NASHVILLE, Tenn. — For Kristin Petrony, fitness was not always the plan.
Before she became a personal trainer, online coach, powerlifter and advocate for women’s strength, Petrony spent 18 years in the classroom as a middle school math teacher. While she grew up playing sports and staying active, her path into the fitness industry came later, and from a deeply personal place.
Her transition from the classroom to the weight room started to take shape as Petrony’s own health was starting to become a concern. Around year 15 [of teaching] I basically found myself overweight, unhealthy and high risk for heart disease, and I needed to figure out what to do,” Petrony said.
Like many women, Petrony first tried the familiar quick fixes.
“After trying all of the the fads and the detoxes, it didn’t work” she said.
But the thing that ended up working was something many women do not consider at first.
“I found strength training tracking my macros.”
The result was not just weight loss. It was a shift in how she viewed her body, her confidence and her capability.
“I was able to lose the weight that I needed, but more importantly, I discovered the power of building muscle and the confidence that comes with,” Petrony said. “That sort of bled into every other part of life outside of the gym.”
That discovery eventually led her to earn her personal training certification in 2019.
Shortly after, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world, and, in many ways, changed the course of her career.
At the time, Petrony was teaching in Metro Nashville Public Schools. When schools went virtual, her schedule suddenly looked different.
“Once the gyms reopened, it gave me a lot more time,” she said. “I was able to take on more clients because I didn’t have a commute to and from work every day. And I also learned how to coach online through that.”
By spring of 2021, Petrony made the leap.
“I put in my resignation and decided to give it a try and run my coaching business full time instead,” she said.
Nearly five years later, her mission of helping other women feel the same has only grown.
Today, Petrony works with women who are ready to build strength, confidence and resilience, especially those who have spent years navigating the damage caused by diet culture.
While her messaging often speaks to Gen X and millennial women, Petrony said her passion has become especially focused on helping women build strong bodies before, during and beyond the menopause years.
“The women that are close to my age, sort of tend to gravitate to each other,” she said. “I think helping women build strong bodies will help them to be resilient as they enter the menopause years and beyond.”
For Petrony, that message is about much more than how someone looks.
She points to the long-term importance of muscle, bone density, mobility and quality of life, especially for women as estrogen declines and risks such as osteoporosis increase.
“Women make up the majority of nursing homes,” she said. “The quality of life and life expectancy is not great. And again, that specifically for women because we’re at high risk for osteoporosis and other things.”
Petrony also sees her work as a direct response to the messages many women absorbed in the 1990s and early 2000s — messages that told women to shrink, get smaller and take up less space.
“I feel like women around my age have been influenced and heavily impacted by diet culture,” she expressed. “It was all about getting as skinny as you can, and that was to our detriment.”
Now, Petrony wants women to rewrite that story.
“Helping women overcome that and look past the societal expectations,” she said. “Women need to do what’s truly best for their bodies and help build muscle and get strong,” she said.
In a male dominated field, Petrony is helping women understand they also deserve a spot on the spot rack.
“Women need to take up space in a gym that is especially notorious for men. It’s really fun to see women come into their own in a gym space and and start lifting weights,” she said.
Petrony trains clients both in person and online. She has built out a garage gym at her home and also trains several hours a week out of the gym inside Nashville MMA Training Camp.
Petrony also offers nutrition support, but her approach is highly individualized. Some clients want to learn how to track macros, and she supports that when it aligns with their goals. Others come with past experiences around disordered eating or an unhealthy relationship with food, and for them, she takes a different approach.
Rather than leading with restriction, Petrony focuses on what clients can add to their lives.
“We focus a lot more on the idea of what can you add? So we want to add things we don’t want to take away.”
That could mean more protein, more fiber, more strength training or more water.
“From a mental health perspective, people are so much more successful when they look at how can I add to my life to make it better as opposed to what can I take away?” she said.
Petrony does not just coach strength, she lives it. As a competitive powerlifter, much of her own training happens in her garage gym. But outside of lifting, she stays active by walking, kayaking and spending time outdoors with her family.
“We really love to go out to Long Hunter State Park,” she said. “It’s roughly a 3 mile loop there, so we just go out there and just take in the quiet and the peace.”
She also enjoys kayaking around Percy Priest and Old Hickory Lake, and said daily movement plays a major role in both her physical and mental health.
“I walk a lot,” she said. “I get an absurd amount of steps every day. It keeps my hips feeling good and my back feeling good for powerlifting.”
Family is also central to Petrony’s life. She and her husband are approaching their 21st anniversary, and they have a 17-year-old son.
Her marriage advice is simple.
“Choose your battles,” she said. “That’s the biggest one.”
When asked where the misconception comes from that women should avoid strength training or focus solely on cardio, Petrony does not hesitate to connect it back to diet culture, and something UNEXPECTED.
“We live in a patriarchal society and I personally feel like in that, strong woman are a threat.”
Petrony believes women have been conditioned to believe they should not get strong, even though the fear that lifting weights will make women “bulky” is not supported by reality.
For Petrony, the benefits of strength training go far beyond aesthetics. They are about resilience, health and being prepared for the unexpected.
That message became even more personal after her breast cancer diagnosis.
“About a year ago, I completed treatment for breast cancer,” she said.
Petrony was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer. It was found early, and she did not need chemotherapy. However, she underwent surgery, had a lumpectomy, completed 20 rounds of radiation and is now on hormone blockers for the next five to 10 years.
“I am very fortunate that it was found very early,” she said.
Still, the moment of diagnosis changed everything.
“I have a very vivid memory of sitting in the chair, waiting for the biopsy,” she said. “The doctor was setting everything up and she had just told me that based on the mammogram images that they were 99 percent sure that it was cancer. I remember just sitting there dumbfounded. Someone just told you you have cancer, like that’s insane!”
In that moment, Petrony said her years of strength training became more than a fitness routine. They became a source of mental grounding.
“And then I remember a moment where I was like, ‘You know what? I have spent all these years getting strong. I can do this.'”
Throughout treatment, Petrony said her doctors reinforced the same message: her strength mattered.
“All through treatment and through that journey, every doctor I had told me that all of my treatments are going to be made easier because I’m strong and because I lift,” she said.
Now, as she continues hormone blockers, Petrony said her doctors have told her that lifting and having muscle on her body may also help reduce side effects that mirror menopause symptoms, including hot flashes and brain fog.
“That’s a huge one for me right there,” she said. “You never know when the diagnosis is going to come. You never know when the accident is going to happen and you want to have a body that’s ready for it.”
While Petrony can help clients with weight loss and aesthetic goals, she wants women to know her work is about something much deeper.
“I’m not all about weight loss and and aesthetics,” she said. “If that’s someone’s goal, I can certainly help with that. However, it’s it’s so much bigger than that.”
Her message is one of empowerment, especially for women who are tired of being told to shrink.
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