This month, it has been lovely to hear about how some Great Kiwi Families keep themselves healthy. In this post, we meet Corinne Austin. Corinne loves an adventure and recently completed an Olympic-length triathlon in Rarotonga. I love her passion for adventure and her willingness to take on a challenge. Read on to find out more about Corinne’s experiences.
Let’s start with telling us a bit about you – what do you do and what are your interests?
I’m a 33 year old Mum of two girls (nearly 5, and 2.5), and married to a wonderful man – Shane. We live on 10 acres 15 minutes from the Whangarei CBD in a suburb called Glenbervie. We have two cows, three horses, one cat and one dog. Seven years ago I founded a business called ‘One2One Fitness’. We predominantly provide Personal Training and Small Group training services (for example, The Active Mums Club) to Whangarei folk, with a focus on pre and post natal women, and pre and post menopausal women.
I have been a regular ‘health and fitness’ contributor to the Northern Advocate for the last three years, was a regular contributor to FitnessLife magazine for a year, and am the Northland ambassador for the Personal Training Council of NZ. I have been a two-time finalist (5 finalists) for ‘Personal Trainer of the Year’ at the New Zealand Fitness Industry awards.
I practice what I preach – entirely. I ALWAYS have a new goal to focus on. I was a horse rider from way back, and was involved in many social sports throughout school and tertiary years. In the last 9 months I have completed my first even ocean swim (the 3.3km Russell to Paihia ocean swim in December 2013), trained for and completed in my first ever Olympic-length triathlon in Rarotonga (in May 2014) that I also convinced my husband and two good friends to do alongside me (all of us first timers), and am currently training for my first ever half marathon in September. I love being fit, I love being healthy, and I love coercing others – ANY others – into participating in a healthier and fitter lifestyle. I also run various Facebook groups dedicated to getting people into some form of fitness or fitness challenge – no matter how small.
Tell us a bit about what makes your family great.
My husband and I both run our own businesses which allows us the luxury of some flexibility in terms of family time, planning family holidays, and enabling our kids to be a big part of our days. We dedicate Sunday to being a full family day and try to always have some new adventure up our sleeve. We involve the kids in our work too, so they know exactly what we do, how we do it, as well as why we do it.
What is your family’s favourite thing to do?
Explore! We love finding new places, and exploring the wonders of the world. It’s totally awesome seeing the world from a young person’s eyes and having the chance to explain the world to them. Seeing them discover new objects or new ideas is one of the easiest ways to get a smile on our faces. We generally let the girls lead the exploration, and enable them to decide where it’s going to take us. But coming in very close in second place is riding horses – it’s a family affair. We all have turns, and everybody wants ‘one more turn’ but everybody loves it.
Our feature at the moment is ‘healthy families’ – what healthy things does your family love doing?
Exploring the outdoors, spending time on our ‘farm’, doing farm chores, family time, making healthy new recipes, dance parties (in the lounge), pretending to do exercise classes, going for walks/adventures, planning trips away, riding bikes, riding horses, going to the park.
What advice would you give anyone who wants to start making their family like a bit more healthy?
When we become parents, we instantly become role models – whether we like it or not. Kids will learn so much more from what we do than what we tell them to do. If you want your kids to grow up knowing what healthy looks and feels like, then you need to show them, daily. Healthy and fit doesn’t mean being boring, nor is it tedious or time consuming. It doesn’t even have to be given the name ‘healthy’. Kids love games and being physical. And when we give our kids time and experiences that they enjoy, and opportunities for them to smile, laugh, and explore, then we are giving them one of the best things that we can give them. Google will give you thousands of ideas of how to be active with your family – whether you’ve got pre-schoolers, primary schoolers, or high school kids. While they still live at home, time is precious, and that time must be used wisely. A healthy family is a happy family, and it’s very true that ‘family’s who play together will stay together’.
This year is election year – what changes could the government make that would make a difference to your family?
– Some kind of subsidy for self-employed people to cover days off work for school holidays or sick kids.
– Increase the threshold for GST registration.
