I believe that fitness professionals are superheroes, saving lives and creating a joy filled community. My aim therefore is to get more people being with more fitness professionals more often.
The story of the girl behind the story. Broni McSweeney – REPs, CERT F.I.T, LLb
In 1997 I started working in the fitness industry
after a very sedentary life as a lawyer on the banks of the Murray River in Victoria, then as a backpacker who thought she would always backpack.
Soon over backpacking I exchanged overseas hostels for a Macpac tent, red buses for an Avanti bike and hit the the Sth Island of NZ and so began a new active life, of mountaineering, climbing, kayaking, mountain biking etc and then the desire to work with my new found active loves by training to be a gym instructor (which I did for 5 yrs), take every style of fitness class possible and become a PT, personally training others to do what I had done and way more.
Each year the owner of the club I was at would send us to Australia or Auckland to go to the fitness conferences and they were so good that I was keen to get mini versions happening on a local level, so I’d invite people from related professions and gurus in our own to come and present for myself and the other staff at the gym, and then to others in Canterbury and now, well I’ve organised over 200 of them bringing in international presenters and generally putting on awesome stuff, mostly for free.
In 2007 I became the body trainer and exercise science tutor at Circo Arts (2 year Diploma) and then in 2008, the Professional Practice tutor on the Fitness Industry Training Certificate at Christchurch Polytechnic and in that same year I started presenting at GetNZActive, the national conference now called FitEx and the year after I was also presenting at Business Grow. In 2010 I started lecturing at Auckland University of Technology on the personal training short courses.
Hard work pays off and as enjoyable as it was, it really was hard work, thankfully in the company of lots of great people. So in 2010 I was chuffed when I won the New Zealand Fitness Industry Lecturer Award and was a finalist in the Bella – Fitness Mentor Category and then in 2011 was the winner of the Fitness New Zealand Award, for outstanding contribution to the industry – which proves that we can can get good at stuff that we are not that good at, like public speaking and exercising, (both of which I grew up being hopeless at) and better still, we can learn to love these things to the point where we couldn’t imagine life without them.
In recent years I have presented at our industry conferences, to group fitness instructors, club owners and managers as well as personal trainers.
I am now am part of the Active Canterbury Network which is full of good people who strive to really help our local community. In between it all I get to work on my favorite project, The 20 Weeks Body & Lifestyle Competition.
Please click here to view more information about our very fabulous team.
The long story - Catch Fitness started at Olympus Health and Fitness Centre, in Christchurch, where gym instructors, personal trainers and group fitties would get together for up-skilling by presenting to each other on different topics for 5 or 10 minutes . We’ d also get in the sales team, or the owners, or a local physio or a fitness trainer from another gym to present. The sessions were so helpful that it seemed only natural to grow that concept to incorporate all fitness professionals in Christchurch, especially to those in small to medium sized facilities and so begun the Catch Fitness seminars, workshops and even a couple of two day full on events. All in all we’ve now run over 160 workshops utilizing some of the best experts in and associated with our industry.
We always had a dream of providing these workshops for free to fitness professionals so we were super chuffed when in 2009 the Active Canterbury Network began funding the workshops for those in Canterbury and Skills Active came to the party as well funding us to take workshops to Dunedin and to subsidize others to come to our existing ones in Christchurch. It was the biggest pat on the back we ever could have got, acknowledging all our efforts and carrying us forward into the future in a way that we only dreamed would be possible.
Meanwhile I had trialled the 20 week competition with around 18 people and I was stoked with the results. Here was a vehicle that we could use to promote personal trainers nationwide, without dictating the type of programmes PTs wrote and without encroaching on their ‘independence’ yet which would be a way to unify the marketing efforts of all them, small, solo, isolated trainers running their own 12 week challenges, as well as trainers inside of clubs without losing the club’s brand or philosophy. It would help put them all on the map and one of it’s other huge benefits would be that huge prizes could be put up, for trainers and clubs to be able to give their clients, which means huge results! and so that journey began and it continues with over 600 entrants now having gone through, some $60,000 in prizes have been given out and some 50 trainers that have been involved, 7 of these. by the way, have been Fitness Life Award Winners. Some trainers have done it for almost 4 years and virtually every trainer that has come on board has done at least two of them.
“20 Weeks” is the ultimate game of trust in that we have to have total faith that the fitness professionals that come on board will do a great job with the entrants, but they do. They all do We have every reason to be proud of our industry I think.
Video of the month – Exercising in a max security prison!
About us
The short story
I believe that fitness professionals are superheroes, saving lives and creating a joy filled community. My aim therefore is to get more people being with more fitness professionals more often.
The story of the girl behind the story. Broni McSweeney – REPs, CERT F.I.T, LLb
In 1997 I started working in the fitness industry
after a very sedentary life as a lawyer on the banks of the Murray River in Victoria, then as a backpacker who thought she would always backpack.
Soon over backpacking I exchanged overseas hostels for a Macpac tent, red buses for an Avanti bike and hit the the Sth Island of NZ and so began a new active life, of mountaineering, climbing, kayaking, mountain biking etc and then the desire to work with my new found active loves by training to be a gym instructor (which I did for 5 yrs), take every style of fitness class possible and become a PT, personally training others to do what I had done and way more.
Each year the owner of the club I was at would send us to Australia or Auckland to go to the fitness conferences and they were so good that I was keen to get mini versions happening on a local level, so I’d invite people from related professions and gurus in our own to come and present for myself and the other staff at the gym, and then to others in Canterbury and now, well I’ve organised over 200 of them bringing in international presenters and generally putting on awesome stuff, mostly for free.
Hard work pays off and as enjoyable as it was, it really was hard work, thankfully in the company of lots of great people. So in 2010 I was chuffed when I won the New Zealand Fitness Industry Lecturer Award and was a finalist in the Bella – Fitness Mentor Category and then in 2011 was the winner of the Fitness New Zealand Award, for outstanding contribution to the industry – which proves that we can can get good at stuff that we are not that good at, like public speaking and exercising, (both of which I grew up being hopeless at) and better still, we can learn to love these things to the point where we couldn’t imagine life without them.
In recent years I have presented at our industry conferences, to group fitness instructors, club owners and managers as well as personal trainers.
I am now am part of the Active Canterbury Network which is full of good people who strive to really help our local community. In between it all I get to work on my favorite project, The 20 Weeks Body & Lifestyle Competition.
Please click here to view more information about our very fabulous team.
The long story - Catch Fitness started at Olympus Health and Fitness Centre, in Christchurch, where gym instructors, personal trainers and group fitties would get together for up-skilling by presenting to each other on different topics for 5 or 10 minutes . We’ d also get in the sales team, or the owners, or a local physio or a fitness trainer from another gym to present. The sessions were so helpful that it seemed only natural to grow that concept to incorporate all fitness professionals in Christchurch, especially to those in small to medium sized facilities and so begun the Catch Fitness seminars, workshops and even a couple of two day full on events. All in all we’ve now run over 160 workshops utilizing some of the best experts in and associated with our industry.
We always had a dream of providing these workshops for free to fitness professionals so we were super chuffed when in 2009 the Active Canterbury Network began funding the workshops for those in Canterbury and Skills Active came to the party as well funding us to take workshops to Dunedin and to subsidize others to come to our existing ones in Christchurch. It was the biggest pat on the back we ever could have got, acknowledging all our efforts and carrying us forward into the future in a way that we only dreamed would be possible.
Meanwhile I had trialled the 20 week competition with around 18 people and I was stoked with the results. Here was a vehicle that we could use to promote personal trainers nationwide, without dictating the type of programmes PTs wrote and without encroaching on their ‘independence’ yet which would be a way to unify the marketing efforts of all them, small, solo, isolated trainers running their own 12 week challenges, as well as trainers inside of clubs without losing the club’s brand or philosophy. It would help put them all on the map and one of it’s other huge benefits would be that huge prizes could be put up, for trainers and clubs to be able to give their clients, which means huge results! and so that journey began and it continues with over 600 entrants now having gone through, some $60,000 in prizes have been given out and some 50 trainers that have been involved, 7 of these. by the way, have been Fitness Life Award Winners. Some trainers have done it for almost 4 years and virtually every trainer that has come on board has done at least two of them.
“20 Weeks” is the ultimate game of trust in that we have to have total faith that the fitness professionals that come on board will do a great job with the entrants, but they do. They all do
We have every reason to be proud of our industry I think.