Tracy Anderson – The Tracy Anderson Method Mat Workout

Tracy Anderson is a fitness instructor to the stars.  And I’m not talking British Lawnmower Museum “Lawnmowers of the Rich and Famous” levels of stardom here.

Vanessa Feltz, Alan Titchmarsh, Some bloke with brown hair...

Tracy trains Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth even appears on the DVD extras for this workout.  Gwyneth clearly believes the best way of promoting a fitness DVD is to tell us that after doing it, she “literally couldn’t walk for three days!” and that doing the Standing Arms section of this workout meant that she couldn’t pick up her children the next day.

“Sorry I’m going to have to put you down now, honey. Mummy’s just too fit for this sort of thing.”

Eh? Is that a good thing? Because while I understand that feeling some stiffness after a workout might be encouraged, being literally incapacitated sounds like a bad thing. I’m not convinced you should be recommending that.

“Can’t ... move. Too ... stiff ... ”

When she’s not incapacitating A-listers, Tracy likes to share her fitness methods with us common people. In her introduction, she tells us that we are all shaped differently: “The good news is that it is completely possible to re-engineer your muscular structure any way you want.”

I can re-engineer my muscular structure any way I want? Fantastic. Can I be an ichthyocentaur? That would be cool.

Part man. Part horse. Part fish. All awesome.

Her main mission is to make us all teeny tiny. It’s a strangely specific ambition that she keeps repeating throughout the workout. Like she doesn’t just want to slim us down, she wants to actually shrink us. Maybe Tracy was 6’8” when she started this.

When she first started teaching this method in her exercise classes “everybody’s arms became teeny tiny and cute.” Which could be a worrying development if you weren’t expecting it.

It’s what happened to this guy.

Tracy’s certainly teeny tiny all over now. It’s a bit like receiving fitness instruction from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

When Gwynnie’s not using Tracy, she just pops her in her handbag.

I am a bit puzzled why this is called the “Mat Workout” as only 2 of the 9 sections actually take place on a mat. That’s only 22% per cent of the workout. I’m sure most workouts achieve a higher percentage than that and don’t even feature “mat” in the title.

No matter. It’s actually a great workout. You know, if you enjoy pain and suffering. And you’re clearly in great company if you do.

“Christ, Madge is about to start one of her tedious Qabala anecdotes.  Pretend to be busy.”

Worst Bit

There’s a distractingly high level of pouting on show throughout this DVD. It’s like doing a workout with a teenager's Facebook page.

Best Bit

I actually rather loved this. Or at least the small amounts that I could manage before keeling over in pain and lying on the floor twitching in pain like a walrus with its flipper stuck in a toaster.

There was a lot of stretching and bending and a generally Pilates-esque feel to the whole thing. I enjoyed the sedate, controlled feel to the excruciating agony. No one was making me charge about like a mad thing.

Difficulty Level

This is a crazy difficult workout. Not least because there’s no “Follow Geoff if you want the easy moves” option here. You can’t bend over, place your hands on the floor and then walk your arms forward three paces? Well, screw you lightweight. You better sort yourself out.

The arm workout looks like a few airy fairy floaty arm moves and is actually insanely painful. It better have done me some good because, you know, I don’t think I am going to be able to pick Gwyneth Paltrow’s children up tomorrow, either.

Hey Gwyneth, you were totally right about the arms. 

Me and Paltrow agree on so much.

Would I do this Workout Again?

I think I will. Not the “at least 6 times a week” that Tracy recommends because I am not a crazy. But at some point in the future, almost probably. And with that kind of killer attitude, I expect to look like this in no time:

Fern Britton – Lynne Robinson’s Everyday Pilates

Despite being the country’s foremost Pilates expert and “The High Priestess of Pilates” (according to Sophie Dahl), Lynne Robinson is no way c-list celeb enough to feature on this blog in her own right. The woman has never even appeared in a pantomime. Let alone released a perfume or been interviewed by Zig and Zag.

Luckily for her, she made a Pilates DVD with Fern Britton in 2003 and gets a grudging invitation to CLCW as Fern’s plus-one.

This DVD was produced long before Fern’s dramatic weight loss and controversial fibbing about her gastric band in 2008 so she appears on the DVD in her retro large and mumsy body wearing a selection of flattering chiffony tops. She’s a whole different woman these days.

Not that you'd want to do Pilates in that skirt

This DVD is subtitled Body Control 7 as there were six (count ‘em)  other Lynne Robinson Pilates workouts before this one. Lynne includes a quick “Back to Basics” instructional segment at the end for anyone who’s just joining at this late stage but really I probably should have started at the beginning if I wanted to properly appreciate the whole workout and character development. It’s like watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows without having seen any of the others and spending the whole film going “Who’s that?” “Why’s he got a scar on his head?” “Where’s that guy’s nose gone?”

My Dark Lord's got no nose.

How does he smell?

Better than you, you filthy mudblood!

Fern doesn't appear in the Back to Basics section. Lynne is joined by a lady called Lorna and a skeleton who doesn't merit their introduction despite putting in sterling work demonstrating where all the bones are and which bits of us are supposed to bend.

Just get a room, you two.

The three sections with Fern are called ‘Morning’, ‘Lunchtime’ and ‘Evening’ because the ladies don’t just want you to do this EVERY day, they want you to do this ALL day. They’re insatiable

Lynne introduces at the beginning by saying “I’m really excited” while sounding like the least excited person ever.

Calm yourself, Lynn.

There’s a lot of emphasis on clenching your pelvic floor muscles in this workout in a move which Lynne calls the “Zip and Hollow”.

“There’s no polite way to say this,” says Lynne. “They’re the muscles which goes front to back and form a sling underneath.”

I see what you mean about there being no polite way of saying it. Sling? You dirty bitch.

She advises women to imagine that they are stopping the flow of water when they clench. Although I am pretty sure she means piss rather than water because I was trying to imagine myself sticking my finger a dyke and it was getting me nowhere.

For the male viewer, she advises trying to lift your crown jewels. “Or family jewels” she adds helpfully for anyone who was baffled by the crown jewels  reference but instantly recognises that their ‘family jewels’ are their testicles.

My what? Ohhhhhhhhhhh.

The morning workout is “energising”, the midday one “reviving” and the evening workout “calming” which certainly all seem the right way round. You can’t say she doesn’t think these things through.

The reviving midday workout contains exercises that you can do using a chair or a wall. Lynne assures that the exercises are perfect for doing while you’re away from home – maybe at the office – and won’t be embarrassing in public.

And you know, in an ideal world, we probably would all start swinging our legs around in the office of an afternoon. But apparently I’m old-fashioned enough at work to worry about coming across as a bit of a weirdo.

Just a normal day in the office.

Best Bit

This  is the first Pilates DVD we’ve featured here and it was just lovely. Pilates was invented about a hundred years ago by Herr Pilates who nicked the bits he liked from yoga, tai chi, gymnastics and bodybuilding. Most of this DVD consists of doing really satisfyingly big stretches.

Worst Bit

During the credits at the end of the DVD, a telephone number is provided for anyone wanting more information about Pilates. We’re promised we can call “24 hours 7 days a week”. Excited beyond measure at the prospect of Lynne Robinson sitting by her phone day and night in order to share her Pilates wisdom, I ran to the phone whooping like a toddler who’s been freebasing smarties.  But time marches on, dear reader and we folk in harsh, brutal 2013 can no longer enjoy the rich pleasures that were open to us in 2003.

“Sorry. This service is no longer available”. That is all.

If only.

Difficulty Level

There was no difficulty either doing the exercises or following lovely Lynne’s instruction. The only thing that would have been tricky would have been if Lynne had popped up at the end and quizzed us on all the anatomical terminology she’d been casually dropping into the conversation throughout the workout. Half the Back to Basics segment was basically in Latin.

I don't know the name of any of these body parts.

Would I do this workout again?

It seems a bit unnecessary to use a DVD in order to know how to stretch properly. But it turns out that I’m pretty rubbish at it unless I’m being talked through it by a fitness instructor standing next to  a TV presenter. I will be doing this one at least one more time because I want Lynne to talk me through pretending to lean over an enormous inflatable ball in order to make my back feel all stretched and lovely. It was great. I may even take my gigantic invisible ball into the office with me.