It’s Thursday and Darwin youth worker Adam Drake is wrapping up his weekly group fitness session.

The 43-year-old has been running a program called Balanced Choice with troubled young offenders at the centre since 2014, in a bid to help transform lives, both inside and out.

“When you exercise, your breathing gets regulated, your endorphins start to kick in and you will too, you’ll look at life in a better way,” he said.

“That’s why I think it’s so important to do these sessions in Don Dale. I take the fellas through body weight exercises like sit ups, dips, laps and mountain climbers, because I want them to be athletic, but not some muscly monster machine.”

With 20 years in the fitness industry under his belt, Adam’s unique program ties together fitness, team building and psychology to help at risk kids make positive choices.

“If our sessions were a recipe, it’s made up of 40 minutes of fitness followed by a 20 minute discussion and I think it’s that moment, when we have the side-by-side conversations, where the magic actually happens,” he said.

“We all sit down together, I’ll get them Powerade or water to drink and then I’ll pull out the quote of day and one of the fellas reads it out.

“For example, here’s one I shared with the kids recently, it says, ‘I hope you get to the place where you look in the mirror not to see the muscles and the ripped six-pack, but to look into your eyes and know that you love the person looking at you’.

“After the quote’s read out then we go round the circle and say, ‘What do you think that means to you?’ People start to tell stories, open up a bit and we just start to explore whatever that might be.

“It’s all just generally about making better choices in life, and making the people around us proud, but ultimately making ourselves proud of who we’re becoming.

“The whole process is a bit like when the footy coach calls the fellas in at half time to give them a pep talk. But it’s not a pep talk about a game, it’s a pep talk about life.”

On his 40th birthday three years ago, Adam said one of the boys in Don Dale had pulled him over to recite a rap he’d made of every quote that he’d ever brought in for him.

“That was so powerful,” he said.

“To this day, it still makes me a bit emotional, that he went to that much effort to compile it ‘till it was a rap, and then had the courage to sit there and sing it to me. Amazing.”

After years of weekly visits to Don Dale, Adam says he’s helped hundreds of kids who’ve been locked up for a range of offences.

“I purposely don’t know what each kid’s done, and I don’t wanna know,” he said. “That’s not up to me. There’s enough people judging them out there, I don’t need to do that. “I’m very happy to just be neutral in that space, and treat them on the face value.

“As the saying goes, life’s an echo. What you put out is what you get back. So give them love, care, compassion, empathy, that comes back to you. If you give out anger and frustration, then those things will come back to you, so I know what I’m choosing.”

WHEN riots broke out inside Don Dale last November after inmates set fire to parts of the facility, Adam said he was proud many of his mentees chose to do the right thing.

“There’s a young man who was released after it happened and he now is holding down a job, playing rugby,” he said. “I take him for breakfast every couple of weeks and we check in to see how he’s going.

“I’m just super inspired by that kid because he chose not to get caught up in all the stuff that was happening that night in Don Dale.

“So he’s chosen a pathway by not getting caught up in the rubbish and proves to the other kids that there’s a better way.

“Now it’s all well and good for a 43-year-old with dreadlocks like me to drop in there and say, ‘you can do better,’ but when one of the young people actually applies it, that’s what it’s about.”

In the long term, Adam said he’d like to expand the Balanced Choice program right across the NT.

“I remember I only had a few hours a week of sessions when I started out and now I run close to 50 hours a week in and outside of corrections,” he said.

“I’ve got three people working with me now and now we deliver sessions to various groups, in the NT including the NT Government Youth Outreach and Engagement Team, Youth Detention Centre, Malak Re-Engagement Centre, the Positive Learning Centre, Darwin Correctional Centre, and more.

“We’re working more in remote communities now too including Nhulunbuy and Tennant Creek where we’re training up young people so that they connect and engage with the other kids in their community.”

AFTER helping his partner pick up the pieces when her cafe in Karama was broken into by a group of kids four weeks ago, Adam understood why so many people were frustrated with the state of youth crime in the Territory at the moment.

“Knowing what happened, that tore my heart in many ways because I thought, ‘these could be the kids that I work with’,” he said.

“But if we’re actually going to be the adults, and if I’m going to be true to the fact that I tell those kids I care about them, then it’s a real challenge, but I better step up right now and continue to care for them, and let them know that no matter what they go through, I’m not going to give up that they’re going to change.”

Adam said if he didn’t have positive role models growing up who also didn’t give up on him, he wouldn’t be in the position he was now to help others.

“There’s good in everybody, sometimes we look at people through a certain lens, but I won’t give up on anybody,” he said.

“I share my story with the young people in my sessions all the time — I’m not perfect, I’ve got my own demons too.

“Back when I was living in Tennant Creek I was really struggled with the grog. My dad didn’t give up on me when everyone else did and helped me when I had to clean my life up and be able to get to where I am now.

“I don’t say that everybody has to go through bad times to do the work, but sometimes to hit rock bottom yourself is really important so you can teach others that you can get back from there.”