Kendall Toole Reveals the Real Reason She Left Peloton as She Announces Her Own Fitness App

Kendall Toole left Peloton behind to pave an individual path in the fitness world.

The cycling coach, 32, just launched her own workout app, NKO Club, featuring her signature bike, strength and boxing classes, as well as meditation, recipes and nutrition tips.

Over a year and a half since her June 2024 departure from Peloton, Toole opened up to OK! about why she decided to step back and take the risk of building a personal business.

When the instructor announced her shocking departure from Peloton after nearly five years, the "goal" was always to establish something entirely her own.

"Initially, when I left, I was very open to what opportunities would come up, and I had conversations with a lot of different businesses and platforms in the space. The second I would get close to working with somebody else or started to entertain the thought, I just had an instinct that was like, 'No, it's not right,'" she explained. "I kept thinking about the community, the Never Knocked Out Crew, and this beautiful community of people. When I was at Peloton, as wonderful as the platform was, I couldn't fully step into serving that community in the way I hoped, on every level."

Toole was open to getting "scrappy" and entirely self-funded NKO Club. With the help of Venture Capital, she was "very smart" with her money and created an app she's proud of.

Since leaving Peloton, she has gotten her breathwork certification to incorporate her signature mental health teachings into a different modality. The fitness star is well aware of the number of similar apps run by talent, but she believes her platform brings a unique perspective that helps people "fall back in love with movement."

"I'm not reinventing the wheel here. I'm a person in fitness and wellness who's creating an app. I've been a member of apps run by talent for years. I think what's key here is the experience," she explained of NKO Club, which features five different workout types. "I was only able, in my time at Peloton, to teach shadow boxing and cycling, but I'm really actually well-versed in the majority of [modalities]."

Toole has a background in "boxing in a ring," "pilates and strength training," which she considers the "core pillars" of her exercise routine.

"Being able to provide that to the community in a way that I was never able to teach it is really exciting," she expressed. "I wanted people falling back in love with movement, falling back in love with wellness, where it didn't have to be about stacking 18 classes and exhausting the body, or shaming yourself because you did or didn't hit a certain number or metric."

Toole added, "I wanted it to go back to its roots of when we move, when we honor our brain and take care of it, and when we fuel our bodies with things that taste good and are delicious and yummy and balanced, we're at our best. I'm doing it in a way that feels a little bit more holistic and very much visually exciting for the community as well."

Although NKO Club is currently a "one-woman show," she hopes to one day incorporate other instructors or experts from the fitness industry.

"We're definitely playing with the idea of what we want the content to look like as we go," the 32-year-old teased. "The great news is we can do anything we want. We can bring really special friends in, which is something we're going to be dropping at the top of the new year, having special guests, looking at having guest instructors, seeing how we build out and develop the business. So by all means, the sky's the limit."