Kal Maadi Promises to Change the World with New Initiative and Foundation at MSM Performance Academy

MSM Performance Academy
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Not so long ago, mental health was considered a controversial, taboo topic, and information regarding mental health awareness and suicide prevention was nonexistent. Unfortunately, it took a staggering number of school-aged children and young adults to commit suicide for the issue of mental health to be taken as seriously as it should have been from the very beginning.

Katie Meyer

Arlana Miller

Morgan Rodgers

Tyler Hillinski

Sarah Shulze

Jayden Hill

Robert Martin

Lauren Bernett

These are the names of young prestigious collegiate athletes, who have all taken their own lives in the past few years due to Mental Health. 

As a relatively new issue at hand, few individuals, especially parents, know what to do when their children are struggling. Thankfully, there are now organizations with passionate leaders at the helm who dedicate all of their time and resources into positively impacting our youth and changing statistics, organizations like Co-CEOs Lucas Zeiler’s and Kal Maadi’s MSM Performance Academy, and now… The MSM Foundation.

 Maadi was once a young boy just looking to be a part of something. He had a desire to play sports, not for the sports themselves, but to be a part of a team, to know what it felt like to collectively work towards a common goal. 

After graduating from school and sports, he knew that he wanted to accomplish two things; “My goals in life were to create an impact in this world, and influence the lives of others, specifically the youth” Maadi stated. He wanted to master skills like resilience, leadership, accountability, respect, and patience, and teach those skills to the world.

 With a desire to help others, he initially thought about becoming a doctor, as he could achieve his goal and earn plenty of money to support himself, but business and relationships are where his heart resides, so he sought something else that would truly interest him and align with his passions. Enter MSM Performance Academy.

 Maadi stumbled upon MSM and knew it was something he should be a part of. “I started knocking on the door and didn’t stop for three months straight. Eventually, I was offered a position as a Family Consultant, or, in other words, a Sales Rep,” he recalled.

 MSM Performance Academy was created to lead youth sports to a better culture, one where mental health and mental performance are foundational components of development. Their belief is that coaches, players, and parents must be united, and they provide them with tools, training, and experiences that help the families fulfill their potential and achieve success, not just in sport, but also in life.

The company does this by focusing on child psychology, parent performance, family dynamics, mentality, and overall health. The coaches don’t just teach these children how to reach optimal levels of mental or physical performance, but also life skills and how to become a leader.

“I immediately fell in love with the mission and purpose of the organization,” Maadi said, “but it was not until eight months into working with MSM that I found my why.”

His ‘why’, as he puts it, was helping youth overcome the struggles they were facing, struggles anywhere from anxiety to a lack of confidence and even suicidal thoughts. He listened to hundreds of youth athletes and their parents detail these issues and decided that he wanted to rebuild MSM into an organization that met these kids where they were and helped them get to where they wanted to be. This passion, dedication, and drive was what took him from Sales Rep to Co-CEO.

MSM Performance Academy has helped over 2,000 athletes improve their lives. However, Kal Maadi felt that this wasn’t enough. He knew that their program was considered a luxury… 

“Thousands of lives was not enough, I wanted to reach millions. I wanted to create a mass movement and positively impact millions of lives. I vowed to battle against the suicide rate amongst athletes and I knew that I would need an army ” said Maadi.

That is when The MSM Foundation, and The Jordan Year Challenge came to life.

 “I had decided I basically wanted to start the company from the ground up. I wanted to erase everything and start from scratch,” Maadi mused. “I flew out to Florida and we started doing some research, and I’ll never forget the one statistic that I came across that basically birthed this entire initiative. It was that there are 45 million players in youth sports in the US. 45 million. 80% of them quit by the age of 15. 70% of them quit by the age of 13, and if you look deeper and you try to figure out the most common reason why, they’ll tell you it’s because they weren’t having fun anymore. The reason that they started to play the sport, the reason that every single player in the world starts to play the sport is to have fun, and that no longer exists.”

The Jordan Year Challenge is an open enrollment program that will expand the reach of their child development and sports performance services. The traditional program is offered in 12-month intervals for thousands of dollars, but The Jordan Year Challenge will be one life-changing week at the price of $23. The goal is to help bring mental health and suicide awareness in sports to the masses and will be accomplished through The MSM Foundation, the company’s flagship non-profit dedicated to mental health advocacy.

With Maadi as the new face of MSM Performance Academy, his passion for bringing awareness and helping youth will extend beyond just thousands of lives and transition the organization into impacting millions, broadening their reach and potential and getting them one step closer to changing the entire world of sports.

About MSM Academy

MSM Performance Academy, founded by Lucas Zeiler, and led by CEO Kal Maadi helps families guide their children to reach College and Professional levels in the best way possible; teaching them the fundamentals to maintain sound minds and bodies, while performing optimally, both physically and mentally. The goal for MSM is to offer mental and physical performance training and empower youth sports athletes, student-athletes and professional athletes to become leaders of themselves. Through The MSM Foundation, the academy teaches players how to reach optimal levels of mental and physical performance. For more information, please visit https://www.themsmfoundation.org/

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