But as time passed, as Toole filled other people’s cups, hers slowly became empty. It’s where the inspiration for her latest exercise effort, Never Knock Out (NKO) Clubhas been made.
“As much as I loved what I was doing, I was very tired and burned out. I’m an energetic, full-tilt person, so I felt like I wasn’t myself. I felt in my body, but out of my skin,” she tells Muscle & Fitness. “I noticed that my enjoyment of training was starting to disappear.”
What worried her most was numbness. “There was a level of deep exhaustion. So I started to really feel numb to things,” she admits. “I think an important sign is not a lot of feeling. It’s the absence of feeling. It’s the absence of passion, pleasure or fulfillment.”
For athletes and high achievers who are conditioned to push through that kind of detachment, it’s easy to ignore them. Toole learned to see it as a warning sign that her nervous system was overloaded, long before anything visibly fell apart.
But instead of sinking deeper, she chose to rise above and step into growth.
“When we notice ourselves being more distant or more apathetic or numb, that’s a great warning system to say, OK, it’s time to change. It’s time to grow,” she says. “It’s time to add weight, either physically, but also add a new challenge mentally. So take the time to go to the other parts of ourselves and see what takes some effort. And that was a big point for me.”
Kendall Toole wants to address what modern fitness culture often ignores
Modern fitness culture is built on output. More intensity. More discipline. More data. When our minds take over and doubt arises, the default solution is often to train harder.
Toole saw that a missing framework for mental resilience was recognizing when the mind, not the body, needs attention first.
“There has been a gap and divide between physical fitness and mental fitness,” says Toole. “And you can’t have one without the other. It’s absolutely impossible.”
That realization became the basis for NKO Club, her self-funded platform that combines on-demand strength training, boxing, pilates, cycling and mobility with breathwork, gratitude logs, nutritious recipes and short mindfulness exercises. The goal, she says, is sustainability.
She purposely snacked on the mindfulness exercises. “I would like to meditate for twenty minutes. That is far from possible,” she laughs. “So we started with five-minute resets. Small victories for the brain actually have a huge impact, because our brains are constantly changing and growing through neuroplasticity.”
Rethinking resilience
As an athlete, Toole understands resilience. But she’s learned that treating every internal signal as something to overcome can become a problem.
“Many people in healthcare and fitness, especially us athletes, pride ourselves on our resilience,” she admits. “But there are times when part of resilience is letting the feeling exist and staying with it.”
She compares mental strain with physical injury. “You can’t fight something that needs its place,” she says. “It’s no different than an injury.”
The challenge, she explains, is that mental injuries are often not visible at first, so people tend to overlook warning signs that they would never physically ignore.
She encourages people to lean forward and recognize what she calls “injury days” for the mind. These days that require rest, gentler movements or space have reshaped the way she trains and lives.
A life lesson that changed everything
Toole’s consciousness is rooted in a much darker season of her life. Eleven years ago, she went through a period of suicidal ideation, marked by deep disconnection.
“It felt like my head was disconnected from the rest of my body,” she recalls. “Like my brain was stuck at the top and my neck down didn’t feel real.”
Not only did she almost take her own life, the trainer admits to M&F who can hardly remember any moments in the months that followed.
“I can’t remember Christmas. I can’t remember New Year’s, I can’t remember my birthday,” she says. “I don’t know if my brain didn’t store those memories simply because it was trying to protect me from a very dark time, but in retrospect I’m grateful that I didn’t have those months because it got me into therapy and really made me work on myself and then build the trajectory for my life now.”
How she trains for emotional longevity
Today, Toole’s mental fitness practices are intentionally practical. She doesn’t believe in perfect routines or extreme protocols. She believes in consistency and early intervention.
“If my central nervous system is not doing well,” she says, “my body will let you know.”
These principles are embedded in the NKO Club, which treats mental fitness as a trainable skill rather than a personality trait. Its core practices include:
1. Mental reps in the morning
Although Toole says being a morning person was never really her thing, she sees tremendous value in becoming one. She knows that if she doesn’t maintain her morning habits, those negative thought patterns and seeds of doubt can take over her much more.
“The first thing I do when I wake up is a three-minute meditation where I get into my body,” she says. “Then I open the NKO app, keep my gratitude journal while my brain is still malleable, and I can implant some good things.”
She ignores her morning scrolling habit and instead puts on music, a podcast, or practices prayer to get her mind ready for a day of success.
2. Breathwork ingrained in the training
Toole practices consciously managing her breathing during and around training. Members of the app will see how she combines ‘mind’ and ‘body’ sessions. For example, she coaches nasal breathing in the 10-second recovery periods of her 15-minute HIIT class “to oxygenate the frontal lobe so we can be more present.”
3. Using the body as an emotional dashboard
Through the awareness built over time, Toole recognizes her body’s early warning signs when her nervous system is working overtime.
“When my central nervous system isn’t doing well, I feel it in my brain, upper traps and lower back,” she says. “I can literally say, ‘Okay, my mental health isn’t great because my back is lighting up.’”
On those days she leans on mobility, hip work, stretching and slower modalities like Pilates sculpture. Layered movements force her brain to the present.
Protecting your humanity
Toole is blunt about what the current environment is doing to our minds. “It’s difficult to try to have a deeply human experience in today’s world, to try to protect your humanity.”
For athletes who pride themselves on never missing a set, Toole offers a different kind of challenge. Train to notice the crack before it spreads and have the courage to stop, breathe and feel so you can keep showing up in the long run.
“When you feel the disconnect between your physical body and your mind, that’s always an important sign,” she explains. “But movement and breathing are the best way to move from that state of overwhelm and disconnection, and then pull yourself back into your own humanity.”
About the App NKO Club is now live and offers a seven-day free trial, followed by a $29.99 monthly subscription. Membership includes:
- 50 workouts in strength, cycling, boxing, pilates and mobility, with more than 10 new classes every week
- Tracks curated by Toole for different genres, in collaboration with Feed.fm, but you can also sync your own playlist with each workout
- Guided gratitude journalism, affirmations and breathwork lessons
- Balanced recipes that nourish body and mind, with a built-in shopping list for easy planning and shopping
- Social, motivational features that connect members as they share their goals and progress, with the promise of real-life events in cities across the country.
- Personalized in-app recommendations that adapt to your goals and preferences
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