Tracy Anderson, standing at just 5’0″ tall, has built a training empire worth an impressive $35 million. After more than two decades in the fitness industry, Anderson has won the devotion of fitness enthusiasts and über fit celebs. One of the reasons people flock to her is because she’s actually super relatable. Though not all members of the fitness community agree with all of her suggestions or workout methods, a good bulk of her tips are backed sound science and undebatable common sense-and those are the tips you’ll find here.
Tracy Anderson's Philosophy: Movement as a Way of Life
For Tracy Anderson, movement is both a career and a way of life. Anderson is best known as the founder of the Tracy Anderson Method, a fitness program beloved by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez, but staying active is simply in her ethos. “It’s part of my character to move my body,” Anderson tells Observer. “It’s built in and it’s a belief system. I believe that to honor our health and our life and to optimize our mood, we have to move.
The Tracy Anderson Method: A Dance-Inspired Approach
The Tracy Anderson Method is its own genre of fitness, founded on the principle that your workout should grow with you. The Tracy Anderson method is a dance-based cardio and mat exercise program that aims to build and sculpt muscle without adding bulk. It uses small, repetitive movements and weights no heavier than 3 pounds. Founded by Tracy Anderson, this focused and highly choreographed approach aims to help people achieve the long, lean muscles of a dancer’s body.
Key Elements of the Method
- Dance-Based Cardio: Many of Anderson's workouts involve dancing. If dance is what brings joy to your life, definitely check out one of her classes or videos.
- Mat Work: Mat classes are the heart of Anderson’s method. They generally divide their time between dynamic dance-inspired movement and mat training.
- Low Weight, High Repetition: Many workouts are built on repetitive movements, which use body resistance and light hand and ankle weights to tire out muscle groups. Routines pay particular attention to smaller accessory muscles, which can strengthen and tone the body without building bulk, claims Anderson.
- Ongoing Variation: Expect mat routines to change weekly. Anderson claims that constantly introducing new movements and sequences keeps the mind and body engaged, resulting in body-wide, balanced toning.
- Nonverbal Instruction: This is often the hardest thing for newbies to get used to. During class, you’re expected to follow your instructor’s moves without verbal cues. Anderson believes this approach helps clients tune into and gain autonomy over their bodies.
- A time commitment: Anderson recommends committing to classes for at least one hour, four to seven days a week. For maximum benefit, some Tracy Anderson programs recommend one hour, six days a week. You’ll also need to invest some time upfront in instructional videos and Zoom coaching calls to learn and understand the approach.
Targeted Programs
In addition to whole-body workouts, Anderson sells targeted programs through her online shop and via third-party vendors under the brand Metamorphosis by Tracy brand. These cater to specific body types and goals:
- Abcentric: You tend to gain weight in your middle.
- Hipcentric: You’re pear-shaped, with your weight centered around your thighs.
- Glutecentric: You’d like a shapelier, more lifted rear end.
- Omnicentric: You want some firming all over your body.
Although scientific research doesn’t support the idea that you can “spot reduce” and trim fat from any specific part of the body, Anderson devotees swear by her targeted approach.
Read also: The Hoxsey Diet
Areas Targeted by the Tracy Anderson Method
- Core: Anderson's programs include a lot of abdominal and core exercises.
- Arms: A series of repeated arm movements using your own resistance and light hand weights tightens the biceps, triceps, shoulders, and other muscles of the upper body.
- Legs: Anderson’s programs focus heavily on the leg muscles, with high repetition of motions like leg lifts, kicks, and deep knee bends.
- Glutes: The rear end is another area of intense focus for Anderson. She uses many of the traditional hands-and-knees leg moves to tighten and lift the muscles of your butt.
- Back: While many workout routines neglect the back, Anderson wants you to look good from all sides.
- Flexibility: Classes include many different stretches to increase your flexibility.
- Cardio conditioning: The dance-based portion of core mat classes tends to be lower impact but still gets your heart pumping. Dance cardio workouts tend to be higher impact.
- Strength: Anderson's program uses very light or no weights, as it aims to build muscle without adding bulk. Many fitness experts, however, believe it is also important to work with heavier weights because added resistance helps build bone, can increase resting metabolism, and benefits overall health.
The Tracy Anderson Diet: A Two-Phased Approach
The Tracy Anderson Diet is a meal plan created by a fitness guru of the same name. Anderson is considered to be a “trainer for the stars” because of her client base of Hollywood actors, musicians and personalities. Despite the trainer’s impressive resume, the Tracy Anderson diet has drawn a lot of attention, both for its effectiveness and extremity. The diet is a 3-month eating plan.
The Nutrient Boost Week
According to the Tracy Anderson diet, the nutrient week boost is all about pumping your body with as many nutrients as possible. These nutrients are derived mainly from vegetables and fruits. Dieters are also advised to make the foods soft in order for the body to digest them easily. This means that foods should be pureed or consumed in liquid form. During nutrient boost week, you don’t have to count calories. You are allowed to eat and blend as much fresh produce as you want.
The Body Reset Week
Body reset week is all about protein. While you can still eat vegetables in this phase, protein-rich foods take center stage. Foods like chicken, fish, beef, turkey, eggs and legumes are highly encouraged during this week. Ideally, you should keep to three meals a day and supplement with veggies to keep you feeling full.
Weight Loss and Safety
There have been some reports of weight loss with this diet. Many dieters lose an average of 3 pounds every nutrient boost week. Because the diet can also be combined with a workout plan, some lose even more weight than the average 3 pounds. The jury is still out on whether the meal plan is safe or not. Some experts argue that the dietary changes are extreme and can lead to health complications. The Tracy Anderson diet is also a VLCD (very-low calorie diet), which means dieters only consume between 500 and 1000 calories a day.
Tracy Anderson's Nutritional Philosophy
The majority of her empire may be built on fitness classes and exercise DVDs but that doesn’t mean Anderson discounts the importance of a wholesome diet. Time and time again she’s reiterated the importance of eating clean, organic whole foods as much as possible. “I don’t like processed foods. I eat lean proteins…as well as quinoa and brown rice,” she said in a recent interview. “Chicken is the only meat I eat-organic chicken. I eat eggs. I’ll have coffee with steamed whole milk, a big salad, then a snack of Eden tamari almonds or an Alter Eco dark chocolate bar (one of these best chocolates for weight loss), then fish and vegetables…for dinner.” But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t indulge from time to time. “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,” says Anderson of restrictive, low-cal dieting.
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Foods to Limit
The only things off limits in her diet? Drink as little alcohol as possible, advises Anderson. “I drink wine very rarely. Soda is basically just carbonated sugar-spiked chemical water, so it makes sense that Tracy suggests cutting it from your diet entirely. “It’s bloating and full of sugar-or if it’s diet soda, it’s full of chemicals. Drink water. Not coconut water-water.
Sample Meal Plans
- If you only have 48 hours: I would go with the leanest eating options. For example: the tea with protein powder at breakfast, a poached egg and small salad with rice wine vinegar for lunch, half of the chocolate bar for a snack, and steamed/grilled plain fish with steamed spinach or asparagus for dinner.
- Salad option: chopped spinach, red onion, parsley, cheese (I do 2 ounces of Midnight Moon cut into chunks).
- Sautéed chicken: Sauté 1 chicken breast with garlic. In a separate skillet, put 1 cup organic tomato sauce with a little red pepper. Sauté ½ yellow onion and ½ zucchini.
- Bone broth mix: Put bone broth in a pot to simmer (I do two cartons of lemongrass chicken bone broth from Pacific). Chop 1 cooked chicken breast and add to the broth along with scallions, celery, carrot.
- Fish: Get 1 can of tuna in water and add mustard and capers.
- Aim for a half bar of Alter Eco’s Dark Velvet chocolate. [You can see the goop guide to good-for-you chocolate here.] Full bar is okay, too. May have 1 to 2 glasses of wine per day. If you are drinking, it is best to have a glass before you go into a hungry time. For people that tend to crave carbs or sugar, go for a crispy, cold white. If the wine can be organic as well, that’s great.
Quick Weight Loss Tips
- The best way to jump-start weight loss is to work out every single day until you actually crave the workout.
- Plus, get off gluten and go very low carb. You are how you move, you are how you eat.
- Ideally, you want to be regular and strategic with the design of your body and your weight management all year.
- If you’re looking to slim down/keep your weight at a healthy, comfortable place this summer, I’d say avoid eating really large portions and overloading your digestive system.
- If you have weight to lose, you can effectively do a fourteen-pound weight loss in four weeks. This requires focus and physical, mental, and emotional willpower. You will experience short-term stress (particularly during your cycle if you’re a woman)-but this can end up being less stressful than living with the stress of excess weight.
Additional Tips from Tracy Anderson
- Train for an hour a day, six days a week: “Do 30 minutes of cardio training (dancing, jogging, aerobics) and 30 minutes of muscular structure (weights and stretches). At the same time, however, she recognizes that newbies need to ease into their new fitness routine. “Start with a couple of days a week. After you’ve been [working out] three to four days a week for a month or so, you’ll be able to add a fifth day-and it’s not going to be hell!” Anderson explains.
- Don't do sit-ups: Like many other trainers, the 41-year old fitness experts advise against sit-ups and crunches. Doing sit-ups doesn’t really burn many calories, so not only can you do crunches every day for years without seeing any dramatic results, the exercises can also cause neck and back strain. “Moves such as crunches which concentrate on the one area create an imbalance in the body and encourage bulk,” Anderson says. That’s because you’ll be building muscle under a layer of fat. To let those ab lines shine through, add high-intensity interval training sprints to your weekly fitness routine. Not only does cardio build lean muscle and burn calories, but the action of driving the legs also initiates the core.
- Manage stress: If you tend to get overwhelmed with the happenings of your day-to-day life, you’ll probably find it challenging to make fitness and healthy eating a priority, too. “When people are stressed, it clouds their minds and makes them less productive,” Anderson explains. To de-stress, so you can get on track to a healthier lifestyle, she advises taking the time to write things down that are getting under your skin at the end of each day. When your thoughts and emotions are in order, it becomes far easier to get your health in order.
- Have fun: It may leave you drenched in sweat and so tired that you can’t even think about moving from the couch, but Anderson swears that fitness can and should be fun. “Exercise can be just as fun as a manicure once you get good at it,” she says. She says the best way to ramp yourself up is to slowly, but surely add on your workouts whether it be in the form of reps or time spent breaking a sweat.
- Go to bed early: “I always recommend early to bed, early to rise,” says Anderson. “If you work out in the morning, you’ll get it done before other things-like someone wanting to get lunch and drinks-[distract] you and keep you from exercising. [Plus,] so much research points to the benefits of waking up early.”
- No excuses: Tracy encourages exercisers to stop making excuses. “You’re an adult; you can set your alarm, get up, brush your teeth.
- Listen to music: TA is adamant that workout playlists be fun, loud and energetic. According to her research, these kinds of jams help get people in the zone, so they push their bodies further and up their calorie burn. “I love music so much! Working out to music is something that people need to do,” she tells People magazine.
- Find a workout buddy: Workout buddies are great because they keep you on target. If you have plans to meet up with a friend for a spin class or a run, the odds that you’ll skip it are very low. You won’t want to let someone else down. “You want a reason to not have to do it because it feels uncomfortable,” Anderson explains.
- Don't skimp on calories: She may be BFFs with Gwyneth Paltrow, a celeb who’s famous for regularly doing mild detoxes, but TA isn’t a fan of skimping on calories. “Juice fasting destroys your metabolic rate.
Is the Tracy Anderson Method Right for You?
Benefits
- Good for beginners: Yes. This program is made for all fitness levels. However, Anderson recommends watch the breakdown steps to learn the exercises and starting slowly.
- Anderson’s combination of aerobic and toning workouts can help you shed pounds and strengthen muscles.
- The cardio work in Anderson’s programs will also help lower blood pressure and cholesterol, cutting your risk for heart disease.
- Anderson has a workout just for pregnant women.
Considerations
- Cost: The price varies based on which DVDs you buy. Monthly membership at one of Tracy Anderson’s brick-and-mortar studios costs several hundred dollars a month plus a hefty one-time initiation fee, which may be too costly for many people. At $90 per month, the online studio is more affordable but still an investment. You can test the waters risk-free by signing up for a free two-week trial membership.
- Time commitment: Anderson recommends committing to classes for at least one hour, four to seven days a week.
- Equipment required: Yes. You'll need 3-pound hand weights and a mat for many of the workouts. a set of 3-pound hand weights, a set of 1-2 pound ankle weights, and a set of 1-2 pound wrist weights
- Not for everyone:
- If you like being in a class with other people and an instructor, a DVD-based exercise program is not the best choice for you.
- If you’re looking for a slow, meditative approach to fitness, this isn’t it. You'll be moving fast.
- If you already have heart disease, you should not jump into Anderson’s workouts unless your doctor gives the go-ahead.
- If you have knee or back pain or arthritis , the high-impact routines of the aerobic workouts are not for you. There are other fitness programs that are much gentler on your joints.
Expert Opinions
Though the Tracy Anderson Method has a long track record and has had a huge influence on modern fitness trends, the program and some of its claims are still questioned.“I personally like to see the science behind things and don’t know of evidence that supports some of Anderson’s recommendations, such as limiting resistance training to light weights only,” says Brian Cleven, MS, a clinical exercise physiologist with the American College of Sports Medicine. “But any form of movement is beneficial if it doesn’t injure you. If you find the Tracy Anderson Method motivating and engaging, that’s a good thing.”
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