Tracy Anderson is running late. Very late. An hour after she was due to have arrived at Steps, the Fame-style dance studio in New York, her representative is apologetically explaining what has held her up. ‘I mean, when Madonna’s running a little late, you don’t tell her to hurry up, right?’ Well, quite. As becomes clear in the course of our interview, being personal trainer to M (as Anderson and her team refer to the star among themselves) is a very full-time job. But then Anderson’s famous clients are her fortune: it is Madonna’s rock-hard abs and Gwyneth Paltrow’s long, lissom legs that have made her the personal trainer of the moment, and look set to turn the Tracy Anderson Method, her fitness technique, into a worldwide phenomenon.

She is also confident that Tracy Anderson Connect – all proceeds from which go to Madonna’s charity Raising Malawi – will be a success, but for different reasons. ‘I didn’t invent this just for an elite group. My favourite thing is to change every woman. I walk down the street and it’s almost like a super-hero feeling, like, “I could do this for that person.” It’s just about getting the content and information out there.

So I decided to use the internet to offer mini-moves all the time that people can add on to the DVD routines.’

Anderson is scornful of traditional exercise methods. ‘Conventional forms of exercise do not work,’ she says. ‘They don’t. Pilates isn’t going to work, bikram yoga isn’t going to work. In fact, I think it will actually decrease your performance as it makes you tired and dizzy. Lots of dancers have horrible bodies.’ She says that running gives you an ugly butt – ‘because, as with every other type of exercise, using the same muscles again and again will build too much muscle in certain places and bulk you up, and a bulked-up bottom is not a pretty one’ – and she bans Madonna and Gwyneth from practising yoga because she doesn’t want their attention deflected. But her biggest bugbear is trainers who claim that you only need work out three times a week. ‘Anyone saying that you can change on just three days a week is as bad as any scam diet book because it’s just not true,’ she says.

Another of Anderson’s mantras? You must move your body for a minimum of 30 minutes per day – and preferably an hour – six times a week at least. Anything less, she says, just isn’t going to be effective. Paltrow, who works out for an hour and a half six days a week, ‘works so hard – she’s a great example. After her second baby she definitely had weight to lose. She always gets her work-out in. There isn’t any excuse.’ Madonna, meanwhile, ‘is an athlete. That’s what I try to hammer into people’s heads, people who criticise her for training two hours, six days a week. She’s just like a baseball player or a soccer player.’

Anderson momentarily drops the girlish tones and sounds genuinely cross at the mention of the negative attention that Madonna’s body attracts. ‘She’s a great example. It’s heart-wrenching to me what is said in the press sometimes because it couldn’t be more inaccurate. Why take someone who is an incredibly good example and just say lots of negative things?’ She doesn’t blink when I suggest that overly exercised bodies can seem unfeminine – her method, she says firmly, produces ‘a hot body’.

When we meet, Anderson is dividing her time between New York, where Madonna is based, and Los Angeles, where Paltrow is filming Iron Man 2. She spends 10 days with each, working via video link with the other. (Ten days is how long she stipulates a person work on one routine before changing exercises to keep muscles alert and avoid bulking up.) This summer she will move to London for two months to train with Madonna as she prepares for her tour, then she will join her on the road.

All this, the new gym, the new staff to train and the updates for her website to film, sounds exhausting enough, but Anderson also has a 10-year-old son, Sam, who lives in upstate New York with his father, Anderson’s ex-husband, Eric. During the shoot there is much concern about what time M is leaving town the next day, how various training sessions will be scheduled, and whether that will give Anderson enough time to get on a seaplane to watch Sam’s baseball match. I wonder if she ever gets any time for herself. ‘I’m not in the mood to stop right now,’ she says. ‘When I stop I feel guilty. The only thing that I stop for is my son. Otherwise, when it’s possible, he comes with me.’ She does, however, find time for her boyfriend, to whom Madonna introduced her – Anderson describes him as an ‘amazing humanitarian and philanthropist’, and canoodles with him when he turns up at the end of the shoot.

The root to Anderson’s evangelism is her own body, for she was the very first person she transformed. She grew up in Indiana, and at the age of 18 went to dance school in New York, promptly gaining 2½st – something she blames on genes. ‘My father,’ she says with a raised eyebrow, ‘is very overweight.’ She was repeatedly told to lose weight, that she was too big to be a professional dancer, and that she was in danger of losing her scholarship.

‘I was in the counsellor’s office all the time and he had no fitness regime for me. I did pilates six days a week, I was on the treadmill, I was with a trainer and all that happened was I bulked up.

I was committed to doing everything they told me, and my body would drastically change with each type of exercise I tried, but it would never be what they wanted at school.’

Soon afterwards she married Eric Anderson, then a basketball player for the New York Knicks and 6ft 8in to her 5ft-nothing. While pregnant with Sam she gained more than 4st. By this point the couple had moved back to the Midwest and opened a gym in Indiana, and Anderson began her quest to find a fitness method to achieve the results she wanted. After questioning doctors, and doing a lot of research, she came up with her theory of working accessory muscles, rather than large muscle groups, of using diagonal rotations and 10-day cycles to keep muscles alert. After giving birth she experimented on herself, and within six weeks she had slimmed to her current size; she has stayed the same shape ever since. Tests on 150 customers at her gym confirmed her belief that she could ‘take any woman from any genetic background and turn her into this teeny-tiny dancer type’. For five years she devised individual routines that changed every 10 days for those 150 people. The result was a huge database of routines.

It wasn’t long before Hollywood came calling, and then, three years ago, she was hired to work with Paltrow on the set of Iron Man. Soon afterwards Paltrow agreed to share her with Madonna. They are the only two people with whom Anderson now works personally.

When she first started training Paltrow and Madonna, her method was so effective that she could eat whatever she wanted and still maintain her shape. ‘When I first met with them I literally was dunking a double stuffed Oreo into a can of processed icing, and I can’t remember which one it was, but whichever one I was with called the other one that minute and was, like, “This is insane. Do you know what she’s doing right now? Let me tell you what she’s doing – she’s killing herself!” ’ Now 80 per cent of the time she eats no dairy produce, wheat or processed food; she has a green juice (made of spinach, kale, chard, apple, lemon, ginger and parsley) every day and is writing a book of recipes that can ‘whip stubborn fat off you in the click of a finger’. She insists, however, that she eats a brownie made by her chef every morning, and that she is ‘butter-cream-frosting obsessed’.

It’s hard to believe that someone quite so driven in her quest for physical perfection would risk such a thing, and there is certainly no sign of those brownies on her person as she poses for the photo-shoot to the blaring sound of hip-hop. But perhaps that’s because, however hard she expects clients to work, you can be certain Tracy Anderson is working herself even harder.

The other day I was reading an article in the New York Times Magazine titled “Is Sugar Toxic?” Great article, but nothing really outside the box. We’ve all seen those alarmist articles about the dangers of sugar. One thing struck me though: the author comments that in the early ’80′s, companies started to make the switch from sugar to high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener in their products. Hold the phone, I thought! I had just seen a brilliant 40-second videothat captured the spread of the obesity epidemic in the US in the past 25 years. The video was as amazing as it was terrifying: using a color key you can actually watch as the entire country gets heavier and heavier.

Most of the people that I see on a daily basis come to me because they want to live a healthier lifestyle. And, for almost all of them, that lifestyle includes some degree of weight loss. When we take a good, hard look at what they are eating, time and time again, they will find that there is sugar in their diets that they weren’t even aware they were consuming. And, as soon as we ween them from these sugary elements, they find the weight comes off. I ran a quick poll on the Fitness Guru Facebook page and found that many people who felt energized and powerful throughout the day were also the ones starting the day with less sugar and more protein and fiber.

I say “ween” because sugar is like a drug, and our use of sugar on a day-to-day basis is akin to an addiction. Don’t think that’s true? Go cold turkey on all sugar and see what happens: you’ll become cranky, tired, irritable and unfocused.

So to lose weight, one of the key elements will be ridding yourself of sugar. So what should you do? Here we go:

1. Keep a food journal: write down what you eat, when you eat it and, as close as possible exactly how much. If you don’t write it down, it doesn’t exist and you will never take responsibility for it. What are you looking for?
2. Find the sugar. It’s kinda like Where’s Waldo? We’re looking for foods that will spike your blood sugar and the fastest, easiest way to do that is with the Glycemic Index. The GI will help gauge just how “sugary” your foods are. 100 is the highest, so, for example, a banana would be a 52, an apple 38 and a grapefruit a 25. Instead of starting the day with a banana, try starting with a grapefruit. Which brings us to…….
3. Unless you are one of those people who is really capable of “all or nothing”, begin a strategy for weening yourself off of sugar. If you have a banana every morning, have half a banana and half a grapefruit. If you eat sugary breakfast cereals, buy a healthier non-sugary cereal and add your own teaspoon. In a few days, make it half a teaspoon and slowly, over time, you will gradually remove the sugar from your system.

The benefits of getting out of the addictive sugar cycle are SO many: more energy, healthier moods, healthier skin, greater focus and, yes, the pounds will start to come off.

There are other elements to healthy weight loss and we will get to those. But this is a brilliant place to start. And start you should. Be gentle with yourself if necessary, but the sooner, the better. Your body and mind will thank you.

To paraphrase: ask not what your diet can do for you, but what you can do for your diet.

One of my favorite pass times (as a fitness professional) is watching the cocktail party throw-down between rivals of different exercise trends. There’s far more drama watching Cross Fit square off against, say, P90X, than the Sharks and the Jets in the school yard. Throw in a little neo-modern Spinning and some Bikram yoga and you have the makings for an urban gang war.

When people get turned on to particular forms of exercise, they can get a little possessive and territorial. And, to a point, I think that’s fantastic! It means that the activity is having an effect far deeper than simply a flatter stomach and more toned arms. It’s becoming a way of life.

I couldn’t thinking about all this when I saw a recent New York Times article titled “What’s the Best Exercise?” It seemed like the author was just baiting a city full of well educated and passionate exercise aficionados.

So what were the options for “best exercise”? Well, we start with the Butterfly swim stroke. But this was quickly labeled at “miserable, isolating, painful”, and it requires a coach, a pool and enough athletic ability that you don’t end up injured. NOT a rave.

Next up, the Burpee, or as some would call it the Squat Thrust. Again, great exercise, but fairly repetitive to the point where the exercise physiologists question whether anyone would actually stick with it. Walking? The benefits of walking are many, particularly if you are starting a fitness routine or if you need an added calorie burn. I love to get people walking regularly; we have become a nation of compulsive sitters. But, as it has few benefits for regular exercisers, can’t quite be “best”. The Squat? Great exercise, working major muscle groups in the back, the legs and the glutes. But “best”? Not hardly.

So now we come to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). I love this form of training. It’s relatively brief but the benefits are incredible. The set up is a series of intervals couple with breaks for a period of a few minutes. The most finely crafted HIIT is called a Tabata (named after the Japanese researcher who ran the studio): four minutes of work broken up into eight cycles, with 20 seconds of all out effort followed by 10 seconds of low intensity work or rest. This form of exercise can really be accomplished with any form of cardio: running, biking, stairs, plyometric exercises. The key is that you have to go ALL OUT for the intense period. No holding back.

So yes, the HIIT is a great exercise. Best? Hmmmmm……..

The problem with the “best” exercise is that it plays to people’s desire for a Silver Bullet, that one single simple thing that will give them everything that they want and desire. So rather than the “best exercise”, I’m going to give you the Silver Bullet…

….ready? The Silver Bullet is……

There is no Silver Bullet. What you want, what you need is a healthy lifestyle. That includes eating smart and exercising regularly. So what’s the best exercise? The best exercise is the one you are going to do, the one you are going to get passionate about and defend with your life at cocktail parties. It could be the one your best friend is doing, but if it’s not, don’t get all deflated and dejected. Keep trying out new things. You might find that it’s CardioDiscoliciousFunkalypso. Awesome!! Keep it safe, keep it smart, keep it consistent. That’swhat’s best for you. No brain, no gain!

And if you want to go Butterfly……or Burp, Walk, Squat or HIIT, go to it!! More power to you! But find that thing that lights you up! And then ride that doggie for all it’s worth!!

• Sights: when you’re getting dressed to work out, ask yourself if the outfit is something you would be willing to wear in front of your grandmother. I am not suggesting prudish over-layering. But many of you said that your some of gym mates dress slightly inappropriately, with the majority find fault with running shorts that are…..well…..skimpy. Think twice as you put it on. Would Granny smile or slap you in your head?

• Sounds: First, cell phones should be left in the locker room unless you have a potentially dangerous situation that you are awaiting. Dangerous does not include updating your best friend about the craziness of your day while you are on the treadmill. Chatting with friends at the gym is fine, but be aware of the people around you. Speak to each other as you would in a quiet restaurant. Try not to yell across the room at each other. Grunting is to be expected when you are working with heavy weights, but there is no cause to turn that into yelling. Odds are you are not a Ukrainian power lifter. Keep it to a simple grunt. Scream singing: one of my favorites and a staple of fitness classes like spinning. But, no matter how much you love American Idol and how well you know the words to It’s Raining Men, look around you……are you the only one singing? Be respectful of the class energy.
• Smells: First, the don’ts– don’t douse yourself in cologne or perfume before you work out. People’s sense of smell is especially acute while exercising and bathing in Paco Raban can be a little nauseating. Flip side– just as nauseating is Body Odor. You’re going to sweat and that means, at some point, you are going to smell. Don’t share that with your friends. Buy deodorant that you can leave in your gym bag or locker. Then use it. Please.
• Space: no matter how big the facility you are working out in, it is still finite and you still have to Share and Be Aware. If you are using a piece of equipment and someone is waiting, let them work in between your sets. It’s not going to ruin your workout. It’s all that cool stuff we learned in kindergarten coming back to help us! Also, if someone is working in front of a mirror, watching themselves so they can correct their form, don’t stand in front of them. Someone did that to me the other day, and we were the only two people in huge facility. Not quite sure what he was thinking.
• Singles: read this carefully. Read it twice if you have to. No matter what you think the energy is like, no matter how smooth you think the opening line is, they don’t want to talk to you. They don’t. They are there to have some focused time for themselves. They are not there to serve as dating fodder for your social life. You want to flirt? Try internet dating. But leave the folks at the gym alone. Seriously.

The most important thing to remember is that your monthly membership fee does not suggest part ownership in the gym. It means that you have the opportunity to take part in a fitness community. Be respectful of that community. This goes for both sides of the coin. If you have issues with the behavior of a particular member, it is not your job to strap on your six-guns and solve the problem. Speak to management and have them deal with it. That’s why they are there. If they can’t seem to deal with it, it may be time to find a gym that has more respect for the community it is building. Just a thought.

If I missed one of your pet peeves, or you have any questions or answers, shoot me an email at michael@fitnessgurunyc.com.

It doesn’t matter if you work out every day, or if you are a weekend warrior: odds are, at some point you have ended up with tight sore muscles. So it is important to master the Art of Self-Massage.

Get your head out of the gutter.

Sometimes it’s neither practical nor economical to get yourself to a spa and spend an hour and a chunk of change getting a massage. But, by keeping a few simple tools around the house, you can give yourself some amount of relief and actually end up with a host of benefits: more energy, more restful sleep and better workouts with quicker recovery time.

We’ll skip over the portable massagers that you can purchase out of magazines and on late night infomercials. Those are adequate but unlikely to delivery more than the most brief, superficial relief. Here’s what you want: (article continues below)

• Foam Roll: it is what it sounds like: a three or four foot long, cylindrical piece of foam core. The idea is to get on the floor (your bed won’t provide a hard enough surface) and place the roll between yourself and the floor. Then proceed to roll out the tension of all your muscle groups. This technique is called “direct myofascial release” and it provides for the release of muscle tension and improved circulation to the tight muscles. Note: depending on how much tension you have, this technique may be shockingly painful at the outset. The more often you do it, the sooner it will be less painful. You can find the Rolls at Perform Better
• Rolling Pin: Yup, same thing you would use to roll out a pie crust. Only you are going to use it to roll out your muscles. It’s the same idea as the foam roll, only you can control the amount of pressure you apply. It’s a great technique for the quads and calves, but, understandably, it’s a little difficult to get to your back…..unless you have a friend come over and roll ya. But then it’s not self-massage, is it?
• Tennis and golf balls: These are my personal favorite. Again, like the foam roll, lie on the floor and place a tennis or golf ball underneath you. Allow the ball to press into the tight soft tissue, avoiding bone as that can be both painful and injurious. Roll around for bit until you find a tight, tense area (we call them “pressure points”) and then lie still, trying to relax over the ball and letting the tension drain from your body. Again like the roll, this technique will take some getting used to, but once you have mastered it, then, truly, will you be happy.

You can take advantage of self-massage whenever you feel the need. Pre- or post-workout, pre-bedtime, when you wake up in the morning. There is no harm in getting rid of that tension. The most important thing to remember is to relax as much as possible while you do it. If you feel yourself tensing because of pain in a particular area, focus your attention on your breath and try to let your body go as limp as possible.

If you have ideas for self-massage, shoot me an email at michael@fitnessgurunyc.com. And come and join us on Facebook for daily tips and ideas.

No Pain, No Gain is not the greatest messaging: sure, you want to push yourself in an effort to get stronger, but push too far and you run the risk of injury. So what do you do if you get hit with DOMS? Here are some ideas:

• Get moving, sooner rather than later. Don’t go heavy handed into another workout but do something light: a brisk walk, a light jog, some easy stretching– anything that can help your body open up and get your circulation going.
• Hydrate: keep drinking water. Get more fluid into your system. Your body thrives on water. And no, coffee and soda don’t count.
• Try a nice hot bath bath with a cup of Epsom salts. The salts are great for soothing tired muscles.
• Find a great anti-inflammatory cream, particularly one with Arnica, an herbal anti-inflammatory. Traumeel makes a great cream and it’s always easy to keep a tube in your medicine cabinet.
• If you must, pop an ibuprofen tablet but follow the directions and don’t swallow them by the handfull. Honestly, it will wreck your stomach.
• Splurge every so often on a massage. If you are going to spend a lot of time challenging your body, make the investments in healing it as well. You will be able to work out better longer for it.

If you think you’ve injured yourself– if the area is swollen, discolored and/or sensitive to the touch– you may be suffering from a strain or a sprain. Check with your doctor. They can diagnose a strain (the over stretching or tearing of a muscle), a sprain (the over stretching or tear of a tendon) or even a stress fracture in the bone. If the doctor finds a strain or a sprain, they will probably suggest that you use RICE to help heal.

• R : Rest. Yes, my brave New Yorker, you must rest the injured area. That doesn’t mean skipping hills when you go for your run, that means skipping the run. Short term smarts on your part will lead to a much faster recovery. Note that if you avoid resting a strained tendon, the recovery could take longer than if you’d broken a bone. I know, I know….I’m such a dark cloud.
• I : Ice. Ice the injured area. At times, I think it’s easier to get New Yorkers to root for the Red Sox than to ice an injury. Take an ice pack, or even a bag of frozen vegetables, wrap it in a light cloth and apply it to the injury for 10-20 minutes. Do this three or four times a day and it will do wonders in terms of getting rid of the inflammation and allowing nutrient-rich circulation back to the area.
• C : Compression. Wrap the area in a bandage– not so tight as to cut off circulation, but just enough to feel the compression.
• E : Elevation. Elevate the injured area for 10-20 minutes several times a day. This means that if you have injured your leg or ankle, lie down on the sofa and put you legs up. This, like the ice, will do wonders toward helping to alleviate the swelling.

Be smart: follow the RICE plan for a few days and you will be up and at it again. If you find you keep injuring the same area, take a good long look at how you are training that particular area and maybe, just maybe, make a few changes.

If you have any thoughts about injuries or any questions about exercise or fitness, shoot me an email at michael@fitnessgurunyc.com.

The snows have ended (finally!) and it’s time to start looking forward to beach season. And with that shift, many of us are starting to pay a littlemore attention to our mid-sections, working hard to get rid of that Winter Waist and attain that Holy Grail of fitness, the Summer Stomach.

Now, you can do crunches until the cows come home and that’s not necessarily going to get you where you want to go. The first problem is technique: most people bully through crunches the way they were taught in fourth grade gym class. Poor technique will not only frustrate you with a lack of result; it could possibly lead to pain and irritation in your lower back— perhaps next week, we’ll tackle technique.

But this week, I want you to focus on the Five Favorites for a Summer Stomach. Check it out………….

It’s just about that time of year again when the birds start chirping, the sun beats stronger and the bikini and tank tops in your closet start to rustle for some fresh air. We all love the dawn of summer, but let’s be honest: Months of sweaters, turtlenecks and gym membership cards that weren’t used as often as they should have been makes us all a little timid about baring our midriff.

Getting a flatter stomach by summer does not have to involve fear, thousands of crunches and lunches after lunches of un-dressed salads topped with a plain chicken breast. Instead, focus on these next three months of spring to start or ramp up your yoga practice for a lean and bikini-ready middle by summer.

Here’s how.

Getting Started

If you don’t already have access to a yoga class either through a yoga studio or your gym, poke around your town for a great discount on classes. If the class experience isn’t your thing, spend some looking at DietsInReview.com library of yoga DVDs. Bryan Kests’ Power Yoga Complete Collection is a challenging but comprehensive start.

Doing the right moves

One of the many benefits of doing yoga is that thanks to the intense breath work and full-body moves, you are working the many muscles of your stomach in nearly every posture or asana you perform. But there are a few hallmark yoga postures that put a strong spotlight on the core. Postures like Navasana or boat pose and plank pose are super stars for toning the stomach muscles. The key with these postures is to hold them and to keep extending through the crown of your head and tips of your toes as you do them. This action will consequently cause you to engage your core.

Putting it all together

It’s one thing to do the right yoga moves for a flatter stomach and it’s another to keep doing them. Frequency and consistency are integral to firming up your middle. Start out by taking one to two yoga classes a week or doing one to two 20-minute yoga sessions at home. Gradually work your way up to three to five times per week.

And don’t forget your diet! Combine the core-blasting yoga moves with a whole-foods eating routine filled with lots of flat-belly foods and you’ve got the makings for a flatter stomach by summer.