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Don't let Christa DiPaolo's peppy personality fool you; this is one chick you don't want to mess with. As the founder of Box180, she can counterpunch, jab, and hook like it's no one's business, and she'll make sure that the rest of her jam packed classes can too.
"Jab all you want, I knock out the competition." – Christa DiPaolo
"It's a nonstop pace," she says. "The warmup is about a quarter of the class, then light hand weights, and then we do fast shadowboxing. That's where my dance background comes into place because it's tempo-based. Then we go on to heavy bags, with thirty to sixty seconds of full body exercises in between– pushups, core work, plyometrics– you name it. I was always worried that the guys would think it was too choreographed, but they actually really like it!"
This Las Vegas native has over 15 years of experience in the fitness industry, having trained under legendary Tae Bo creator and fitness legend, Billy Blanks. "Seeing what he did and what he created made me want to start my own class," she says. So after moving back and forth between LA and Las Vegas, she settled in Miami about five years ago and created Box180, which she teaches at Equinox Coral Gables and Aventura, Ironflower Fitness, SobeKick, and Anatomy at 1220.
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When she's not at the above studios, you'll more than likely find Christa swimming or running with her dog. That is, when she's not meandering through Miami's food scene. "We are regulars at Sugarcane– the bartenders are amazing!" she says. "Our new favorite place is Mignonette. I'm a total foodie. I really just want to eat for a living!"
And while she originally dreamed of becoming a backup dancer (growing up, her mom owned a dance studio in Las Vegas), she found her true calling was not so much in the ring, but outside of it, proving her worth as a woman in the fitness industry and helping people change along the way.
"I think the most challenging thing for me as a female in a male dominated industry is that I felt I always needed to be in a ring and box professionally to have the respect in the industry," she admits. "I started doing that, but I have two herniated discs in my spine. It was too painful,and I wanted a long career, so I did it the hard way. I worked my ass off."