CINCINNATI — After going down the wrong path, Kalli Riggins used fitness to get in a better place. Now she’s inspiring others to do the same.
What You Need To Know
- Kalli Riggins knew she needed to turn her life around after falling off a balcony last year and struggling with substance abuse
- Riggins has always been passionate about fitness, playing basketball in college
- She decided to go through training to become a fitness coach
- Riggins then created Kalli Fit to encourage others to lead a healthy lifestyle
Riggins has found her passion: Coaching others to lead a healthy lifestyle. While Riggins has always been passionate about fitness, it wasn’t an easy road to get here.
“Spiraled out of control a little bit with just substance abuse and things and falling off the balcony — that was kind of the point where I was like this is it, I can’t keep doing this,” Riggins said.
Riggins broke her leg in three spots during that fall in early 2020. She used that as a wake-up call to begin her journey to become a fitness trainer.
“I needed to find my purpose,” she said. “I wanted to help people so I felt that taking what I’m passionate about, learning more about it, being able to use that to help people, it’s just made me feel a lot more purposeful in the world.”
After offering boot camp last summer, she realized she could make this her full-time job, and Kalli Fit was born.
“I’m just winging it, and we’ll see what happens,” she said. “I started getting a group of girls that were consistently coming and I was like this is actually taking off!”
Now, Riggins spends a lot of time in the gym training people that have been with her since day one.
“Seeing how far they’ve come, especially the people that have been here since the beginning,” Riggins said. “The workouts didn’t use to be this hard. So seeing them be able to push themselves to get to this point, it’s amazing and I love to see it!”
She said seeing her clients get better and stronger is one of the best parts of the job.
“I want them to see results probably more than they want to see results,” she said. “And it makes me feel good to know that I’m having this impact on their life and helping them live healthier lives and build healthy habits and come push themselves harder than they think they can.”
Riggins said she’s upfront about her story in hopes that it helps inspires her clients that no matter what, you can push forward and be better.
“You can make the change,” she said. “You don’t have to be defined by your mistakes. Every day is a new chance to be better than you were yesterday.”
