What makes PrestigePT different comes down to one thing people usually don't expect when they walk in: results aren't just about the workout.
I didn't build PrestigePT to be another commercial gym with a rack of dumbbells and a sign-up desk. I built it because I kept seeing the same problem: people would train hard, get some results, then plateau or regress, not because they weren't working hard enough, but because training was the only piece of the puzzle anyone was looking at.
Real, lasting health isn't just a workout problem. It's a whole-person problem. That's why coaching at PrestigePT was never meant to be just me and a client. It's a team.
Built From the Ground Up: The Story Behind PrestigePT
I wasn't born into any of this. I moved to Australia in 2012 with nothing but dreams, studied sport at Griffith University, worked night shifts, and trained clients during the day. I knew that if I wanted real results for myself, I had to help enough people get theirs first. So I started building, brick by brick.
Then I lost everything. I poured everything I had into a gym partnership, and it collapsed. For months I slept in my 1988 Toyota Camry with nowhere else to go. It's still the hardest period of my life, and it's the one that shaped everything I do now. Years later, during COVID, I coached clients out of a backyard tent through rain, heat, and cold, because their health mattered more than my circumstances. That wasn't a hardship story to me. It was just what refusing to quit actually looks like.
Somewhere in rebuilding, coaching over a thousand people personally, I learned what actually works, and what doesn't. It was never about motivation or quick fixes. It's about systems, habits, accountability, and the right coaching for the right person. That's why PrestigePT exists: to give people a private, premium coaching experience that delivers real results, so they don't waste years the way I did.
Exercise changed my life, but what kept me in this industry was watching it change other people's. People don't come to us to lose weight. They come to regain confidence, energy, and a better quality of life. That's still my purpose, every single day.
I believe everyone deserves a real chance to become the strongest, healthiest version of themselves. You just need the right coach and the right environment. That's what I've spent over a decade building.
Why One Trainer Isn't What Makes PrestigePT Different
A personal trainer can build you a great program. But if your nutrition isn't dialed in, if an old injury is quietly limiting how you move, or if your body is telling you something your training plan isn't accounting for, no amount of gym sessions will fix that on their own.
That's the gap most personal training misses. It's also the gap we built PrestigePT around closing.
Who's Actually On My Team
When you train with us, you're not just working with one coach, you're supported by a team that covers the parts of health a workout program alone can't reach.
Michaela, our in-house nutritionist, is a member of the Nutrition Society of Australia and holds a Bachelor of Food and Nutrition from La Trobe University. Her focus isn't fad diets or restrictive rules, it's helping clients build sustainable habits that actually survive a busy, real life. She works alongside your training plan so your nutrition is supporting your results, not working against them.
Dr. James Morgan, our in-house osteopath, is AHPRA-registered and holds a Master's degree in Osteopathic Medicine, with over 15 years of experience in movement, strength, and injury-aware care. If pain, an old injury, or a movement limitation is holding your training back, James works directly with our coaching team so your program is built around what your body can actually do, safely, not despite what it's telling you.
Dane, our exercise scientist, holds a Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science and brings a background in elite strength and conditioning, including time with the Tweed Seagulls Cyril Connell squad and the Gold Coast Suns Academy. He's currently working towards his ASCA Level 2 accreditation. What that means for everyday clients is simple: the same structured, evidence-based approach used to build athletes is behind your own program too, focused on progressive training, movement quality, and injury prevention, not guesswork. Dane's the one making sure the plan doesn't just work in theory, it holds up under real, sustainable progress.
Combined with a personal trainer who's actually tracking your progress week to week, that's specialists working from the same plan instead of separate appointments you have to coordinate yourself.
Our personal training team brings that same depth. Veronika Brogden, a Senior Personal Trainer with over a decade of experience, holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from UC Davis, is NASM-certified, and draws on a competitive background as a 2nd Dan Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and 10-time California State Champion. Crystal combines qualifications across Personal Training, Performance Nutrition, and Boxing with a background as a competitive gymnast and national Taekwondo champion, coaching around five pillars: movement, nutrition, hydration, mindset, and sleep. Angello brings 15+ years of experience and a decorated competitive bodybuilding career, including IFBB and NABBA placings, into a structured, results-driven coaching style. You can meet the full coaching team and see what each of them specialises in before you book.
That's the kind of depth we look for across the team, not just someone who can run a session, but someone who understands what it actually takes to build a habit that lasts. It's also, honestly, what makes PrestigePT different from a gym where you're handed a program and left to figure the rest out alone.
What This Actually Looks Like Day to Day
It's not three separate services bolted together. It's one coordinated plan.
Your training program is built with your nutrition goals and any physical limitations already factored in, not adjusted after the fact. If something changes, an injury flares up, progress stalls, life gets busier, the team adjusts together instead of leaving you to figure out which appointment to book next.
What Makes PrestigePT Different Over the Long Run
Anyone can get short-term results from motivation alone. Long-term results, the kind that actually change how capable and confident you feel five or ten years from now, come from consistency. And consistency is much easier to sustain when the plan around you actually makes sense as a whole, rather than being three good ideas that were never talking to each other.
That's the real difference between a gym membership and coaching that's actually built to last.
Where to start
If you're on the Gold Coast and want a plan that's actually built around your training, your nutrition, and your body, not just one of the three, get in touch. We start every new client with an assessment, not a workout, so the plan is built around where you're actually starting from.
You can book a free assessment at PrestigePT's private studio in Bundall, or reach us on 07 5620 4420 or [email protected].
Shawn Maftounian is the Founder and Director of Prestige Personalised Training, a private personal training studio in Bundall, Gold Coast. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Sports from Griffith University and was named Australia's #1 Personal Trainer in 2019. He recently spoke about what it takes to build a career in health and wellness in an interview with Authority Magazine, covering purpose-driven coaching, community, and the future of preventative health. You can meet the full coaching team on our team page, or follow Shawn's work on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
