The video for Cheryl’s newest song features her dancing in the streets, and now we know how she’s achieved such a svelte physique.
In an interview with The Sun, Cheryl says: "I’ve been doing the Tracy Anderson Method, where you work your muscles at all different angles to lean you out, rather than bulk them up. You do it in 90-degree heat with humidity, which is supposed to help tone your skin."
She’s hardly the first celebrity to sing the praises of the Tracy Anderson Method – but what exactly is it?
Who set it up?
The clue’s in the name; this is the work of Tracy Anderson, who has a background in dance. Anderson says she created the fitness plan when she was 22 – she had gained weight after having a baby, and when her then-husband was suffering from a sports injury, she wanted to use her dance training and love of fitness and Pilates to create something new and slim down herself.
Even though her methods have won praise, it’s interesting to see a fitness star posting before and after pictures – this is increasingly a rarer sight on Instagram, with the body positivity movement arguing that thinness does not immediately equal being better. However, Anderson does write in Women’s Health: "Sure, I wanted to lose my baby weight – but what I really wanted was to be healthy, strong, and balanced in a way I could sustain my whole life." It must be said that she doesn’t endorse quick fixes or punishing your body with workouts or diets – instead she advocates a more sustainable way of being healthy, even if the genesis of the method was focused on losing weight.
What does the workout entail?
The whole method is aimed at targeting and strengthening the small, accessory muscles to achieve a long and lean body. They’re high-energy workouts which focus on repetitive movements, lots of reps, and light weights – the whole point is to fatigue your muscles. Some classes have more of a dance cardio focus – in a room where the heat is turned right up – and others are for toning.
Unusually for fitness classes, if you’re in a dance cardio class with Anderson, she won’t talk or give you any verbal queues, you just have to follow her movements.
Many of the classes – and the DVDs Anderson has released – focus on target areas like abs, arms or thighs, and you can pick which areas you want to work on.
Which celebs love it?
Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Tracee Ellis Ross, Alessandra Ambrosio – this really is just scratching the surface of all the famous people who subscribe to the Tracy Anderson Method.
In fact, Gwyneth Paltrow loved the method so much when she first tried it, she soon became Anderson’s business partner.
Where can you do it?
Anderson is based in the US, so most of her activity is there – she has six studios across the country, as well as one in Madrid and a personal training team in London.
However, what’s helped the Tracy Anderson Method become so popular is the fact you can do it at home, like Cheryl. You can pay to have access to the Online Studio – but if you don’t want to take the plunge immediately, maybe try a few of the workouts on her YouTube channel first.
