OUR STORY

The Pride Owners & personal trainers, Samu and Mel, standing in front of a lake

Hi, Samu here.

Our story starts with Mel and myself in a passionless pit, but it finishes with us following a dream. Sounds dramatic right? Well for us, it is. After finishing Uni, Mel and I had built great Civil Engineering careers. After 6 years we were earning more money than we needed in jobs that most would envy. From the outside, our lives seemed very ‘successful’.

Then we quit. What a waste of a degree right?! Hold on, hear us out.

We quit because every Sunday we dreaded going into work. Because we had no passion for what we were doing each day. And because society's expectations were dragging us into a cycle we didn’t want to get stuck in.

Image showing the cycle of climbing the cooperate ladder.

It wasn’t easy. With job offers around every corner, for more and more money, we decided to move to Perth. We left the suffocating engineering industry for one that filled us with passion. Health and fitness. (No, this wasn’t our dream - that part’s coming soon).

Perth is where we found our style of Personal Training. We put in thousands of hours (literally) into becoming the best personal trainers we could be. We trained people, read books, took courses, trained more people, talked with mentors. Anything that would help us build our skills as personal trainers.

Within a year we were fully booked. After a while, we found ourselves in a familiar spot. We were earning more money than we needed. We had a life that we loved and from the outside, we seemed to be living a very ‘successful’ life.
Once again, we quit (I know what you’re thinking, here we go again haha)
This time for a different reason.

Every single day in Perth Mel and I would dream of creating a space back in NZ that did things differently. A gym that made 'non gym' people feel excited to go to. A gym that had an infectious atmosphere and empowered its members with confidence.

Where every member felt like family, and to all our members, the gym felt like home. In an industry obsessed with large group training, we dreamed of a space that catered for the introverts.

Most importantly, a place that actually got people the results they were looking for!

The Pride is that dream.