Kiwi ingenuity at fitness centre

Press, 2 January 1985, Page 14 (Supplement)

Kiwi ingenuity at fitness centre

Story:

JOHN WOODWARD

Photos: JULIANNE MYERS

Peter Ball and his brother, Michael, know how to achieve total fitness and they are letting thousands of New Zealanders into their secret.

The North Island brothers have played a major part in the recent boom in the popularity of fitness centres offering weight training and exercise to music programmes.

The opening in May 1984 of the Total Fitness Centre, housed on three floors of the former Kaiapoi Woollen Mill building in Manchester Street, Christchurch, is testimony to the success of their unique approach to the fitness industry. The Christchurch complex is the fifth Total Fitness Centre opened in New Zealand by the brothers and, according to Michael, is the culmination of four years research into the needs of New Zealanders wanting a complete fitness workout.

For Peter, aged 27, and Michael, aged 24, Kiwi ingenuity was the answer to meeting those needs. Like most business ventures, Total Fitness began on a small scale, with the opening of a gymnasium in Tauranga in 1980. Other Total Fitness centres were soon opened in Rotorua, Hastings and Wellington.

The Christchurch complex is the first of several gymnasiums planned for South Island centres. Its size, range of facilities and equipment are impressive. Covering 44,000 sq ft, it is New Zealand’s largest gymnasium, says Michael.

However, it is not its size but the equipment it houses that makes the Christchurch centre unique. The rows of weight training and resistance machines which fill the topfloor work-out room were built in Christchurch under Michael’s direction. The brothers had not been satisfied with some of the equipment used in their North Island centres and believed they could supply their new Christchurch gymnasium with their own equipment “structured to our needs.”

“It has taken us three years to get off the ground and work out what we wanted for a professional gymnasium,” said Michael. “This is what we have come up with.”

Michael arrived in Christchurch in January to oversee the production of the equipment built to the French Polaris design of variable resistance equipment, for which Peter Ball owns the Australian franchise.

The nine pieces of equipment, duplicated in three circuit training rows, work on strengthening every muscle group in the body.

Importing the equipment from the United States would have cost more than $lOO,OOO and at the price “we could not have afforded half this gear,” he said.

Although unwilling to give a price, Michael said that local production had proved much cheaper. After the first machines were made in Christchurch, the manufacturing branch of Total Fitness moved to Wellington to begin production on a range of fitness equipment designed by the Ball brothers. One of the first pieces of equipment designed by Peter and Michael, a tricep resistance machine, is already in use in Christchurch and is proving successful. “We felt the existing tricep machines were too complicated. We wanted a much simpler design and this one works well.”

The new equipment is being produced for the Wellington Total Fitness Centre and additional equipment will be sent to Christchurch for use by its steadily growing membership of 1500. Marketing is aimed at both commercial and home use and what the brothers believe will be a lucrative export market in Australia.

Plans are under way for Total Fitness centres featuring the homegrown equipment to be opened in Auckland and Dunedin as well as several smaller centres throughout New Zealand. In the meantime, the completion of facilities in Christchurch remains Michael Ball’s top priority. As well as the 12,000 sq ft mixed gymnasium and weight training centre, the complex offers a ladies’ gymnasium, creche, sauna and steam rooms, an indoor running track, health food restaurant and takeaway bar, and the Enafit exercise-to-music programme exclusive to Total Fitness. Construction of New Zealand’s first racketball courts has started and will be followed by. an indoor swimming pool, solarium and beauty clinic. Courses in the martial art of Balintawak, first taught in New Zealand by Peter Ball, will begin at the centre early in the New Year.

All this adds up to what Michael says is “the best gymnasium in the country.” “We are a family business and we want to cater for the family,” he said. “We call it Total Fitness and that is what it is.”