LA's Hottest Trainer 2015 Contestant #16: Chelsea Kruse, Exhale Venice

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Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski personally wrote us to nominate Chelsea Kruse, praising the trainer's ability to balance both physical and inner strength. A fitness star for more than 10 years, Kruse has always been intrigued by the industry, from dancing competitively as a child to leading Billy Blanks Tae Bo videos in her middle school gym classes (true story!) to studying exercise science at the University of Kansas. "A fitness career was more sensible than my previous childhood goal to be become a crime scene investigator," she notes. "I still dabble with solving mysteries on the side, but fitness has my heart!"

Today, you can catch Kruse at Exhale's Venice and Santa Monica locations, where she teaches all of the studio's core fusion principles: barre, barre+cardio, yoga, and core fusion extreme. "My favorite to teach is our high intensity classes (barre+cardio and CFX) class," she reveals. "They are the perfect combination of strength, flexibility, and a cardiovascular challenge."

Want to take one of Kruse's Olympian-approved classes? "I typically teach bright and early, so I have to wake people up with encouragement, good music, and a heart-pumping sweaty class," she explains. Her top-notch workout soundtrack also gets clients motivated: "Anything with a good beat gets me excited to sweat. From Ace of Base to Beyoncé to Justin Timberlake. My current summer jam that I can't help but dance to is "What Are Ü Now" by Diplo, Skrillex, and Justin Bieber."

As if we couldn't like the girl more, she's also a legit trendsetter. "I became aa vegetarian before it was cool (since age 8)," tells us. I watched every episode of Walker Texas Ranger before Chuck Norris became an American folk hero! "