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Madonna's Trainer Fights Back
Madge dropped her trainer, Tracy Anderson, amid claims of money woes and a dubious résumé. Jacob Bernstein on how she kept Gwyneth and picked up Shakira despite her controversial past.
A few weeks ago, Tracy Anderson was the hottest personal trainer in America, with a career on steroids. In the span of three years, she went from being a little-known exercise guru in Indiana to sculpting two of the most famously fit bodies in the world: Gwyneth Paltrow’s and Madonna’s. She was profiled in The New York Times, USA Today, Harper’s Bazaar, and W. She made it onto Oprah. Then the unthinkable happened: She was dropped by Madonna, which is the fitness-equivalent of losing a Nike endorsement deal. Now, it’s open season for her in the press: The New York Post’s Page Six has turned her into its latest piñata, old clients are complaining publicly about unpaid bills and broken promises, and trainers who have worked with her say she’s unprofessional.
So just who is Anderson and what is her fitness secret?
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According to people who have trained with her, the pixie-ish workout queen—34 years old, about five feet tall, around 95 pounds—is a woman who promises (and is often able to) get nearly 20 pounds off a client’s frame in six weeks, though some think her ability to accomplish that has as much to do with the with the diet as the regimen, because clients frequently have their calorie counts reduced to roughly 1,000 a day.
The actual exercise program consists of complicated dance aerobics and lots of leg and butt work. Music by Britney Spears and Kanye West blares throughout her hour-and-a-half- to two-hour workouts. Colored elastic bands hang from the ceilings and run across the studio walls, enabling devotees to do pull downs from a number of positions. One thing Anderson advises clients against is running, because it builds up the thighs. Another is spinning, an exercise that she faults for giving a woman a man’s butt.
Anderson’s technique was impressive enough that she landed a client in her L.A. studio (her other was back home in Indiana) who happened to be the wife of Gwyneth Paltrow’s agent. Shortly thereafter, in 2006, she got the chance to workout Paltrow herself—and so Anderson flew to the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. She nailed the audition. Paltrow has called her friend and now-business partner (the GOOP impresario has a financial stake in Anderson’s Greenwich Village gym and appears in DVDs and YouTube clips with her) an “exercise genius.” After that, things really took off: Paltrow introduced Anderson to her good friend Madonna.
“You could very much tell she was aware of the attention she had gotten and fed off that. She wanted people to think she was a celebrity herself.”
But for a woman who promises abs of titanium, Anderson has a personal history with rather flabby claims. For example, she purports to have a dance background, and to have studied at Juilliard during the 1990s. Yet the registrar’s office there has no record of Anderson (or Tracy Richardson, as she was born) ever taking classes at the school, The Daily Beast has found. Moreover, from 2002 to 2004, Anderson ran a studio in Fishers, Indiana, called HardCore Pilates, yet she admits through a representative that she has no Pilates certification.
Anderson has frequently claimed that former Knicks forward Eric Anderson, with whom she has a child, was her ex-husband. It later turned out the two had not actually gotten divorced. (The couple met when she was 19 on the set of the movie Blue Chips, in which she had a bit part as a cheerleader.)
People who have trained with her report hearing stories that she’d appeared in Cats on Broadway (though no evidence could be found to support this) that she was being sponsored by Carnation Instant Breakfast mix (again, no evidence could be found), and that she had an early career working in music videos as a choreographer. There’s not much to substantiate that either, though she did at one point get a part in a Chicago production of A Chorus Line playing the character who does the famous “Dance 10 Looks Three” number.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
Great article! 1000 calories and two and a half hour workouts a day - no wonder Madonna looks the way she does.
this is a horrible story. shouldn't the writer have tried to contact this woman?
the headline says she's fighting back? there is no such angle in this whole story.
this is an attack piece. i wouldn't be surprised if she sues DB for libel.
and i don't know this woman at all--all i know is journalism, and this isn't it.
I wonder these womens bodies look like when they stop these extreme workouts.
Look, the woman's a personal trainer. The people she trains either look great or they don't. Who cares about her qualifications? Having Pilates certification is like having the stewardess give my 5-year old a pair of United Junior Pilot wings.
And yes, she's a lousy businesswoman. But everyone knows that with yoga studios and health clubs, you always pay as you go. Never front managers money (in the form of payin gin advance for a year's membership) because they're surprisingly likely to run the place into the ground long before your year is up. And anyone who becomes an investor deserves to lose his money. Consider it a tax on your stupidity.
As for getting dumped by Madonna -- isn't that also inevitable? Does she sooner or later dump everyone in her life. Anderson has a right to be disappointed. But not surprised.
If she's good at getting celebs to look their best, she'll have no problem finding new customers. And it sounds like that's the one thing she does well.
Just for the record, Pilates certification from a PMA approved program might not be medical school, but it requires a substantial cost, lots of hard work and more than 800 hours of observation, teaching and apprenticeship, a written exam and finally a practical exam where you teach a new client in front of a panel. Much easier to just say you have it than actually get it.
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now the media will shred her to pieces. All persons with big ego,get tired of each other.
Who cares about Madonna, let alone her employees?
great reporting!
Especially in the world economy and all the problems we have to face,these people have nothing to offer,and to admire.It use to be interesting, now its like all of them are aliens.
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I'm sorry, but if this is what passes for "content" the Daily Beast should stick to aggregation. Is there anybody in their right mind who actually cares whether Madonna fired her personal trainer and that this person lied about her credentials. This is beyond drivel.
The writer says people are sneering at Anderson because her results have "as much to do with the with the diet as the regimen." Well, duh. You want to drop some pounds, it's ALL about the food, money.
i read this to find out who suckered madonna into sculpting the man arms. was it Anderson?
padded resumes. messy relationships. bad financial choices. whatever. who cant be accused of claiming to be a julliard trained choreographer? I won 4 nobel prizes before the age of 6.
Madonna doesn't understand that when you have a kid you cannot always jump at other people's whims? Perhaps if Ms. Anderson had an army of nannies to raise her child like Madonna, she would be more available. Obviously, Madonna is not raising her own 5 kids, or she would know that caring for your child comes first. How sad for her children, having a nut job for a mother.
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