Building on the Abs of Madonna

THIS is the woman responsible for Madonna’s arms.

Tracy Anderson pulls down on resistant elastic bands strung across the ceiling; dances around the room; endlessly circles her arms. She moves her torso back and forth and sideways to strengthen the abdominals, and then lies on her — of course — taut belly for a series of butt-toning leg lifts.

To spend an hour working out with Ms. Anderson, with an iPod blasting and the heat cranked up, is to get a taste of what it’s like to prepare for a grueling concert tour, striving for that sinewy muscle tone. Or so you can tell yourself. Maybe this is how it feels to sweat like Gwyneth Paltrow, bopping around your blond-wood home gym in the Hamptons, losing the pregnancy pounds with Ms. Anderson’s mat exercises and dance routines. “You really are how you move,” Ms. Anderson said.

Ms. Anderson, 33, worked out with a reporter recently in a rented space in Midtown, demonstrating her signature muscle strengthening and cardio dancing, which have won her two devoted clients in Madonna and Ms. Paltrow. With those celebrity names lofting her reputation, she is preparing to open a high-end $900-a-month workout studio in TriBeCa.

But those who join probably won’t be grunting and lunging alongside Ms. Paltrow or Madonna — Ms. Anderson trains them privately — and her employees will lead most workouts, not her.

Looking as if she subsists on birdseed, the pixie-ish trainer said she actually has “a big appetite.” (Don’t all thin people say that?) She is partial to cupcakes — anything with butter cream frosting — and, while she is now very mindful of nutrition, maintains that when she started out in the fitness business she was still a junk-food junkie, dunking Oreo cookies in containers of Pillsbury icing. “I was kind of like a doctor who smoked,” Ms. Anderson said.

It was about three years ago, while running a studio in Los Angeles, that Ms. Anderson came to the attention of Ms. Paltrow, who then told her friend Madonna. Now the bulk of Ms. Anderson’s time is devoted to the two stars: she essentially moves in with one, depending on whose career is in higher gear, while working with the other through video chats and custom DVDs, or by dispatching one of her associate trainers.

When Madonna was preparing for her “Sticky and Sweet” tour last year, for example, Ms. Anderson lived with her for nine months and then accompanied her on the road. Last summer, she trained Madonna during the day in Manhattan and took the train almost every day to the Hamptons to put Ms. Paltrow through a workout in the evening.

“Tracy Anderson is my savior,” Madonna said in an e-mail message. “After two Caesareans, three hernia operations and one riding accident that left me with 10 broken bones, she was the only one who could pull my body back together into one piece.”

Read the entire article at the NY Times Website