"It's very important," Hunter said. "Sometimes it can almost feel the regattas get in the way a bit because you have to take a week out of fulltime training to put a good race together. Training is where the medals are won."
There was considerable satisfaction out of victory in Lucerne.
"It's been so long since we raced a crew in our boat class, you can get a bit nervous. You don't know where the standard is, but we had been performing really well. It was a bit of an unknown."
Hunter, Christchurch-born, Wellington educated and now Cambridge-based, was in the bow seat when New Zealand were fourth at last year's worlds, following second placings behind Denmark in 2013 and 2014. Now he's at the other end of the boat, presenting him with a fresh challenge. The other three rowers have the speed of their stroke determined by the man in the stroke seat.
"It's a bit different. The biggest thing is in the bow seat you're limited in terms of the work you can put in and sometimes when the boat was not going too well I found it hard to do that.
"In the stroke seat I find I can work really hard. I'm still learning to pace myself a bit. Sometimes you get to the last 200m and you're a bit knackered and have to dig deeper than you'd want.
"I think it's a bit of a myth that it all comes from the stroke seat. Everyone's responsible for the rhythm. If one person's out [of sync] it's all over."
Hunter believes the New Zealand squad are in a good space after bagging eight medals in Lucerne out of 10 events entered. Clearly there are no guarantees for Rio success, but the vibe is good.
"Really happy. All crews did really well and someone said it's important you know where you stand. The crews have got a lot of good feedback where they at.
"We all know we've got a lot of work to do, but it's nice to know the work we have done has actually been spot on," Hunter said.