Helping the police to be their best on the beat

blog Date published 9 9 2021 , Age 3 years ago

It’s been a busy time for our Nelson Tasman Police as they help navigate us through a nationwide lockdown all while continuing their everyday job of ensuring our communities safety.

It’s essential our police stay in great shape both mentally and physically in order to carry out their roles.

So, while our police officers are out there supporting us, who are supporting them to be the best they can be on the job?

Meet Bachelor of Sport and Recreation(external link) graduate Alex Way. Alex is the Police Physical Education Officer for Nelson Tasman responsible for ensuring the physical fitness, health promotion and wellness of our police and police cadets.

Alex runs physical competency testing and helps prepare recruits for Police College throughout the region.

“The physical competency test is an obstacle course staff undertake every two years to show they’re fit enough to do their role,” says Alex, “I also test recruits to ensure they’re up to the standard to go to Police College and if they’re struggling, I help get them up to speed.”

A recent career highlight for Alex has been to help rehabilitate someone coming back from major surgery.

“I worked with someone for three months who had a knee reconstruction and managed to get them to pass this fitness test and now they’re doing the normal day to day stuff again which they haven’t been able to do for four years. It's been very rewarding.”

Alex first discovered the NMIT fitness programme while playing rugby as a year 10 at Waimea College.

“An NMIT fitness student was helping our rugby team as part of their final project and I started talking to him about what he was doing and it really turned a leaf for me.”

“The upside of studying at NMIT is that you have smaller classes so you have a better relationship with the tutors. They were really supportive the whole way through including my classmates as well,” says Alex.

The Bachelor of Sport and Recreation is offered by AUT at NMIT’s Nelson Campus and is available to graduates of NMIT’s New Zealand Diploma in Sport Recreation and Exercise, Level 5 and 6.(external link)

To find out more about our Fitness programmes, visit nmit.ac.nz/fitness(external link)