Outside the old vat room with Penny. Photo / Rebecca Mauger
Outside the old vat room with Penny. Photo / Rebecca Mauger
They say it’s relaxing to watch people work.
Penny, the plodder horse from Pahoia, looked super relaxed munching on her morning hay while she watched women working out at The Cow Shed Gym.
A few horses often wander about the paddock, which surrounds the cowshed, and come to say hello.
Personal trainer Anneli Deschamps, from Mount Maunganui, runs fitness classes out of the old cowshed in Whakamarama. The partially renovated gym is open-air in a beautiful outdoor setting surrounded by the sounds of the country.
Deschamps’s father-in-law turned the cowshed into a gym during the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown to keep fit.
Anneli Deschamps with Penny the clydesdale/paint horse peeking inside the Cow Shed Gym. Photo / Rebecca Mauger
Deschamps’s mother-in-law and a few of her friends showed an interest as well, so Deschamps started training with them. She reached out for more clients and she now runs regular sessions.
The women who come here think it’s great, she said.
“Sometimes the horses come up here to say hello and stand here staring at us. They come over to see what’s going on.”
Deschamps said many of her clients have never been to a gym before.
“They may find gyms quite confronting, judgemental, or they’re not sure what to do so this is a really good environment for them.”
People who live rurally also don’t have to sit in traffic to get to a city or town gym, she said.
The circuits are a mix of warming up, body weight exercises, weighted exercises, boxing and stretches.
The 323-hectare ex-dairy farm once had about 150 cows. Back in the day they had sheep, pigs, chickens and were self-sustainable with their own meat, vegetables and fruit.
These days the working farm has blueberries, kiwifruit and land for dairy cow grazing.
Anneli with Penny at The Cow Shed Gym. Photo / Rebecca Mauger
It is owned by a fourth-generation family and will be kept as a legacy for the next generation.
Deschamps’s love of fitness came about when she lived in Queenstown and joined the gym there.
“I loved keeping fit but I also liked to help people to feel good within themselves and change their routine and their habits around fitness... and find a love for it.”
