Madonna’s personal trainer Tracy Anderson shares her ‘Method’

If anyone personifies svelte, it is Tracy Anderson. A close consort of Madonna (“the most amazing work ethic”), Stella McCartney (“hilarious”) and Gwyneth Paltrow (“the most fun – and a great cook”), Anderson is best known for being photographed running alongside her statuesque celebrity clients looking short, hot and sweaty. But this failed ballerina turned personal trainer to the stars is in fact hugely influential – she defines the way her celebrity clients look, and they in turn determine the way millions of other women aspire to look. Indeed, Anderson, 33, considers herself personally responsible not only for the extraordinary transformation of Madonna’s body, but for setting a new standard for all of us: the “ageless, lean, mean” celebrity aesthetic.

Of Madonna, she says: “I want to keep her body looking like it’s 20 years old. Because you don’t have to have saggy arms, or poor skin tone in your 50s, or not have cute hips. It just doesn’t have to happen. [A superfit body] should start being your standard when you’re young – and after that, why should you ever want less? Plus, it’s good for your body to train all the time, it keeps you young. Who wants to get old? That is part of my inspiration and it is going to end up helping so many other people.”

We meet in an artist’s studio in New York. Anderson teeters in glittery six-inch high heels and comes across as hyper, wholesome and childishly over-excitable. She looks surprisingly natural in the flesh (if a little orange), despite an exaggeratedly heart-shaped face and huge stick-on eyelashes. Her son Sam, 10, bounces around. Her ex-husband Eric sits quietly in a corner doing the crossword. The three of them travel everywhere together despite the fact that Tracy and Eric are divorced: “We have a really weird relationship,” she says, “We are like brother and sister.” They are all on tour with Madonna and have just flown in from Philadelphia for a few hours, en route to Atlantic City.

For the past 18 months, Madonna has religiously followed the “Tracy Anderson Method”, a Pilates-style exercise regime which Anderson is now marketing worldwide; the first Tracy Anderson Method Studio opens in New York’s Tribeca this month, with later openings planned for Europe (including London), Asia and Australia.

It is a brave move: historically, the fortunes of health clubs mirror those of the stock market – industry figures estimate over 20% of gym memberships have already been cancelled due to the recession. But while the majority of her colleagues in the fitness industry are bracing themselves for a downturn, Anderson is bubbling over with confidence.

The Method, she claims, will ensure that Madonna can continue looking the way she does now for the next 50 years. “The reason why I am successful in what I do is that my mission has always been the same: I want anyone up to 100 years old to be able to have the best body ever – against ageing, against genetics.” This is Anderson’s mantra: everyone can fight genetics and have what she calls a “teeny tiny dancer’s body”.

She has invented an exercise contraption called the “hybrid body reformer”, her own version of a Pilates machine, which Madonna has installed in her London home. Anderson has pioneered thousands of moves and stretches, she says, designed to correct nature’s flaws. Above all, though, her methods are draconian: low weights (only up to three pounds) but high reps – 60 for most people, 100 for Madonna. She exercises with Madonna for two hours a day, six days a week. “Joseph Pilates set out to make the core of the body really strong. I want to make every woman look like a Victoria’s Secret [underwear] model.”

Anderson achieved this herself after years of yo-yo dieting, starvation, over-eating and gym addiction. As a dance student she used to gorge on fat-free frozen yoghurt and was once violently sick after eating powdered Ovaltine because she was so desperate for a chocolate fix. Anderson blames her father for her genes: “He looks like Danny Devito. He has weight issues.” Her mother also wanted to be a ballerina but got married instead: she set up a dance studio in Noblesville, Indiana, where Anderson grew up. “I really wanted to make it as a ballet dancer to make my mom proud. But it didn’t happen.” It wasn’t because she was too short – it was because she was considered too large. “You had to be super-thin. I heard over and over again. ‘You are so talented. If you can change your body, then you have a career.’ They didn’t know what to do with me. They would say, ‘You need to make weight’ [ie get down to the ‘right’ weight]. The more I would panic, the more I would gain. They wanted me to be 88lbs [40kg]. I am 98lbs now. I realised I was going to have to severely diet to be that tiny. My thighs were going out on the sides and I had a bit of a stomach. I would look at the other girls and then at myself in a leotard and know that my body was never going to be what they wanted.”

In 1993 she met Eric Anderson, a basketball player for the New York Knicks and a man as tall as she is short. She ditched ballet school, got pregnant and put on 25kg. (She now specialises in the removal of post-baby weight.) Initially living off Eric’s earnings and still obsessed with her hunt for the perfect dancer’s form, she eventually embarked on a research quest, eventually opening her own fitness centre in Indiana and trialling her methods on hundreds of women. Some severely overweight women lost up to 25kg in six months, she claims. Others, delighted with results doctors had told them were impossible, cancelled their tummy tuck surgery. The Tracy Anderson Method was born. In 2004 people started inviting her to Los Angeles and by 2006 she got the call from Gwyneth Paltrow to train her on the set of Iron Man – and then agreed to share her with Madonna.

Anderson won’t be drawn on what Madonna is like as a person. (Would you?) But she does seem to warm up a bit more when she talks about Paltrow, who obligingly features on the publicity material for her New York studio. “Gwyneth was not a dancer when I started training her. And, boy, can she move now. If people look at her as a role model, they can see that she took the time and the energy to make herself learn how to dance. It wasn’t easy for her and it didn’t happen overnight.” When Anderson first met Paltrow and Madonna, they were horrified by her junk food diet. “I had gotten very cocky about the fitness programme I had developed and I was eating four cupcakes a day, cheeseburgers … I was dunking Oreo cookies in processed icing. Madonna and Gwyneth were both on top of me about it. They were, like, ‘What are you doing?’ But I had such a serious sweet tooth and because I could get such good results from my fitness regime, I could get away with it. I got to the point where my workout was so effective that I could eat whatever I wanted. But then I became more interested in nutrition. I don’t eat Oreos anymore. But I do love homemade cupcakes. And Gwyneth’s pancakes are amazing.”

Having remodelled half of Hollywood (Anderson has a long list of other celebrity clients – including men – whose names she won’t reveal), Anderson has set her sights on the rest of us. “I don’t think about the next celebrity I would like to work with. I have another kind of disease. When I walk down the street, with every person I encounter, I am always thinking to myself, ‘I could totally change that person.’ Because I’m so confident in my Method, it’s like an addiction for me because I know I could do it.” But can her aesthetic be taken too far? And do we all really want to look like teeny, tiny dancers?

Anderson is aware that her aesthetic has its critics. As author Fay Weldon puts it: “Madonna does not have the body of a 20-year-old. She has the body of a 50-year-old who is well-exercised and half-starved. It has become a very odd thing: that the less of you there is, the more there is meant to be. Most of us can’t be bothered. Surely it’s better to be more comfortably padded as you get older? Then you don’t break your bones when you fall over.”

Anderson shrugs this off. “Who cares what some people say? Who wouldn’t want to look like [Madonna]? But then I’m obsessed with intricate definition and strength. It’s beautiful. Madonna is exquisite to look at and she works hard at it.

“People are entitled to their opinions but I’m so proud of her as a student of my work. I could not be more proud of the way she looks.” She gets “a little bit offended” when people suggest that she is pushing an unrealistic body shape. “Of course, everyone should accept themselves for who they are. But there is a difference between accepting yourself and not working at who you are. It’s not OK to say, ‘Oh, I’m really overweight and that’s just who I am. Why shouldn’t I be seen as beautiful? Why should we all have to have a Victoria’s Secret body?’ Because I think that if you love yourself and who you are, you will take care of your body.” The teeny tiny body is within the grasp of all of us, she beams. Providing you have two hours a day spare, six days a week. Simple, no?

The Method behind Madonna’s madness

Tracy Anderson’s top 10 tips – all you need is a spare hour a day, six days a week … for the rest of your life

• Train for one hour a day, six days a week. “Do 30 minutes of cardio training [dancing, jogging, aerobics] and 30 minutes of muscular structure [weights and stretches],” says Anderson. “Do it six days a week for the rest of your life.” Yes, you read that correctly.

• Beware of the gym: the weights are too heavy. “After over-exercising in gyms in my late teens my muscles got very bulky and I was more like a gymnast than a ballet dancer. It looked like somebody threw me in the trash compactor: my neck got really short.”

• Instead, learn to dance. “If you want a dancer’s body, dance. Dance aerobics is my favourite cardio. It’s very frustrating if people think you have to become a dancer to do it – you don’t. My DVDs are very user-friendly. You can take one or two combinations a day and learn them.”

• Think high reps, low weights. “For me, fitness is all about high repetitions and low resistance. I mean 60 reps with 10 different exercises using weights of three pounds or below.”

• Don’t just switch off while you’re working out. “I have done research about people who think they’re doing movements and people – like Madonna and professional dancers – who are actually ‘performing’ movements. The people who can connect and perform during their workout get results way above and beyond the people who are just going through the motions.”

• Watch yourself exercise. “Look at yourself in the mirror and critique yourself and your movements as you would a piece of artwork. Have an opinion about how you are moving.”

• But don’t beat yourself up that you are not Madonna. “Do you need to train two hours a day? Probably not. The reason why my celebrity clients have to train two hours a day is because their endurance level is so strong. For Madonna to get results and keep results, it’s like a professional athlete training – she has to push harder.”

• Unless you need to lose weight, eat what you want, but sensibly. “I like for people to be not in their heads about eating [ie they should not get stressed about it]. Food restriction can become a real mental game and I’m not a fan.”

• If you do need to lose weight, be strict with yourself, however. “I’m not a fan of dairy for women and I don’t like processed foods. Every day I drink a juice with parsley, kale, ginger and apple. I eat lean proteins like fish and chicken as well as quinoa and brown rice.”

• Drink as little alcohol as possible. “I drink wine very rarely. Alcohol slows your metabolism for three days after you drink.”

For more information, exercises and DVDs go to tracyandersonmethod.com

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