Walking with industry experts

Flex Fitness New Zealand recently launched its new app, Treadmill Talk.

Health and fitness, two words that seem to be on everyone’s lips. Gone are the days of hanging out at your local golden arches, now it’s just as likely to be about green juices, raw slices and gym classes.

Flex Fitness New Zealand, based in the Hamilton CBD, launched its first ever podcast series on Sunday, called Treadmill Talk.

“You always hear people talk on treadmills and conversations between friends and it was always about something that was happening in the health industry,” said Vivienne Bouttarath, marketing assistant at Flex Fitness New Zealand and co-host of Treadmill Talk.

She said Flex Fitness NZ director Tyler Leith and marketing manager Dillon Williams came up with the idea of a podcast to educate people about these trending health and fitness topics, because casual gym conversation is likely to be forgotten or include misinformation.

“I don’t think there’s any podcast like that in New Zealand, with the people around us and from people in the health and fitness industry.”

Leading nutritionist, former Olympia athlete and professional body-builder Jake Campus was the first guest on the podcast last week. He discussed nutrition for muscle growth, including the top muscle-growing foods in New Zealand supermarkets, and delved into some of the myths surrounding protein. “There is an upper limit to protein, a lot of people think they can just smash protein shakes, or chicken breasts, but it can still be converted to body fat.”

“I learnt more every time I listened back to Jake,” Bouttarath said. “It was really good to even learn the basics and things like portion control and what you can eat if you’re vegan or vegetarian, for example.”

She said Campus was a good person to start with because of his nutrition knowledge, and future podcasts would include athletes, physiotherapists and yoga instructors covering anything current in the health, lifestyle and nutrition industries.

Bouttarath said social media has had a massive impact on the popularity of health and fitness, with millions of ‘fitspo’ Instagram accounts being created every day and entire YouTube channels dedicated to workouts and healthy eating.

“For me, social media has changed the game. Before we had social media, we only had TV and radio, but now everyone can show their own opinion or expression. Being in the digital age, there’s so much more of a push to be health conscious.”

With podcasting experiencing a rapid rise in popularity, and in the US alone the number of people listening to podcasts over the last four years doubling in size, Treadmill Talk’s timing looks good.

“With Flex Fitness, we really want to build the Flex lifestyle community, we’ve been testing different ways with social media, but we thought no one is in this space. Our mission and values is to push the boundaries, so this is the next step for us taking the lead and doing something different that no other gym has.”