A Whangarei Youth Guarantee Certificate in Fitness tauira has impressed NorthTec's High Performance Lab recording a score that would rival the fittest NRL players.

Tauira Cleveland Reihana gave the sports science staff the highest aerobic fitness level they've recorded to date.

The exercise involved incremental running until exhaustion to measure the rate of oxygen consumption. 

This is traditionally used to determine the effectiveness of training regimes for elite athletes. 

NRL players measure between a value of 18 to 21 and Cleveland, who is 17, scored 20.9. 

Other activities measured with specialised monitoring technology were speed, power, agility and body composition with the data collected used to statistically show where their fitness lies on the average scale.

Kaiako Morgana Nathan said the performance tests added an element of interest that kept tauira on their game.

"I'm really impressed, not only with their results but with their attitude and etiquette, even the other staff around here are impressed with them."

From these results Morgana will get them reassessed in another six to eight weeks to compare progress on the fitness programmes they've devised for themselves.

"Everyone has different goals; get bigger, get smaller, leaner, stronger. They're engaged as long as it's relevant to them so by implementing their own training plan, they can see what's improved and what hasn't worked."

As well as studying anatomy, physiology and nutrition, the tauira also get to learn about customer service and tikanga Māori and will have to run an event as part of their assessment.  

Tauira Hori Glassie (15) says with all the hands-on learning, it's hard to believe they're the same students who were excluded from mainstream education.

"All these guys couldn't get into any other school. But here they're supportive and encourage one another." 

Morgana agrees regarding the changes she's seen so far.

"They always keep you on your toes but it’s so rewarding and I’m just really proud of them."