Support Local: The Transformation Fitness Centre/\_
Meet Lavinia and Fred, owners of the Transformation Fitness Centre in Glen Innes. 10 years local.
We love having a business based in Glen Innes. All three of our fitness operations have been around here and we’re not moving out anytime soon. It’s so cool being part of this community - the people are fun and vibrant and there’s always something going on. From mums' classes in the morning - I love looking after their babies while they get some time to themselves - to young families coming in to train together, to groups of loud ladies who’ve always got the latest goss, to rugby teams. We get to meet such a great variety of colourful characters.
We’ve been running indoor boot camps for 10 years around here but we’ve been in this particular space for the last three (we were just round the corner previous to this and at the Gymnastics Club before that). Fred found it, and while it looks great now, it wasn’t like this when we took over. It was an old second hand store and there was so much stuff from the previous tenants left over - seven huge containers of rubbish, in fact. Needless to say there was a lot of crying, and swearing, to get it to how it looks now. It really wasn’t fun.
But it’s been so worth it, it’s a great space for people to meet and connect; we even have pot luck dinners sometimes where our clients come and bring their dishes from all over the world and we turn up the music and have some fun. It’s quite funny, we have stopped shopping at the supermarket here because people freak out when they see us and think we’re judging what's in their trolley! We do help people with their nutrition, as well as physical fitness but we know everyone needs donuts sometimes.
Covid has certainly made us engage with people more online and now we do a lot of coaching, workout development and nutrition that way – we know not everyone is able to come to physical training on a regular basis and this way we can help more people in the community. We actually did classes online during lockdown for donations and that money went to buying vouchers to give to essential workers. Lots of our clients work locally so it’s nice to be able to help out when things are tough – people always love giving to organisations like foodbank through the fundraisers we hold a couple of times a year.
It’s pretty funny to think Fred has a masters in Neuroscience and I have a degree in International Hospitality Management – if you’d told us we’d be running a gym 12 years ago we probably wouldn’t have believed it, but we’re so glad we are, as we get to help people achieve their wellbeing goals every day and they bring so much sunshine to our lives with their great energy too. I can’t imagine working anywhere else.
Visit transformationcentre.co.nz
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