Toole’s NKO app integrates instructor-led exercises, recipes and mindfulness instruments into one platform. Greater than something, although, she needs the app to assist spark a group
Throughout Kendall Toole’s tenure as a Peloton health teacher, she was an outspoken advocate for psychological wellness, typically citing the subject throughout her boxing, biking and power lessons.
Toole amassed an enormous following, little question from Peloton customers with whom her model and messaging resonated. However in 2024, she left the fitness giant to pursue her personal profession ambitions.
“That point in my life was incredible, however it positively got here with limitations, too,” Toole advised Athletech Information. “I felt like there was a niche in what I may give to the group.”
For the previous 10 months, Toole has been exhausting at work, growing a brand new app to domesticate that sense of group she was eager for at Peloton.
As an teacher, Toole would typically finish her lessons with the phrase, “They will knock you down, however they may by no means knock us out.”
Her mantra turned the muse of the brand new app, referred to as “By no means Knocked Out” (NKO), which Toole stated embodies three core pillars of wellness: train, diet and psychological well being.
“The aim was to place all of the apps that I like utilizing into one area,” she stated.
A Three-Pronged Strategy to Wellness
The NKO app integrates instructor-led exercises, recipes and mindfulness/psychological well being instruments into one area.
Finishing up Toole’s aim of making a group, the app is centered on the foundations of health and wellness, whereas offering a reprieve from social media and the ocean of on-line content material.
“It simply looks like we’re overwhelmed by a lot content material, a lot suggestions, telling us who we have to be and what we have to suppose,” Toole famous. “I needed an area the place you’re not scrolling, you’re not doomscrolling and you’ve got your three clear pillars.”
Exercises span power, biking, boxing, Pilates and mobility, with 10 or extra new lessons added on a weekly foundation. Toole additionally partnered with Feed.fm to supply music throughout all genres, with playlists that customers can choose for any exercise reasonably than having set music. Customers may sync their very own playlist to any exercise.
Toole has additionally added a library of her favourite recipes, which she stated individuals on-line typically ask for, in addition to a built-in grocery listing. Notably, she selected to not embrace any form of meals monitoring, hoping to assist individuals domesticate wholesome relationships with consuming and “carry the enjoyment again to meals,” she stated.
As an outspoken advocate, Toole is especially pleased with the psychological well being portion of the app, which options guided breathwork and an in-app journal, the place customers can preserve a gratitude journaling streak for every day they use it.
“The entire level of the app is, how can we simplify from the chaos that we cope with?” she added.
Toole’s Imaginative and prescient for Group
Toole has seen that health and wellness hubs are more and more turning into these third areas for individuals to gather in a context that doesn’t require going to a bar or drinking alcohol. Because the NKO app builds its personal sense of group, she’s hoping to shift it to in-person occasions.
“I don’t suppose all people wants one other social platform,” Toole defined. “I additionally don’t need it to develop into one thing the place everybody has to brag about, ‘Hey, I did eight lessons right this moment.’ That’s not the purpose.”
That’s why Toole’s final aim is to carry individuals collectively offline via the app’s rising group.
“With NKO membership, what we hope to do inside that first yr is construct occasions the place we’re with the group,” she stated. “We get individuals engaged, we have interaction with native gyms, native expertise, and provides individuals extra methods to search out connection.”
That would appear like pop-up occasions or a tour, Toole stated, and even establishing bodily NKO areas sooner or later. For now, Toole is the only teacher, however she’s planning to usher in visitor instructors and increase from there.
“What I’m enthusiastic about is different individuals within the area — different expertise, pals of mine, individuals who characterize completely different views, completely different viewpoints, completely different ages than me — being visitor instructors on the platform, letting them come on, letting them do lessons, and reaching new audiences in that means,” she stated.
Having as soon as been a part of a serious health model, Toole discovered community-building to be restricted, particularly throughout manufacturers.
Constructing her personal app means she’s in command of the NKO model, which was a precedence for Toole.
“I’m not beholden to an investor; I’m not beholden to anybody else,” she stated. “That was an enormous determination.”
Sooner or later, she’s open to bringing in buyers in the event that they transfer to a bodily area, however, she added, “It’s actually protecting the mission primary.”
The NKO app will price $29.99 for a month-to-month subscription and $249.99 per yr for an annual plan. Founding members obtain 15% off all product clothes for the lifetime of their membership and first entry to future occasions.
Toole needed her app to really feel refined whereas remaining welcoming and inclusive, assembly anybody wherever they could be of their health journey.
“I’m not making an attempt to gatekeep,” she stated. “I need to create a rustic membership for the misfits.”
