LA-based trainer Kirsty Godso has a distinct MO: she gets a kick out of making her clients suffer but uses body-positivity-coded cheerleading to soften the burn. Typical affirmations include “stunning”, “gorgeous” and “move your beautiful body”.
“I get a little evil in workouts,” says Godso of pushing her clients past the pain point. “But instead of talking about burning calories, I talk about why it’s important to do hard things. I find their goal beyond aesthetics and champion that.” That’s also why, as a rule, you won’t find her teaching in a crop top: “I don’t want people thinking about my body; my job is to make them feel good about theirs.”
Godso – a 38-year-old brunette with a waist-length ponytail – might shift the focus beyond aesthetic goals, but she still works with some of the world’s most beautiful bodies. Her clients include Kaia Gerber, Hailey Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo, Charli XCX and dancer Maddie Ziegler – a roster she keeps deliberately small so she can give everyone her full attention. Last year she also announced a partnership with California-based performance-apparel brand Vuori, part of a multi-million-dollar, multi-year deal.
When in LA, Godso’s clients train with her up to five times a week – sometimes daily if they have a bigger goal. She trained Bieber during her pregnancy and post-partum; she preps Rodrigo for her tours. Most people on her roster now count as a close friend. “We know each other inside out, but trust is everything,” says Godso. “I can never do those ‘day in the life of’ stories because I have signed so many NDAs.”
The Godso method, which she calls Pyro, is a mix of strength training and Pilates-style movement integrated with “micro doses” of cardio in the tradition of HIIT. “I think the word symbolises energy and intensity in a spicy, fun way,” she says of the name she landed on. Though her practice has been gleaned from 15 years of training experience – she has tried everything, from hot yoga and dance cardio to barre and spin – she steers clear of fitness fads: “The algorithm rewards a trend – we need to make that stop.”
Instead, Godso advocates consistency and repetition. “The body wants to learn something and get better at it, then you can be more confident, increase your weight load and improve your skill,” she says. Her fitness philosophy is about motivating clients to keep moving every day, and she tends to advocate for heavier resistance training and a higher protein intake. The result is lean but with visible muscle strength. Pyro, in Godso’s vernacular, is now an adjective: “Pyro arms”, for example, describes well-defined triceps, biceps and deltoids. But these gains come with no small amount of pain: an early signature move called the “hot-sauce burpee” incorporates a tuck jump into an already gruesome manoeuvre. She also favours switch climbers (a movement that targets multiple muscle groups at once), typewriters (a horizontal shuffle while in a full plank) and the cable machine for different strength exercises in the gym.
“She is an incredible work-hard buddy, but she also makes everything more fun,” says Godso’s close friend and sometime collaborator Krissy Jones of NY-based yoga studio Sky Ting. “Kirsty knows exactly why she is asking you to do something, and she knows how to communicate it in a way that makes people want to rise to the occasion.”
Despite a natural talent and love of sport that saw Godso work as a Nike trainer for 13 years, she didn’t set out on this career path. At school in Auckland in the 1990s, she found her happiness in team sports – netball, water polo – before studying finance and marketing, then going into marketing for Les Mills, the former Olympian-turned-fitness mogul who built a global empire syndicating choreographed classes such as BodyPump to gyms worldwide. Godso was also recruited to appear in his training DVDs – “that will date me”, she laughs.
Nike scouted her in 2012 and she became one of its star trainers, running large-group events and classes all over the world, which eventually enabled her to move to the US in 2016. For a time, she was pigeonholed as a HIIT trainer: “I was someone who could do the workout, talk and teach at the same time, but I was doing it too much,” she says. “With HIIT it’s important to pace out the classes and allow for recovery. I was doing 16 classes a week.”
In 2021, she met Kaia Gerber – the other KG – in a Pilates class, and the model asked if they could train together. (It was Gerber who was first affiliated with Vuori and introduced Godso to the brand – Nike and Godso parted ways last year.) The model has said that Godso has “positively impacted every aspect of [her] life – Pyro is a lifestyle”. Godso launched her own Pyro training platform in 2024. Guided video sessions are split into Gym (with equipment) and Studio (mat classes with light equipment) and themed around Strength (weight training), Sweat (cardio) and Sculpt (Pilates-style workouts).
Godso’s signature mix of punishment and positivity shines through in every video. Later this month she’s dropping Shred, a new programme consisting of three- or six-week intensive schedules anchored in strength training. Users can expect interval-based cardio sessions and “spicy” sculpting workouts (high burn, low impact) to help them get back into a routine. “The name Shred is also a little spin on some of the mildly toxic language often seen in the industry,” she says, adding that she hopes it will help users fall in love with a healthy and active rhythm.
Godso’s time now belongs to her. An average day consists of training her clients from 6am and running her businesses (she manages a whey-protein-powder brand, Made Of) in the afternoons. She sometimes trains with her workout buddy, Roy Chan – the duo are the his-and-hers of Hollywood trainers. “Kirsty makes a workout feel like an episode of Friends disguised as an insane sweat session,” says Chan. “The first time we taught together, we completely improvised – no plan, just flowing back and forth – and that’s when I saw her stage presence firsthand. She’s got the perfect mix of expertise and wit.”
Both trainers bandy a feelgood brand of fitness that moves beyond the pursuit of a snatched waist. “Exercise can feel like a chore when that’s the only reason you’re doing it,” says Godso. “I see it as something that lets you operate from a better place. I want it to make you feel good