David @ DHPT

Last week I announced on my Facebook and Instagram pages that I was rebranding my personal and group fitness training business.  I thought, seeing as I have a bit of time on my hands at the moment with this lockdown, that I'd explain the reason why I decided to do this - in case anyone was interested. My new company branding 360 Degree Fitness was a company that I started from scratch.  I built it with the help and support of a great many people.  People who probably don't even know how much they supported me.  To those people - my clients, my suppliers, my friends and family, those random people who read my blog posts when I was writing terribly and wondered if I would ever find my own "voice" to write with, I want to say a huge thank you.  I truly appreciate every blog view, every time you liked a post on my social media accounts or share it with your friends and family.  You truly have no idea how much that has meant to me over the years.  ...

Over Easter weekend, I went on a little trip away.  Two school mates and I went on a fishing trip to the far north of the North Island.  It was great.  We did a lot of driving, camped a lot, fished a lot, did a lot of catching up, and made fun of each other a lot.  What guys tend to do when they catch up after a long period of not seeing each other much. More importantly for me though, it was great to just get away from the city.  For the most part, we were in areas where our mobile phone coverage was iffy at best.  It meant that there was no point in having our phones with us so, for the most part, they stayed in the vehicle.  And I enjoyed the change.  I heard someone say recently that we are so connected that we are disconnected these days, and I thought that that made a lot of sense. Another thing I enjoyed about the weekend was getting out into nature.  I make no secret of the fact that I am a city boy.  Born and raised in the s...

It may not be apparent to everyone, but I put a lot of thought into what to name my fitness business before I finally decided on 360 Degree Fitness .  It involved many hours of staring blankly at a piece of paper trying to pick names out of thin air before I decided to get a bit smarter about the whole process. I sat down after about a week of being frustrated with not coming up with a decent name and started to go about it in a more structured way.  I asked myself what I wanted the company to represent, what it's aims were for it's clients, the  training/coaching philosophy that I believed in, and then I went to work. I took that blank piece of paper that had been taunting me for a week or so and started writing.  Big ideas rather than detailed things - things like mental health not just physical health, not getting bogged down in the minutia of the fitness industry, meeting people where they are rather than forcing them into boxes, and so on. What eventu...

Hello everyone and welcome to the new year! This year will be a very exciting one for 360 Degree Fitness with us looking to help more clients reach their goals in new and exciting ways. Firstly, we will be taking our Tuesday morning lounge workouts and transforming them by including video demonstrations of the exercises.  This will make them easier for you to do at home without wondering whether you are performing the exercise correctly. Check out the video below for our test run that we put together last year. A new workout will be uploaded to our YouTube channel each Tuesday morning.  These are great for supplementing your training sessions with us, and they can be done at home with minimal or no equipment.  Please remember to subscribe to our channel also to ensure you don't miss a video.  We will also be putting out other videos with a variety of subject matter, and maybe even some guest videos from other health providers, so keep an eye out! ...

This will most likely be my final blog post of the year.  As such, I thought that it would be useful to look back at the 12 months that have passed and see what I have learned along the way.  Some of it fitness related, some of it life related, some of it probably nonsensical, but don't judge me please.  Here goes. 1. I'm a morning person.  This may sound simple but it has changed my entire outlook on how I live and work.  Most days I now get up at 5.15am (at the latest - 3-4 days per week I am up at 4.30am).   Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be a martyr here.  I have just realised that I function better in the morning than at night.  Ss if I want to get more work done I need to be up earlier, simple as that.  I have been way more productive since making the change so I must be on to something. 2. The saying "If you find a job you love, you'll never work another day in your life" is actually true.  I love my job.  Simple...

I have come into personal/ group fitness training a little later in life than most having had part of a career elsewhere first.  It took me a while to get here but now that I am here, I firmly believe that I will always love training people.  Here are a few reasons why. My client's successes feel like joint successes Setting goals with clients is a mainstay of training, it is something that you do on a regular basis.  Once the goal is set, it can be weeks or even years before the client gets to that goal (depending on how long-term a goal it is).  As such you get to see and help your clients through the ups and inevitable downs along the way.  So when a client reaches that goal it feels very much like you have both reached a goal - after all you have travelled the journey together even though the client has had the biggest burden to carry. Every day is different I used to work in an office where my daily routine changed very little.  Get in every...

I was informed by my LinkedIn profile the other day that it has been 2 years since the inception of 360 Degree Fitness. I thought as it has been an interesting, challenging and rewarding climb over those two years that I needed to thank some people for their help and support. It is always important to remember those who believed in you at those times when your own belief faltered so that is what I have done. There are so many people who have had a hand in my business over its first 730 days. Not least of these are my clients. You are the reason why I get up in the morning and work late into the night. The reason why I have the best job in the world, and the reason I have stuck out the hard times to get through to where I am today. Yes, there have been some rough times – times where we were not sure where the money to pay the bills was coming from, but that is the price of following your dreams and having clients as enthusiastic and supportive as I have has made it all worth it. O...

Corporate fitness is nothing new. Organisations have been supporting employees in their efforts to stay healthy for years but some employers still hesitate to get behind these efforts.  This always surprises me as the benefits seem to dramatically outweigh the setbacks.  Here are just a few of those benefits. A healthier workforce This one is probably the most obvious of all the benefits of supporting employees who want to get fit. Healthier staff means less sick days. Less sick days mean more productivity for the employer which is beneficial to the bottom line as well as the staff member. A healthier workforce can also mean reduced insurance premiums if this is a benefit that you as an employer provide. This again will help with the bottom line. Encourages people to take breaks While this may initially seem like it is detrimental to an employer it is, in fact, the opposite. We are turning into a deskbound species. We sit for very long pe...