It was a competitive race, as these things usually are, but one Gympie personal trainer has risen above the rest to be crowned the region’s best – or favourite – in the business.

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Longtime local PT Paul Frampton took out the Gympie Times subscriber-exclusive competition with 28 per cent of the final vote, followed by power couple Fiona and Matt Keable of The Real Body Movement with 20 per cent and James Ollier (Impact Elite Training) and Amy Price-Wilson (Gympie ARC) with 12 per cent each.

Mr Frampton, who runs the Empower Active studio alongside partner Trudi Hellmuth out of Channon St, said he was “humbled” to receive the most support this time around.

“It’s good to know that people appreciate what we do. We’ve got a lot of good clients and we’ve been doing this a long time,” he said.

“We don’t put ourselves out there too much, we don’t too much advertising and rely mostly on word of mouth. We’ve been here a long time and trained a lot of people.

“It’s very humbling, it just feels really good to know that people think that highly of us. There’s a lot of great trainers in Gympie, very well-educated and highly-skilled.”

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The well-respected trainer said he and Trudi remain constantly busy with yet passionate about their fitness enterprise, and had plenty of praise for the wider Gympie fitness community.

“We work long days and we work pretty hard at it. We love it. We’re really lucky, we have really good clients. It’s a lot easier when you enjoy doing what you do,” he said.

“It’s a pretty tough industry, there’s a lot of PTs in Gympie and we all seem to be working pretty hard, so it’s good that Gympie seems to be big enough for all of us.

“It’s a great thing to get all these PTs some good recognition.”