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:

Danielle Lloyd – Keep Fit Look Fit

Danielle Lloyd was one of the Celebrity Big Brother contestants responsible for the show’s racism controversy several years ago. Danielle,  Jo O’Meara and Jade Goody (described by Charlie Brooker as “The World’s Thickest Coven” ) ganged up on beautiful, polite and successful Indian actress Shilpa Shetty sparking  44,500 complaints to Ofcom, withdrawal of sponsorship deals and an investigation by the police.

British television at its finest

It’s probably a bit unfair to still be banging on about it. Poor Danielle. You spend the first years of the your career doing good works like winning Miss Great Britain or dating footballers  or posing nude for Playboy and all anybody ever remembers is that time you said that the Indian lady should “fuck off home.” in front of 5 million people.

They're best of friends now, of course.

This workout DVD “Keep Fit, Look Fit” was released the same year so perhaps it was intended as recompense for her previous actions. Her gift to the nation to say “sorry”.

If so, it’s a terrible gift. She would have been better off producing the Danielle Lloyd “Not-A-Racist” Perfume instead. Although she probably did that as well.

Buy it for the non-racist in your life

The workout DVD is an uninspiring collection of dance workouts led by trainer Steve Rich. If I was feeling charitable I might assume that the makers of the DVD were aiming for it to be as natural as possible which is why they decided to keep in all the bits where Danielle flubs her lines, messes up the moves or looks generally awkward. They cleverly managed to prevent the thing looking over-rehearsed by not doing any rehearsals.

Several years after releasing the workout, Danielle moved into acting and appeared in Dominic Burns’ 2010 film “Cut” - the world's first single continuous-shot horror movie.  Danielle’s character sets up the movie by providing the pre-credits sequence. Sort of like Drew Barrymore in Scream.

I know Halloween’s over but huddle round anyway and enjoy this terrifying dialogue. Remember this is from an actual film that some poor sods paid money to see.  Danielle plays Annette, a babysitter, who phones the mum of the kid she’s looking after .

Try to imagine that the lines are being said by someone with the acting skills of a late night soft porn advert and someone who sounds like she’s on that supposedly “hidden camera” Kindle advert.

Mrs Burton: Is Sandy OK? 

Annette:  Well, she’s not hurt or anything... 

Mrs Burton: But?  

Annette:  She keeps on getting herself worked up about this clown. 

Mrs Burton: Clown? 

Annette: She keeps saying that it is talking to her. That it’s going to hurt her. 

Mrs Burton: What are you talking about, Annette? What clown? 

Annette: The life size clown at the end of her bed. 

Mrs Burton: Annette, listen to me very carefully. Get Sandy out of the house right now! Run to the neighbours and call the police! 

Annette: I don’t understand. What? 

Mrs Burton:  Sandy doesn’t have a toy clown!

Da da daaaa!

To be fair, although the acting improves slightly for the rest of the film, the storyline doesn’t. The rest of film takes place at a different time and could be summarised as follows: “There are some people. And then they hear some scary noises. And then scary clowns want to kill them dead.” Frankly, if you told that as a spooky story at Brownie camp eight year old girls would mock you for being lame. And rightly so.

I’m not sure whether Danielle really has a future in acting but having watched both “Keep Fit Look Fit” and “Cut” today, I know which one I preferred.  Only one of those DVDs features a Rufus Hound doppelganger with an axe embedded in his midriff. That’s one hell of a fitness workout.

Best Bit

Danielle is sporting a comprehensive selection of Danielle Lloyd 'Designed4Love' workout wear. At the time of the DVD’s release, this clothing was available for purchase by the likes of you and me. Sadly the Designed4Love website has now closed as has that avenue of potential dream fulfilment.

Happily you get to see what must amount to the entire collection here. There are short sleeved tops, long sleeved tops, hoodies, sweat pants and a lovely velour tracksuit. Everything you could ever dream of.

Feel the quality.

Weirdest Bit

Danielle has her own logo. Clearly she recognised that she was a brand and needed to be marketed as such. As well as featuring on her designer workwear it’s also displayed on the set which along with the shiny gold decorations radiates an air of a market stall selling fake designer handbags.

The logo is a sort of backwards D dash L thing that weirdly looks more like it says ‘CH’. It looks like it’s trying to copy someone else’s brand but I can’t work out whose. Chanel? Chantelle? Chessington World of Adventures? I have no idea.

Worst Bit

It’s hard to choose what with the shitty production values, the terrible extras and the plinky plonky fucking music, but I think, on balance, my least favourite parts are any bit where Danielle is required to speak. Particularly the bits where she does a bit of unconvincing banter with Steve.  Talking like a believable human being isn’t really her strong point.

"Where are you feeling it, Danielle?”

“In my ... muscles?”

Danielle tries to sound like she knows what she’s talking about.

Difficulty Level.

Oh, you know, it’s fine. Not especially hard. Not especially easy. It’s like a great big dollop of meh.

In her introduction, Danielle says that she likes her exercise to be fun and that the best kind of exercise is where you’re having so much fun, you don’t even realise you’re working out.

Yeah, that sounds good. You should have tried that here, Danielle.

Could I do this if I was a racist? Could I?

Would I do this workout again?

Well no. Because of it being shit and everything. Tell you what though, if they make Cut 2 : Cut Harder and Danielle scores another role then I’m right there. This time I think they should start with that story where the girl hears a tapping on the roof of the car and the policeman tells her not to turn around because  it turns out to be blood dripping from her boyfriend’s severed head. That one’s a classic.

Beverley Callard – Rapid Results

What you’re looking at here is just one of the four workouts that Coronation Street actress and actual, proper fitness instructor Beverley Callard has released.

The full oeuvre is as follows: Real Results, Rapid Results, Ultimate Results and Lasting Results.

She’s clearly a results-focused woman.

I’m trying to work out which of these results is the most desirable, if you have to choose.  Certainly ‘rapid’ seems to be a pretty good quality in an exercise as is ‘ultimate’. That’s the highest limit attained right there. ‘Lasting’ results are pretty crucial. You don’t want to achieve the perfect body then have your old fat self blobbing out at unexpected moments like that bit in the Nutty Professor.

Blobbing

On reflection while ‘rapid’, ‘ultimate’ and ‘lasting’ are all important, being ‘real’  is totally non-negotiable. A workout advertised as “The Imaginary Hypothetical Workout” isn’t going to fly off the shelves.

If Beverley wants to market these DVDs in box sets, she could group them according to combined results. The Real and Rapid workouts could be packaged together as the “Efficient Results” collection or you could combine Rapid, Lasting and Ultimate for “The Phantasmagorical Results Workout.” I have put together cut-out-and-keep a Beverley Callard Fitness Results Venn Diagram for this very purpose.

This particular workout was originally released in 1996. Much as I moan and complain about the shitty DVD extras that come with most C-List Celeb workouts, I have become accustomed to having them around. Beverley’s DVD doesn’t have any extras at all. It doesn’t even provide the option of selecting workouts by section on the menu. You click once to start and then the whole workout unfolds from beginning to end without pausing for breath. It’s a DVD that thinks it’s a video cassette basically. I’m surprised that it didn’t try to rewind itself afterwards.

You're just spoiling me with choice, here.

Beverley introduces us to the team that we are going to be working with. There’s Sue who was on the last video, apparently, Sarah who has got fabulous legs and Val who tends to store fat on her bottom and thighs.

There is also Karen who is Bev’s second-in-command and is there largely for her counting skills. She does count beautifully, mind.

Karen counting. Or possibly swearing.

Then there are the two boys: Mel “who exercises regularly and loves it” and David “who exercises regularly and hates it” both of whom are completely overshadowed somewhat by their startling outfits. They’ve both come as the only gay in the village. 

While I appreciate their commitment to style – although maybe everyone was dressed like that in 1996 and I was too wrapped up in myself to notice – those outfits can’t have been the most comfortable things to work out in. By the time they reached the floor exercises I bet they were dying to change out of their PVC lederhosen and into something more comfortable. Maybe some ass-less chaps, a feather boa  and a gimp mask.

Of course, David's always dressed lovely.

The credits say that the guys’ outfits are from The Cutting Room in Wigan. Eager to find out what the fashionable look is these days in workout slash fetishwear, I looked them up online. Disappointingly the only Cutting Room in Wigan appeared to be a hairdresser. However, a quick look at their staff page showed that the owner is none other than Mel off of Bev’s video! Unbelievable! You know what this means, don’t you? Good because personally, I have no idea. Maybe it was a tax dodge.

Best Bit

Without a doubt the best part of the whole workout are the face exercises at the end. Bev has us gurning and stretching and grinning like crazy people. Word of warning: don’t attempt the lower lid exercises while wearing contact lenses. And don’t do any of the exercises if there is an outside chance that anyone might see you. Particular if they might screenshot you and put your pictures online. Because you’ll just look stupid.

See?

Weirdest Bit.

At the end of the workout, Dave Gorman look-alike Mel tells Beverley that they have a surprise for her. The gang go off for a moment and come back bearing a massive cake covered in cream and, well, you can see where this is going, can’t you?

And yes, she is pretty much headbutting that cake in the third picture. 
Still, Mel's clearly having the most fun he's ever had in his life.

Difficulty Level

As I mentioned before, as well as being Liz McDonald in Coronation Street, Beverley Callard is an actual proper, legitimate fitness instructor. You can tell. She shouldn’t have been allowed on C-List Celebrity Workouts at all, really given how useful, well-explained and well-presented the whole thing is.

Would I do this Workout Again?

This is a nicely put-together fitness plan but even if I could face the low-tech menu options again, I’m not sure how much more time I can spend with the ridiculous 90s fashions. Not that they’re painful to look at. Quite the opposite. If I watch this DVD too many times there is a very real danger that I might go and buy myself a high-cut snakeskin print leotard with black mesh straps. Or a black and silver PVC playsuit, of course.

I could totally pull this look off.

CD:UK – Dance Workout

CD:UK was a television chart show which was presented by, amongst others, Cat Deeley, Holly Willoughby, Myleene Klass, Lauren Laverne and  Ant ‘n’ Dec.

None of these people are in any way featured on, mentioned during or presumably aware of this spin-off Dance Fitness DVD.

Completely unrelated.

The DVD is fronted by Andy Instone and his tiny tribes of “CD:UK Girls” and “CD:UK Boys”. The only link it seems to have the TV programme whose logo is splashed throughout is that it is “set in the CD:UK studio”.

Even assuming that the Producers of CD:UK were aware that they were using it – and that they didn’t just sneak in one Saturday afternoon after filming had stopped – that’s not a very exciting claim to fame.

The real celebrity is behind the dancers.

The credits reveal that it was shot at Riverside Studios which is one of the most frequently employed TV studios in the country. They shoot tons of stuff there. CD:UK isn’t even a big enough deal to get a mention on their website.

With slightly different set-dressing this entire workout could have been just as legitimately marketed as the “Apprentice: You’re Fired – Dance Workout.”

The DVD is split into two dances and there’s a routine and a performance for each one.  The routine is where Andy explains the moves and the performance is where we put it all together.

Andy gives it to us straight.

As Andy says in his introduction: “Many people nowadays spend a lot of time watching TV, playing video games and listening to music”

Woah, Andy, where are you going with this? Surely CD:UK is guilty of encouraging two of those three things you just mentioned?

Luckily our man goes on to say “There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s all good and we all do it” before pointing out that there isn’t a lot of exercise involved in those activities and letting us know that the DVD will enable us to “warm up, learn some fierce dance steps and take part in some fantastic choreographed dances.”

Fierce Dance Moves.

The dancers demonstrate everything in “slow motion” first. Their slow motion just looks like normal speed to me, to be honest. After that everything goes a bit crazy and the routine becomes a blur of gyrating body-popping danciness.

In addition to the routines, there are a handful of uninspiring extras – behind the scenes recordings, that sort of thing. Thankfully no stupid diet plan for once. That’s not all we get though. Oh, no. As it says on the DVD Box – “Find the hidden ‘Easter Egg’ to reveal an exclusive extra feature!”

Dude, seriously? You throw together a dance CD:UK cashing in on a programme which had already stopped broadcasting by the time that this was released and now you expect me to spend my own time looking for an extra hidden somewhere on the DVD? Do you really think I am going to do that?

Well of course, I am. Obviously. I will go to any lengths it seems to give you people the information you need. I had to actually look for it myself, as well. You’d be surprised to learn – as I was by about my eighteenth Google search - that the internet is not crammed full of people asking how to find the CD:UK Dance Workout Easter Egg. Or people providing the solution, for that matter.

Fear not people, the story has a happy ending. Your hero did manage to unlock the hidden secrets of the Dance Workout DVD.

Now I know a great many of you will to discover the magic for yourselves, so anybody who doesn’t want to know the result, for the love of God, look away now!

SPOILER ALERT *** SPOILER ALERT *** SPOILER ALERT

Right, listen carefully. You get to the Easter Egg by going to the main menu, highlighting ‘Pick a Section’ and then clicking the left button. The screen will then flash a message saying “Found Easter Egg!!!!” and your shrivelled little heart will swell with wonder.

The happiest moment of my life so far.

The exclusive extra feature is... wait a minute, actually. Before we get to that, what does the fuck does ‘exclusive’ mean in this context? Exclusive as it only features on this DVD? Much like all the rest of the routines and extras on this DVD then? I suspect there’s a fine line between ‘exclusive’ and ‘shit no-one else cares about’.

Anyway, it’s just the gang looking very sweaty doing one of the dance routines in double time. So that’s that.

*** END OF SPOILERS FOR CRAPPY ARSE FITNESS DVD ***

Best Bit

While the DVD might not have a great deal to recommend by way of fitness instruction, the young people involved are all pretty good dancers. The main presenter, Andy Instone seems a pretty cool guy when you read up on him. He is committed to breaking down any preconceptions boys might have about dancing not being a masculine activity. He runs workshops and community projects and has even taught dancing to young offenders in prisons.

Hey bro, you don’t have to convince me of the manliness of dancing. I’ve seen “You got served.”

Worst Bit

You know what else the television programme CD:UK was famous for apart from Cat Deeley and Ant ‘n’ Dec? Featuring lots of music. It was a chart show which included a rundown of the top 20 so all the music featured was the really popular mainstream stuff. Stuff you would recognise if I came on your car radio. Stuff you’d remember the words to whether you particularly wanted to or not.

The makers of the Dance Workout DVD have decided to honour this fine music tradition by not including any recognisable tunes whatsoever and instead plumping for the sort of cheap-ass commissioned plinky-plonky soundtrack where you don’t have to acknowledge anyone in the end credits.

Although, in this case, it sounds less like someone randomly throwing golf balls at a Casio Keyboard and more like the thumping bass beats you would hear through your ceiling if your upstairs neighbour had his stereo on a bit too loud.

None of these songs featured on the Workout. Guaranteed.

Difficulty Level

“If you get lost or we go too fast just go back to the slow motion part until you’ve nailed it” says Andy. Who then goes on to say “when we do any mad stuff or transformations to liven things up, don’t worry about copying – just do what you can”. I may have decided to interpret most of the DVD as ‘mad stuff’ because it really was very fast, very complicated and very much the sort of thing that is probably best attempted by professional dancers.

Mad stuff. Possibly.

Would I do this Workout Again?

Well Andy seems to want me to. He seems adamant that if I watch  the DVD enough times rewinding to re-watch the instruction-y bits then sooner or later I will get the hang of it.

I can’t share his optimism I’m afraid. Even if followed his advice, it would take years. And I would still be rubbish at the end of it.

I will leave this sort of thing to the kind of super-cool young people who take place in Andy Instone’s Urban Strides dance classes.