Tracy Anderson: How the Celebrity Trainer Trains Herself
Like a gown from Vera Wang or Stella McCartney, celebrity personal trainer Tracy Anderson’s work is admired wherever it goes. Except in her case, it’s not a gown being applauded. It’s the incredibly chiseled physiques of JLo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kim Kardashian, and many other celebrities.
Find out how this celebrated trainer got where she is and how she is able to remain disciplined with her own daily regimen.
How did Tracy Anderson get her start as a celebrity trainer?
The mastermind behind the “Tracy Anderson Method” had to get her start somewhere. Anderson is responsible for producing the look so many women try to aspire for: that lean, ageless look seen on her clients like Jennifer Lopez.
It might surprise you to learn that Anderson has weight struggles, just like the rest of us.
“I was never brought up with a gym rat fitness mentality,” says Anderson told The Fashion Spot in 2014. “My mom was a ballerina – she owned a ballet school for 40 years – so from a very early age I learned how to connect with my body through dance. My father became obese, which further highlighted that I wasn’t genetically blessed.”
Anderson did a dance school scholarship in the 1990s, but still gained a large amount of weight, which showed up significantly on her petite 5-foot frame. She explained how the weight gain led to a lightning bolt moment and the research that eventually became her wildly popular ‘Method’.
“My son’s father played in the NBA and through him I met a doctor that had done extensive scientific research on muscle fibers. It hit me that you can actually redesign your muscle fibers, but there were no tools out there to help people – nothing to guide them to do something they thought was impossible.”
This led to her gradually and eventually developing and presenting her method, and the celebrity clients began rolling in.
Who are Tracy Anderson’s clients?
While Anderson counts Lopez, Paltrow, Kardashian, Victoria Beckham, Madonna, Cameron Diaz, and even Meghan, Duchess of Sussex as followers of her method, the influential trainer wants everyday women to celebrate their own physiques, not someone else’s.
“What celebrities are doing is really irrelevant,” Anderson told The Daily Mail in 2016. “I feel like we’re constantly dimming our own lights by showing there’s a demand for, ‘Oh my gosh, that celebrity is carrying that drink. Is she drinking it? Is that why she looks like that? I want that drink, too, because then maybe I’ll look like that.’ It’s toxic.”
“I gained 60 pounds with my first child. . . and understand what it’s like to feel not at home in your own body.”
How Anderson the trainer trains herself
Anderson, not surprisingly, sets some very high standards for her clients, and for herself as well. She doesn’t ask of anyone else what she can’t accomplish for herself.
Daily, these are her requirements for optimal fitness, as she explained in her conversation with The Guardian: “Do 30 minutes of cardio training [dancing, jogging, aerobics] and 30 minutes of muscular structure [weights and stretches]. Do it six days a week for the rest of your life.”
“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.”
She also tackled the diet end of things. “I like for people to be not in their heads about eating. Food restriction can become a real mental game and I’m not a fan.”
“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.”
