The Gospel According To Godso

Meet Kirsty Godso, the no-BS trainer out to “light shit up” in the gym (and in life)

- Lizza Gebilagin

Kirsty Godso is not your regular fitness instructor. And it’s not just because the Kiwi-born Nike Master Trainer spends her days running sessions at Nike’s private gym in their NYC headquarters, putting locals through gruelling HIIT sessions in the city’s coolest new space, Project by Equinox, and juggling projects such as being the global face of CliniqueFit. Kirsty doesn’t even call herself a PT.

“That’s never been the way I’ve described myself,” Kirsty says in her New York-peppered accent. Instead, she says, you can call her a “PyroGirl”.

Pyro-what, you ask? If you’re not one of her 129K Insta followers, here’s how Kirsty breaks it down. “It’s now gotten so big, it’s turned into a movement,” Kirsty says. “When we talk about PyroGirls, we say, ‘Be the fire that burns inside-out!’ So if you have things that light you up, you’ve got to do something about it. You can’t sit around being complacent. You’ve got to blaze some trails!”

The movement evolved from a PyroGirls class she designed with fellow Nike trainer Lauren Williams. When they get together, “it’s too much sauce, like, it’s too lit”, she laughs. Their signature move? The hot sauce burpee (we tried it in Sydney – it’s as crazy tough as it sounds).

“We have people come into class, and they are like, ‘I’ve literally had the worst day, and all I could think about was coming to PyroGirls because you guys are going to light shit up,’” she says. “The workout is hard.”