Tracy Anderson: the fitness guru to the stars

“Each day, thousands of women, myself included, engage in a ritual,” says Xochitl Gonzalez in The Atlantic. “We perform The Method. We ‘do Tracy Anderson’.” Anderson, who rose to fame training celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, has become so ubiquitous in the high-end fitness world that if you visit the Hamptons or Tribeca, you might notice solitary men in T-shirts proclaiming “My wife is at Tracy”. While ordinary mortals do pre-recorded workouts online for $90 a month, membership at one of Anderson’s studios is a multi-thousand-dollar status symbol – “the fitness equivalent of a waterfront property”. Last year, she opened her first studio in London’s Belgravia.

“Fitness entrepreneurs come and go,” says The Cut. Most can only dream of having “the staying power of Anderson”, who burst onto the scene in the mid-2000s when she helped Paltrow lose weight for the first Iron Man film and went on to train luminaries including Jennifer Lopez and Victoria Beckham. Before parting with “the queen of pop” in 2009, she moved in with Madonna so the pair could concentrate full-time on the routine. Paltrow, who calls Anderson a “pint-sized miracle”, remains a friend and business backer.

Nonetheless, the biggest mistake you can make around Anderson is to call her a “celebrity trainer”, says The Sunday Times. The phrase is banned. “In reality, I have a dance background, a chess background, an inventor background… an explorer background.” Having studied for years to perfect her workout – which she views as “both an art and a science” – and “her own intellectual property”, Anderson compares herself to Leonardo da Vinci, who, just like her, “used his scientific knowledge to enhance his art”, says The Atlantic. Some might view this as preposterously grandiose. But self-belief has fuelled a personal fortune estimated at $110 million last year and a (so far elusive) lifetime quest to copyright her moves.

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Born in 1975, Anderson grew up on a small ranch in Noblesville, says The Atlantic. Her mother ran a dance studio; her father worked in the family furniture business. Anderson describes the household as “sometimes middle-class, sometimes not” – one day they’d buy new school clothes; the next, cash-strapped, they’d have to return them. Her father hoped Anderson would become a lawyer, but at 18, she moved to New York to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy – and was demoralised by not having the correct “dancer’s body”. After marrying former basketball star Eric Anderson, the couple moved back to Indiana and eventually opened a Pilates studio, which went bust in 2005 owing $334,375. Fortunately, Anderson had a second string: she co-owned a studio with a branch in Los Angeles, where one of her clients was the wife of Gwyneth Paltrow’s agent.

Private equity not welcome

For nearly as long as Anderson has been famous, “she has worried about her former trainers stealing her moves and clients”, says The Atlantic. For good reason. “By 2014, so many Anderson apostates were operating in New York City alone that one blogger started rating them according to their “level of Tracy-ness”. Anderson has become an expert in US copyright law. Unfortunately, it’s not on her side. Although “performance choreography” can be copyrighted because it’s considered “creative expression”, physical fitness is deemed “functional” and so cannot.

Many of Anderson’s peers have been bought out by wealthy corporations or private-equity firms. “I don’t even hold space for that,” she says. “I’ve had people with their MBAs mess up my business.” What’s the point of “fancy educations” at Wharton, Stanford or Harvard, she says, if they don’t have the right mindset?

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