Kendall Toole Announces NKO Club, A “Country Club For Misfits”

With the launch of NKO Club, former Peloton instructor Kendall Toole blends fitness, nutrition and mental health into a holistic platform.
In June 2024, Kendall Toole shocked millions of fans by walking away from one of the most visible fitness platforms in the world.
Best known for her years as a Peloton instructor advocating for mental health awareness, Toole became popular for her high-energy rides, motivational coaching style, and her focus on mental well-being.
She announced that she was leaving the company around the same time as two other popular instructors, Kristin McGee and Ross Rayburn.
“Peloton has shared that my leaving was a byproduct of contract negotiations, which is 100% true,” Toole told me when the news first broke last year. “I had grown as much as I could possibly grow there and I’m deeply grateful for the experience.”
Fast forward to today, after her year-long non-compete terms have ended, Toole is speaking more candidly about her departure from the company.
“I was offered more money to leave if I agreed to say nothing publicly about the company,” she says. “But I wanted freedom. I needed to have agency over my career.”
Despite the offer of severance, Toole is clear that her departure from the company was 100% her own choice.
Just this past October, Toole finally led her first live fitness class in over a year, appropriately at the World Mental Health Festival in New York City. According to the terms of her non-compete, Toole was not permitted to lead any fitness classes or participate in any form of fitness content streaming in any capacity for a full year.
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Toole met me only a few hours after landing in New York for the event, remarkably bright-eyed and bubbly for someone who’d just stepped off a red-eye from Las Vegas after speaking to 500 women about mental health.
Before we began the interview, cold brew in hand, Toole gushed over how excited she was (and the outfit she’d be wearing) to attend the Project Healthy Minds 3rd Annual Gala later that evening.
Her trademark energy, the same spark that once powered thousands through early-morning rides, hasn’t dimmed at all. She’s now bringing that energy into her next chapter, which begins today as she announces her new fitness app, NKO Club.
NKO, short for Never Knocked Out, is a nod to the words her father repeated throughout her life and the phrase Toole used to close every Peloton class. But this time, she’s going beyond the bike.
The Country Club for Misfits
Constantly in motion, the fitness star spent her “non compete year” in partnership with Lululemon, co-hosting a podcast with longtime friend Galey Alix, starting a newsletter, creating a YouTube channel and preparing for today’s launch.
For $29.99 a month (or $249.99 annually), members get access to cycling, boxing, strength-training, Pilates, breathwork, mobility and stretching classes, all designed to meet people at whatever fitness level they’re comfortable with.
In addition to the fitness offerings, NKO Club boasts a gratitude journal, protein-forward recipes that can generate an automatic grocery list (“because my ADHD brain always forgets the ingredients,” she laughs), and curated NKO Club music stations powered by Feed.fm.
“I have playlists for everything,” Toole says, citing how important the music piece was to her. “We have pop-punk, hip-hop, EDM, and more. There are coordinated playlists that match the energy of the class. You can take the same workout three times and it’ll feel completely different.”
Toole’s next chapter is also about reclaiming wellness from the gatekeeping that’s crept into the industry.
“There’s so much elitism,” she says. “We’re not reinventing the wheel, we’re just making it warmer. I wanted to create a space where no matter who you are, you’re welcome to move with us.”
Trading The Global Stage For Entrepreneurship
Toole doesn’t romanticize the leap from employee to entrepreneur. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” she says. “You have to save money for a very long time. Be prepared to make tradeoffs. But if you think about it, a consistent paycheck is also a tradeoff, one that sometimes sacrifices your mental health. It’s costing you either way, so it’s really up to you how that cost is being spent.”
She credits her “frugal girl mindset” to what gave her the financial runway to walk away when Peloton’s workplace culture “no longer aligned with her values.”
“I could no longer mentally and emotionally stand to be in that workplace,” she says. “The tone of the company had shifted, and it was no longer a place where I felt comfortable.”
The irony of preaching mental health while privately unraveling wasn’t lost on her.
“It felt hypocritical, promoting mental well-being while being unwell,” she says. “That’s when I knew something had to change.”
Her former employer’s public-facing sentiment towards Toole remains respectful. When I reached out to Peloton for a comment, they offered the following statement:
“Kendall left a powerful legacy at Peloton and we are grateful for her passion and commitment to our Members. We’re cheering her on in all of her ventures ahead and we’ll always celebrate her as a valued member of the Peloton community.