About
Christina Kosti
Originally from Athens, Greece, Christina is an experienced exercise scientist and coach, specializing in optimizing athletic performance and overall well-being. As a former elite track & field athlete with international distinctions, she brings firsthand experience in high performance sports to her coaching.
She provides personalized training programs tailored to individual goals, including strength development, hypertrophy, endurance, mobility, and weight management. Her expertise extends to sport-specific training, including conditioning, technique refinement, competition preparation, as well as injury prevention & rehabilitation.
Over the past five years, Christina has worked in Greece, The Netherlands and Switzerland with a diverse clientele - ranging from general and clinical populations to elite athletes and high-profile professionals.
Her mission is to help individuals achieve peak performance, sustainable health, and longevity through evidence-based coaching.
Education
My Story
I’ve been moving for as long as I can remember. As a kid growing up in Athens, I was always running, climbing trees, kicking a football in the square, skateboarding—always in motion. When I was only four years old, I was taken to a track and field stadium for the first time. I don’t remember every detail, but I remember how it felt. I was free. I could run as fast as I wanted, jump as far as I could. I was happy. That stadium quickly became my second home—and has stayed that way ever since.
I joined Panionios G.S.S., a club that shaped me not just as an athlete, but as a person. Panionios isn’t just a sports team—it carries a legacy of resilience, memory, community, and pride. There, apart from athletics, I learned how to swim, play basketball and volleyball, do gymnastics, judo, ping pong... but more importantly, I learned the values that still guide me today: discipline, perseverance, humility, teamwork, and respect. I found people who believed in me, and they became my family.
In my early school years, my PE teacher noticed how fast I was and how I could float from one leg to the other in jumps, and told me, “You’re going to be a great jumper.” But it felt like I had already known. I remember watching the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, completely captivated by the jumpers. There was something about the way they moved—the strength, the grace, and the way they seemed to fly—that made me feel like I was meant to be out there too. I was 13 when I started training in long jump. By 15, I was already one of the best in my age category. I tried triple jump, and in my very first competition, I placed in the top 3 in Greece. A year later, I won the national championship, competed in the Balkan Championships, and represented Greece in the World Youth Championships, where I placed 5th. I went on to win nine more national medals.
But it was around the age of 16 that I first started feeling pain in my lower back. I was diagnosed with four herniated discs. At the time, no one around me really understood how the human body worked, and I didn’t know how to protect myself from the strain I was putting on it. I was training hard—lifting heavy, practicing jumps regularly, absorbing huge impacts—without having built the necessary strength base to support it all. The training was intense, and my body began to break down.
A doctor once told me I would never be able to do sports again. That moment could have destroyed me—but instead, it lit something up inside me. I knew, deep down, that couldn’t be the end of my story. That mismatch between what I was doing and what my body actually needed—that became the start of my journey. It’s what made me want to study sports and exercise science. I needed to understand movement, performance, adaptation. I wanted answers.
How I Got Here
In the last years of my athletic career, I began building my own training program, based on what I was learning in my studies. I was still sometimes in pain, but I could mostly compete without symptoms. Despite the challenges, I kept training through it all—even when COVID-19 hit and stadiums were closed. During my final competition year in 2021, I missed my last chance to compete in the European Championships due to a hamstring injury that occured during a qualification race. At the time, I thought of it as a failure. But over time, I realized it taught me one of my most important lessons: discipline and hard work do not guarantee success; they only make it possible. Without them though, success is never an option.
I studied, trained, and worked simultaneously—coaching people and doing whatever I could to support my journey. I paid for my own supplements, shoes, and travel—because in Greece, unless you’re at the very top, there’s no financial support for athletes.
After finishing my bachelor’s degree, I knew I couldn’t keep living that way. At 22, I wrapped up my elite athletic career and began my first master’s in sports coaching, hoping to use everything I had been through to help younger athletes avoid the same struggles. I became a coach. I focused not only on good form, technique, and proper mechanics, but also on injury prevention, mental resilience, and proper recovery.
But even after stepping away from elite sport, the back pain didn’t go away. My sciatic nerve was affected. I had numbness and tingling in my leg, and even a short hike would leave me in bed for days. I had tried everything—medications, rehab—but finally decided to have surgery. I was 23 when a part of my L5-S1 disc was removed.
I created and implemented my own rehabilitation plan. Just a week later, I was walking; a month later, back in the gym; three months later, running; and six months after surgery, I could jump again—pain-free.
During that time, I was working at a rehabilitation clinic. And that’s where something clicked again. I had patients with the same condition I had. I knew how they felt. I could read their bodies, ask the right questions, test what mattered. I started to see how my knowledge and personal experience could actually change lives. People came in with pain—and left being able to walk again, run again, enjoy life again. That gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long time: purpose.
This was no longer about sport.
This was about people.
This realization led me to pursue a second master’s in the Netherlands, this time focused on rehabilitation and research. I began working in an exercise physiology lab, and slowly my perspective shifted even more.
Exercise wasn’t just about jumping farther or running faster. It wasn’t just about performance. I realized something so simple—but so profound:
Exercise is medicine.
It can prevent disease. Slow down aging. Reduce pain. Keep us healthy, strong, and independent.
After retiring from elite competition, I saw exercise as something that had hurt me. For years, it was tied to pressure and pain. Even though I had physically recovered, my relationship with movement was broken. It had become a source of stress, pain, even fear. I didn’t trust my body—and honestly, my body didn’t trust me either. I used to love training, but after everything, I almost hated it. It took me years to rebuild that connection. To move again without pain. To enjoy exercise not as punishment or pressure, but as something fun—something good for me.
Through trial and error—and by learning to prioritize both my physical and mental needs—I finally found a way to enjoy movement again. I built a consistent, healthy routine where I can lift, run, jump, or do any workout I love, without fear or pain. The truth is…
Exercise is a privilege.
It’s one of the most powerful tools for health we have.
My approach is holistic. Exercise is essential, but it has to work alongside proper nutrition and recovery. That means addressing sleep, mental health, circadian rhythms, habits, substance use, and alcohol. And if you’re a woman? You’ve probably been overlooked. Although women make up 50% of the population, only 7% of sports and exercise medicine research focuses on conditions that specifically affect them.
That needs to change. And I am trying to be part of that change.
What Drives Me
My mission became clear. It wasn’t enough to just train people—I needed to educate them. I didn’t want to help just 10 or 100 people; I wanted to reach as many as I could. I wanted to dive deeper into research, explore questions we don’t yet have answers to, and be part of the science that shapes how we approach performance, pain, disease and health in the future.
That’s why I decided to pursue a PhD at Louisiana State University. It wasn’t an easy choice. I’ve left my home, my family, my support system—and now I went even further away. But I know in my heart it’s the right path.
This isn’t just about research or career.
It’s about giving people what I didn’t have.
It’s about using my story, my scars, and my strength to create impact.
It’s about helping people live stronger, healthier, and with less pain.
Being an athlete taught me discipline, hard work, resilience, honesty, and fair play. My club, my coaches, my teammates—they shaped who I am. But when that chapter closed, I had to rediscover myself. And I did—through education, connection, and sharing.
That’s what I want to keep doing.
That’s the impact I want to leave.
People deserve to live without pain—and to reach their greatest potential.
They deserve to understand their bodies.
They deserve answers.
They deserve movement.
And they deserve to achieve their highest performance—in the most sustainable and healthy way.
We all do.
And it all starts with knowledge.
“I turned pain into purpose. Now I’m here to educate, support, and inspire others—to help them move better, live better, and stay strong for life.”