going to hurt themselves.”