Former NZMA Manager receives exercise award

This article was sourced from Nelson Weekly

As the list of accolades for the Exercise NZ Award was being read out, Peter Fraser told his wife that it “kind of sounds like me.”

“As it gets narrower and narrower, I started to get emotional. Because it’s an overall contribution to the exercise industry, there’s lots of side things (I’ve achieved).”

The award acknowledges Peter’s continued work in the space and is selected by the board of Exercise New Zealand.

It was presented at the annual Exercise New Zealand awards night at the end of November in Auckland as the industry celebrated their best personal trainers and facilities around the country.

Peter has spent 25 years in the industry, working his way up from manning the front desk of a small gym to running some of the biggest gyms in the country.

Five-and-a-half years ago he moved to Nelson, but previously he was the general manager of Les Mills’ Wellington location on Taranaki St, a five-floor gym with over 7500 members.

You might even catch him in those cliche fitness DVDs from his time as an instructor with Les Mills.

In more recent years, Peter has been educating the educators as the general manager of NZMA and New Zealand Institute of Sport.

He was then the national sales manager for UP Education, the largest independent tertiary provider in New Zealand where he helped upskill the current and next generations of personal trainers alongside the biggest PTE programme in the country.

“The mission is to lift the standard of the industry. We offered PT level four and five courses for free to the industry.

“Some of these people, in the 20 years they’ve been doing it, there’s so much more theory, more exercise equipment and new science.”

Peter has also been running classes at CLM, which was up for facility of the year at the same awards.

But his own award has come at the perfect time as he puts the finishing touches on a new gym he plans to open in the new year.

Planned to be in the Nelson CBD, Peter has teamed up with BFT (Body Fit Training) to open the first franchise in the region.

He describes BFT as a global model that uses modern biometric data to make the most of a workout.

“You have the BFT3 heart rate monitor and target different heart rate zones depending on the programme.

With small classes, he says BFT is set up to help people train like an athlete, while also being a community.

“Everything you do is integrated with scientific proof.”