Family brings fitness to Hobsonville Pt
‘‘It's a proper community.’’
The new CrossFit in Hobsonville Point is very much a family affair.
Jess Greenland and her aunt Phyllis Nicol opened the doors of their new CrossFit gym in late January.
It’s a fusion, Greenland says, of her aunt’s desire to do something health-related and Greenland’s passion for Olympic weightlifting and CrossFit.
After a health scare in 2011, Nicol talked with her niece via email about opening a health farm. Greenland, then based in London where she was coaching CrossFit alongside a full-time job, helped brainstorm some ideas with Nicol.
‘‘The dream was a big piece of land with health facilities including gyms, healthy eating and massage, and everything else that goes with a health farm,’’ Nicol says.
‘‘[But] when I saw what Jessica had written [about CrossFit], I thought, ‘Wow, we could do that, and we could start right there.’’’
Nicol asked Greenland if she would come back to help run a CrossFit, to which she readily agreed. Her niece arrived back in New Zealand on the gym’s opening, and taught three classes the same day.
Greenland, 38, head coach at CrossFit Red Dragon and a Masters weightlifter, began lifting and CrossFit in 2011.
She says CrossFit Red Dragon encourages a community atmosphere. ‘‘A lot of people have said to me this is the only thing that they’ve ever stuck with.’’
CrossFit is a branded fitness regime which is characterised by varied functional movement done at high intensity for short periods. Workouts are always led by a certified coach.
Classes typically run for an hour and involve a high intensity workout, which often mixes weights and cardio. Greenland says CrossFit tries to replicate the movements performed in real life, rather than simply training muscles in isolation.
‘‘Dead lifts are important, because even something like picking up your kid, you’re lifting that heavy weight off the floor,’’ Greenland says.
Nicol’s younger sister and Greenland’s mother Iris, has also taken up CrossFit and visits the gym up to four times a week.
The family did most of the work on the gym’s building themselves, which was a winery at one time.
Nicol says the vision going forward is to have a community of people who are ‘‘functionally fit’’. It has also provided a new goal for Nicol personally.
‘‘What Jess has given me has pulled me out of retirement,’’ Nicol says. ‘‘Now I’ve got an interest and a passion, a new career.’’