{"id":178833,"date":"2025-06-12T16:41:33","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T16:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/178833\/"},"modified":"2025-06-12T16:41:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T16:41:33","slug":"inside-the-exclusive-obsessive-surprisingly-litigious-world-of-luxury-fitness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/178833\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Exclusive, Obsessive, Surprisingly Litigious World of Luxury Fitness"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Each day, thousands of women, myself included, engage in a ritual. We flail our arms like orchestra conductors. We wiggle our rib cages. We get down on all fours and raise our knees to our ears. We roll on the floor. For up to 90 minutes, gathered together at studios or in front of our laptops, we perform The Method. We \u201cdo Tracy Anderson.\u201d<\/p>\n

The workout is not Pilates. It includes dance cardio, but it is not dance cardio. Though some moves are inspired by ballet, it is not the Bar Method. Anderson, who rose to fame training celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, does not wish to be referred to as a trainer. She describes herself as a \u201cself-made scholar\u201d and an artist who has created a \u201ccanon of work.\u201d The movements, she told me, are a combination of choreography (\u201cbeing creative with the biomechanics of what\u2019s possible in our body\u201d) and science (understanding movement from \u201ca body and energy perspective\u201d).<\/p>\n

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Wander around the Hamptons or Tribeca and you might notice solitary men in T-shirts explaining their solitude: MY WIFE IS AT TRACY. Ordinary people like me can do prerecorded workouts online for $90 a month, but membership at one of Anderson\u2019s studios is a status symbol, the fitness equivalent of waterfront property. Her empire includes eight locations: in Manhattan (one in Tribeca and one in Midtown), the Hamptons (one in Water Mill and one in Sag Harbor), Los Angeles (one in Studio City and one in Santa Monica), and Madrid. Her newest studio is in Bozeman, Montana.<\/p>\n

Studio membership costs upwards of $10,000 a year. Many clients spend far more, opting for private sessions designed by the Prescription Team. If you want to train with Anderson in person, you can book a spot during \u201cVitality Week\u201d (actually a long weekend) for $5,000. I know one woman\u2014a successful entrepreneur married to an even more successful financier\u2014who budgets $36,000 a year for her Tracy Anderson body. (For the record: She looks amazing.)<\/p>\n

In addition to legions of rich wives and women who work in the beauty and fashion industries, fans of The Method include celebrities and entrepreneurs: Tracee Ellis Ross, Jennifer Lopez, the power Realtor Claudia Saez-Fromm, the New York City political lobbyist Suri Kasirer. When the cash-strapped developer Brandon Miller committed suicide last year, many blamed it on the pressure that he and his wife felt to keep up with their Hamptons neighbors. She did Tracy Anderson every morning.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard rumors of powerful women threatening to blacklist people from joining the studio. I\u2019ve heard that byzantine rules govern the hierarchy of spots near the front of the class. For years, the tabloids have been full of stories about feuds between Anderson and former trainers she believes stole her moves. She built an empire on the perception that she was a glamorous fitness doll, and now she doesn\u2019t want to be perceived as a glamorous fitness doll. She wants to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

Xochitl Gonzalez: In the age of Ozempic, what\u2019s the point of working out?<\/a><\/p>\n

Anderson\u2019s goal is to transform how people think about the mind and the body, and to prove that her workout is her own intellectual property, both an art and a science. She\u2019s created \u201cthousands\u201d of moves, she told me, and \u201cdone actual studies.\u201d She compared herself to Leonardo da Vinci, who, just like her, \u201cused his scientific knowledge to enhance his art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tracy Anderson devotees can buy clothes in her workout line, or her exact ankle weights, or Tracy Anderson magazine, which includes testimonials from famous studio members, plant-based recipes created by a team of chefs, and photos of Anderson modeling thousand-dollar designer sweaters over workout gear. Her Instagram features slick videos of Tracy Anderson, the trainer, performing Tracy Anderson, The Method, while wearing Tracy Anderson, the brand. Yet there is very little of Tracy Anderson, the person, available. She existed for me\u2014as she does for so many others\u2014in her workout videos as a silent body in motion, upon which we could project our feelings about our own bodies.<\/p>\n

And then, one day last November, I came face-to-face with her. This was no ordinary celebrity sighting. For years, I\u2019d been emulating this woman\u2019s every move. When she wiggled, I wiggled. When she shook her hips, I shook my hips. When she went into a full split and rolled backwards onto the floor before scissoring her legs in the air, I \u2026 waited for the next exercise.<\/p>\n

Anderson greeted me at the door of her house in Brentwood, California, followed by a pack of beautiful dogs, including a cavapoo, standard poodles, and another breed I couldn\u2019t place. It turned out to be the product of the male cavapoo and a female poodle that had fallen \u201cmadly in love,\u201d according to Anderson. When they \u201canatomically could not express themselves to their fullest ability,\u201d Anderson asked science to step in. \u201cThey deserve to be helped because they were trying so hard to procreate that his, like, his male parts were bleeding.\u201d The poodle was artificially inseminated, and they went on to have eight puppies.<\/p>\n

Her way of speaking\u2014warm and Midwest-earnest\u2014makes even something as outrageous as doggy IVF seem like a gesture of compassion. In that moment, all I felt was happiness for those dogs. Shouldn\u2019t we all be able to express our love?<\/p>\n

Anderson grew up on a small ranch in Noblesville, Indiana, surrounded by goats, geese, and turkeys. Her mother ran a dance studio. Her father worked in his family\u2019s furniture business, but was also a poet and chess enthusiast. Anderson described the household as \u201csometimes middle-class, sometimes not.\u201d One day she\u2019d be told she could buy new school clothes; the next, she\u2019d be told the family was out of money and she\u2019d have to return them. Her parents had dueling ambitions for their daughter. Because she was good at chess, her father imagined her as a future lawyer. But because she excelled at dance, her mother imagined her on Broadway. For a time, her mother\u2019s plan won out.<\/p>\n

At 18, she moved to New York to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. It was the early \u201990s. She found a job at the Gap and lived on $5 ATM withdrawals and H&H bagels with mustard and tomato because she couldn\u2019t afford turkey. Just 5 feet tall, Anderson didn\u2019t have the \u201cdancer\u2019s body\u201d she was told she needed. She dieted, considered taking up smoking, and eventually, demoralized, left school.<\/p>\n

She got engaged to the former NBA player and Hoosier legend Eric Anderson, whom she had met while playing a cheerleader in the movie Blue Chips. In a few years, they were married; living in Indiana with their son, Sam; and running a facility for youth sports and dance. They were young and inexperienced, and fell behind on rent and closed the facility. They opened a Pilates studio, then closed that too. In February 2005, judges ordered the Andersons to pay $334,375 in unpaid bills. In April, they filed for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

But Anderson also co-owned another studio that had a branch in Los Angeles, and she was developing her theories around fitness. She had long been fascinated by Olympians, such as swimmers and gymnasts, whose physiques were shaped by the repetitive motions of their sports, and wondered if she could design a series of movements to shape the dancer\u2019s body that had long evaded her. After what she describes as a period of research and study, she came up with a program to strengthen the major muscle groups while working smaller \u201caccessory\u201d muscles through a series of repetitive rotations and movements. In L.A., she introduced clients to a piece of modified Pilates equipment she called the Hybrid Body Reformer. One of these clients happened to be the wife of Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s agent at the time, Anderson told me. Paltrow, who\u2019d recently had a baby, complimented the woman on her body. When Anderson tells her own story, this is usually where she begins.<\/p>\n

Anderson has been famous since 2008. That year, in London, paparazzi photographed her<\/a> with Madonna and Paltrow, both in sweaty workout gear. Suddenly, she was not just a trainer to the stars but the trainer to the stars. These were the glory days of celebrity magazines and gossip blogs, and Anderson was ubiquitous, proselytizing about how to get J.Lo\u2019s butt or Gwyneth\u2019s \u2026 anything. \u201cI\u2019m giving you Gwyneth\u2019s legs right now,\u201d she told a beauty reporter<\/a> during a workout. \u201cTrim and Trimmer!\u201d a headline read.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Paltrow invested in Anderson\u2019s business. Anderson started planning another studio<\/a> in New York and headed to London, to train and tour with Madonna. That same year, she and Eric divorced, and she released the Tracy Anderson Method: Mat Workout DVD, which laid out her fully developed theories for the first time.<\/p>\n

\"photoTracy Anderson and Gwyneth Paltrow at a 2019 event in London for Paltrow\u2019s wellness and lifestyle company, Goop (Darren Gerrish \/ Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cGenetically, we are all shaped differently, and we all have our own set of problem areas,\u201d she says in the introduction. \u201cThe good news is it\u2019s completely possible to reengineer your muscular structure any way you want\u201d: to get \u201cteeny tiny\u201d arms and \u201cfeminine\u201d abs and thighs without \u201cbulking.\u201d Central to the workout was silent instruction\u2014she demonstrates the moves without speaking\u2014and a near-torturous number of reps with very, very light weights.<\/p>\n

The celebrity-lifestyle-obsessed late aughts were an ideal environment for what Anderson was selling. Fixating on \u201cproblem areas\u201d was seen not as self-loathing, but as self-empowerment. Talking explicitly about working hard just to get skinny sounds awkward now that we live in an era that celebrates wellness and body positivity. Anderson seems to regret her role in the 2000s skinny-industrial complex, when she would tell people, \u201cLet\u2019s go; you can get teeny tiny!\u201d But she said she had no choice: \u201cI had to contribute to it too, or else nobody would do my workout.\u201d Besides, \u201cyou can\u2019t change a culture before it\u2019s ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now any one of Anderson\u2019s clients could be on Ozempic or Wegovy if she wanted to, and Anderson has to offer something beyond thinness. But although the way she talks about the moves has changed, the moves themselves have not.<\/p>\n

Clients go to her because they \u201cknow that their body\u2019s going to look the best that it can look,\u201d she told me. \u201cAnd they\u2019re not going to go anywhere else, because they know how smart I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson is 50, a thrice-married mother of two. She doesn\u2019t like to talk about hard times, but she\u2019s definitely had them. Eric Anderson died in 2018 of a heart attack. \u201cHe was such an incredible human being and he was such an incredible father,\u201d she told me. She said she always thought they might end up back together someday. Having to tell Sam that his father was dead was \u201cthe worst moment of my actual entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years after Eric died, during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the father of Anderson\u2019s younger child, Penelope, died too, of a brain tumor. \u201cI did not have the relationship with Penny\u2019s dad that I had with Eric,\u201d she told me. But she took Penelope to see him before he died, and thanked him for the gift of their daughter: \u201cPenny\u2019s part of both of us. And she\u2019s extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I pressed her to say more about what she\u2019d learned from her experiences of loss, she told me she\u2019d become \u201cvery understanding of people\u2019s journeys\u201d\u2014even \u201cthe people that steal from me.\u201d She said she always asks herself, \u201cGosh, what happened to them as a child?\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that Anderson has experienced death and divorce, debt and failure, is one reason I was drawn to her. I could relate. I divorced as a young woman, and I ran a small business through the Great Recession, and I was sick to my stomach for years worrying about the possibility of bankruptcy. Starting a business, losing a business, starting a new one\u2014this is what entrepreneurs do. I also knew from experience that if you\u2019ve spent years fighting for your business\u2019s survival, you don\u2019t take kindly to anyone you see as stepping on your turf.<\/p>\n

I came to Tracy Anderson sometime in 2009 or 2010. My grandfather, who\u2019d raised me, had just died, and I had been working frantically to save my company. In the process there had been a lot of stress eating and crying on my sofa, and the resulting weight gain created a new wave of sadness as I felt lost inside myself and my grief. I had seen Anderson in celebrity magazines and turned to one of her DVDs.<\/p>\n

The Method made me thinner. But it also made me feel incredible. The choreography was so unusual\u2014and the work so intense\u2014that it required my full concentration, which eased my anxiety and helped me feel present in my body. Unlike yoga, where you were constantly being instructed, or fitness classes, where you were being \u201cmotivated,\u201d Anderson didn\u2019t talk at all, something I found incredibly soothing.<\/p>\n

I have strayed over the years<\/a>. I craved the dark, loud music of SoulCycle; I wanted to try running a marathon. I was making a TV show and was so sedentary, for so long, I developed sciatica and a slipped disk. But I\u2019ve always come back to Tracy Anderson. (\u201cMost of them always come back,\u201d she told me.)<\/p>\n

Read: The workout that actually makes me happy<\/a><\/p>\n

Anderson herself interested me, but I was hardly a member of the #TAmily, as fans have branded themselves online. (The hashtag is shared, a bit awkwardly, by the Tamil diaspora.) You\u2019ll see gushing comments about how Anderson changes women\u2019s lives, or questions about what brand of sneakers she\u2019s wearing. \u201cWhat a gift to learn from you,\u201d one fan wrote on Instagram. \u201cYou talk to us like that beautiful sister that loves you so much and wants the very best for you,\u201d wrote another.<\/p>\n

Anderson says she doesn\u2019t want to be a guru. Of the women who credit her with changing their lives, she said: \u201cNo, no, no, no, no. You don\u2019t have me to thank; you have you to thank.\u201d But in many ways, she encourages her clients\u2019 feelings of intimacy. Occasionally, she\u2019ll get on Zooms with dozens of studio members that are then preserved in a section of her website called \u201cConversations.\u201d Women ask Anderson for advice on their diets and workouts and lives, but for a lot of the time, Anderson simply listens. If her Instagram videos are slickly produced, these calls are remarkably DIY. And long. One call last year ran for five hours.<\/p>\n

Other aspects of the business remain frustratingly (or charmingly) mom-and-pop. Products\u2014such as Kenko, four-pound minimalist weights made of Canadian maple\u2014appear with great fanfare and then are rarely spoken of again. Members who pay (a lot!) to livestream classes often complain that they start late. Had someone forgotten to turn on the camera?<\/p>\n

Many of Anderson\u2019s peers have been bought out by wealthy corporations or private-equity firms. Barry\u2019s (formerly Barry\u2019s Bootcamp) was co-founded by Barry Jay in 1998 and is now owned by Princeton Equity Group, among others. SoulCycle was founded in 2006 by a spin instructor, Ruth Zukerman, and two of her clients before it was acquired by Equinox in 2011. Even CrossFit\u2014known for its spartan gyms\u2014was taken over by Berkshire Partners.<\/p>\n

\"photoAnderson at her home on Long Island, New York, March 2025 (Caroline Tompkins for The Atlantic)<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, being bought someday by private equity is not in my\u2014I don\u2019t even hold space for that,\u201d Anderson told me. \u201cI\u2019ve had people with their M.B.A.s mess up my business,\u201d she said. \u201cFancy educations\u2014Wharton on there, Stanford on there, Harvard on there.\u201d But they didn\u2019t have the right mindset, she said. Was she a control freak? \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what I was<\/a>,\u201d she replied. \u201cI was a wild fucking stallion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now she is married to Chris Asplundh, a scion of the Pennsylvania-based billion-dollar tree-trimming empire Asplundh Tree Expert. (Mehmet Oz is a relative through marriage; he used his in-laws\u2019 address for his voter registration<\/a> before his failed bid for a Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat.) Asplundh bought out Anderson\u2019s other investors. \u201cThis is a family business now,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n

Anderson\u2019s employees describe themselves as a family, too. Steven Beltrani, the company\u2019s president, walked her down the aisle when she married Asplundh. Employees\u2019 Instagram accounts are full of loving posts about one another. But every family has its fissures.<\/p>\n

Megan Roup was hired to work for Anderson in 2011. Roup was a member of the #TAmily for six years\u2014schooled in The Method and given access to training manuals and Anderson\u2019s celebrity contacts. All of these surely proved valuable when Roup left and opened the Sculpt Society, a mostly online fitness class.<\/p>\n

Roup quickly amassed many clients, some of whom\u2014including the Victoria\u2019s Secret model Shanina Shaik\u2014had formerly trained with Anderson. When the pandemic forced fitness online, more people found their way to Roup. Anyone familiar with Anderson would recognize many of her signature moves in Roup\u2019s workouts. Roup\u2019s website stated that she had \u201cseen something missing in the fitness industry,\u201d and sought to fill this void. Anderson saw contractual violation and theft\u2014and the latest in a long string of betrayals.<\/p>\n

For nearly as long as Anderson has been famous, she has worried about her former trainers stealing her moves and clients<\/a>. For good reason. By 2014, so many Anderson apostates were operating in New York City alone that one blogger took the trouble to rate them according to their \u201cLevel of Tracy-ness.\u201d Anderson describes herself as \u201clow conflict.\u201d But most anyone who does her workouts and listens to the chats she delivers after class will be familiar with her bitterness toward the \u201crip-off trainers\u201d who keep \u201cstealing\u201d her work. The frustration, at times, sounds more like paranoia.<\/p>\n

Anderson didn\u2019t name names publicly, but the tabloids were happy to report on her scuffles: The Daily Mail, for example, quoted an anonymous source saying that Nicole Winhoffer, who launched a DVD collection with Madonna\u2019s backing, was \u201coverweight\u201d before she started training with Anderson, and that she didn\u2019t \u201cunderstand the reasons behind the moves, just the motions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2022, Anderson brought a lawsuit against Roup and her business<\/a> through her parent company, Tracy Anderson Mind and Body, for breach of contract and copyright infringement, among other claims. Anderson attributed her new aggressiveness toward Roup to finding \u201cmy voice,\u201d and the wisdom she\u2019d gained in her 40s. Also likely helpful was the cash infusion her new husband offered the business.<\/p>\n

But by bringing the case to court, Anderson has subjected her own workout to new scrutiny. When I set out to profile one of the most famous women in fitness, I never imagined I would have to learn so much about copyright law. Yet here we are. Copyright is designed to protect creative expression. Performance choreography is considered creative expression and has been protected by copyright law since the 1970s. Physical fitness is not. In their defense, Roup and her team relied on a copyright-infringement case brought against rival studios by Bikram Choudhury, the inventor of a series of yoga poses performed in a hot room. The court had dismissed Choudhury\u2019s case on the rationale that the poses involved were not creative art, but \u201cfunctional\u201d movement.<\/p>\n

A federal judge in California tossed out Anderson\u2019s copyright claim for similar reasons. Anderson calls her program a \u201cmethod,\u201d the judge pointed out, and methods are exempt from creative-copyright protection. In addition, he wrote, Anderson says her Method is the result of research and markets it as \u201cdesigned for the purpose of improving clients\u2019 fitness and health.\u201d Functional movements, in other words, just like Choudhury\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Anderson ultimately settled with Roup on the breach-of-contract count for an undisclosed amount, but she is appealing the copyright decision. Amanda Barkin, an IP attorney at FKKS in New York who has been observing the case, told me that Anderson\u2019s accusations will be hard to prove. Roup is \u201callegedly incorporating these choreography and other elements from The Method that she learned through, like, the confidential employee handbook,\u201d Barkin told me, but those moves are also \u201call over TikTok, so I don\u2019t know how confidential a lot of it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wondered, when speaking with Barkin and reading the court summation, if I detected a whiff of dismissal. At the end of the day, these are just women\u2019s workouts\u2014things of vanity\u2014so what\u2019s the big deal? A male attorney, writing about the case on the FKKS blog in 2023, noted that although Anderson faced an uphill battle, at least she had the glutes for it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Roup\u2019s lawyer, Nathaniel Bach, called Anderson\u2019s lawsuit \u201cill-conceived and frivolous\u201d and insisted that Roup had \u201cdeveloped The Sculpt Society on her own.\u201d But the judge\u2019s decision to toss out the copyright claim, he wrote, was \u201ca significant victory both for Megan and the whole fitness industry, as the Court\u2019s rulings reaffirm that no one can claim ownership over physical exercise or dance cardio.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether or not some of Roup\u2019s moves are based on Anderson\u2019s Method, the big question is if anyone can invent and own a fitness move in the first place. Evan Breed was a professional dancer for 10 years before she became one of Anderson\u2019s master trainers. She told me she could understand why Anderson would object to someone \u201ccopying exactly the choreography of her dance cardio.\u201d But that doesn\u2019t apply to the more basic movements\u2014the arm workouts and the muscular-structure work done on the mat. Dancers like her\u2014and like Anderson and Roup\u2014\u201cgrew up doing those rib isolations, moving your ribs side to side, moving the hips side to side.\u201d The arm exercises, she said, are essentially what you do while warming up for a ballet class.<\/p>\n

Anderson isolated the movements and shifted them down to a mat. But they did not come out of nowhere. Perhaps those Anderson accuses of theft feel they\u2019re only doing what she did herself, and continuing her practice of reinterpretation.<\/p>\n

Why, I wondered, did Anderson keep emphasizing her workout as a research-driven method, if that was exactly what was going to hurt her copyright case? Why did she insist on having it both ways? Maybe it was that original tension\u2014between the Broadway chorus girl and the sharp attorney\u2014playing out all over again.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing particularly unusual about a trainer arguing that their program is more effective than others, but Anderson\u2019s emphasis on her own research is notable. She started out with insights, she said, but she wanted proof. And so, in 2001, she began what she frequently refers to as \u201cthe study\u201d or her \u201cclinical study,\u201d gathering \u201cfive years of quantitative and qualitative data from 150 women.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photoAnderson leads a workout at her Water Mill, New York, studio employing her new HeartStones weights. (Caroline Tompkins for The Atlantic)<\/p>\n

She recruited mothers who would drop their kids off at the Indiana youth center that she and Eric opened, along with other women, and provided them with choreography to shrink their problem areas. After the center shut down, she told me, she kept following up with the same women: For five years, every 10 days she would measure them in more than 28 different places and provide them with new moves. What she discovered in that process, she says, is the foundation of her Method.<\/p>\n

Anderson insists that clients are coming to her because of this research. And it\u2019s why she doesn\u2019t feel bad about charging so much for it.<\/p>\n

And yet the study is not, of course, an actual clinical study\u2014it was not performed by independent researchers and was not submitted for peer review at an academic journal. When I followed up with Beltrani, the president, to ask if Anderson could share the data with me, he told me they were proprietary.<\/p>\n

Even so, Anderson argues that only the close-minded would ignore her findings because she\u2019s an outsider to the scientific establishment. What bothers her most is the idea that others are copying her moves without properly understanding the science. \u201cTo create my life\u2019s work has taken so much research, so much focus, so many people believing in me financially. For me to be able to test, experiment, create, and do this, and for anybody, especially a woman, to come in, work for me, learn from me, leave, take me off their r\u00e9sum\u00e9, and steal from me?\u201d Anderson\u2019s voice was full of passion as she called this \u201cmorally bankrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Anderson wouldn\u2019t send me any of her data, she said, when pressed, that they included records in notebooks and Polaroid shots. She also agreed to put me in touch with one of the women she\u2019d trained in the early days of her career.<\/p>\n

Julie McComb is a mom and teacher with a bakery business in Westfield, Indiana, and she\u2019s remained friendly with Anderson ever since she started training with her in the mid-2000s. Back then, McComb was new to the area, and Anderson was Indiana famous.<\/p>\n

Chatting with her dentist during an appointment one day, McComb mentioned that she liked to work out. The dentist said, \u201cI have to tell you about this girl. She\u2019s amazing. She\u2019s fabulous. She\u2019s the best in the area.\u201d She has \u201cthis whole philosophy,\u201d the dentist added, \u201cand she\u2019s done all this research.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember her lifting my shirt up,\u201d McComb told me, and Anderson saying, \u201c\u200a\u2018Oh, we\u2019re going to take care of this, and we\u2019re going to do this, and we\u2019re going to shrink this in, and get this smaller,\u2019 and her hands were all over my body.\u201d McComb started to laugh, she told me, because \u201cmy problem areas were always\u2014even when I was in high school\u2014the sides of my hips. I said, \u2018Tracy, there\u2019s nothing we can do about this.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

But Anderson made her personalized workout routines every couple of weeks, and she used a tape measure to track her progress, \u201cand Tracy literally took me from a size eight to a size zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

When McComb became pregnant with her son, she did The Method all through the pregnancy. Anderson recommended her own ob-gyn. It was such an incredibly easy birth, in McComb\u2019s telling, that she looked up at the doctor, surprised that it was over already. \u201cHe laughed,\u201d she told me. \u201cAnd he says, \u2018Julie, that\u2019s because you\u2019ve been working out with Tracy Anderson.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

McComb had known that Anderson was gathering research but wasn\u2019t aware that the measurements she took from her were part of the \u201cstudy\u201d she\u2019s been talking about ever since. But she didn\u2019t seem to mind. She told me she\u2019d had a minor stroke and some surgeries for a heart arrhythmia a few years back, and had largely stopped exercising. She\u2019d gotten back into The Method after that, but then dropped off again. She would have liked to do online workouts, but she and her family had moved into a smaller house and there wasn\u2019t enough space. She feels bad about gaining weight, she told me, but what she truly misses is how The Method made her feel, and \u201cthe environment and the sisterhood that we all had when we were there.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cIt was more than a workout.\u201d<\/p>\n

For months leading up to my visit to Brentwood, Anderson had been promoting her latest product, HeartStones\u2014a set of 2.8-pound beveled spheres beset with a circle of rose quartz that were meant to be lifted through a series of slow-burn, tai chi\u2013like movements. They were made of iron, and they were going for $375. I could not imagine why even the most devoted of devotees would buy them. \u201cSis you have lost your damn mind,\u201d read one comment on Instagram. I hoped to ask Anderson about the HeartStones during our meeting.<\/p>\n

But first we talked about climate change, and inequality, and the reelection of Donald Trump. Anderson rarely discusses politics publicly. She knows that she serves women on both sides of the partisan divide. When she posted on Instagram about supporting Kamala Harris last fall, one angry user wrote on her website that Anderson had \u201cabused her position,\u201d adding that she was supposed to be \u201ca trainer, not a guru.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Anderson sees politics as a wellness issue. \u201cI cannot stand the hate. I cannot stand the division,\u201d she told me. \u201cThat is so unhealthy for us.\u201d Over lunch (a vegan fried-green-tomato salad) she talked about \u201chow our nervous systems as women have been epigenetically so compromised\u201d by living in a \u201csystem that is so corrupt and unfair.\u201d Then we had to pause: A package from Goop had been delivered in the mail.<\/p>\n

She went on to talk about how she had \u201ccreatively unlocked\u201d women and enabled them to learn to \u201chear their bodies\u201d and their \u201cnervous systems\u201d so that, when a woman\u2019s husband asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s for dinner tonight, honey?\u201d she can say: \u201cFuck you. Get your own fucking dinner.\u201d She also expressed a wish that she could make her workouts more accessible to \u201cpeople that are making a difference, like teachers, you know what I mean? Nurses, people who are underpaid and making a difference? They need it.\u201d (She didn\u2019t offer any specifics, however, for how she might do this.)<\/p>\n

We talked, at last, about the HeartStones: She recommends that anyone who wants to lose weight start with the HeartStones, \u201cbecause they have to hear their body.\u201d They have to stop hating their bodies, their metabolism, \u201cthe fact that exercise might have been challenging for them.\u201d If they hate themselves, they will \u201calways feel miserable. They will not feel better even if they\u2019re thinner.\u201d It seemed like sound advice, though I still had no idea how the weights themselves were supposed to achieve these goals. I think she could tell I was skeptical.<\/p>\n

When it was time for me to leave, Anderson packed up some gluten-free chocolate cake that her chef had made and some flowers that had been on the table and\u2014oh, also, why not throw these in?\u2014a set of HeartStones from her personal stash. She asked her husband to walk me to my car, and it was only on the drive home that I realized I\u2019d just accepted a gift of significant value from the subject of a profile\u2014something forbidden by the ethical codes of journalism. I had to return the HeartStones! But this was Los Angeles; I was already on the 405\u2014I couldn\u2019t just turn around. I decided that I would mail them back.<\/p>\n

But not before I tried them. I wanted to dismiss them as silly and frivolous and overpriced. They certainly didn\u2019t transform how I think about myself or my metabolism. But holding them had the soothing quality of a weighted blanket; the movements slowed my breathing and opened my chest and back. When friends came over, I would show them the HeartStones, tell them the price, watch them laugh, and then make them hold them. I\u2019d show them a few movements. They\u2019d mimic me mimicking Tracy. No one wanted to give them back. Including me: I forked over the money to keep my weights.<\/p>\n

Like much of what Anderson is selling, the HeartStones remain a mystery to me. If they have any grounding in science, I have no idea what it is. But they feel nice, and my arms look better.<\/p>\n

Anderson is still appealing the case against Roup, though when we spoke a few months ago, she expressed some doubts. She didn\u2019t really care about Roup, she told me; she cared about fighting a system that tries to \u201cnarrow artists.\u201d What if, she suggested, \u201cI want to make a Broadway show about what I\u2019m doing?\u201d Then she could copyright the products of her creative genius, and no one could rip off her moves anymore.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still not sure if she was kidding.<\/p>\n

This article appears in the July 2025<\/a> print edition with the headline \u201cThe Tracy Anderson Way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4322],"tags":[1630,105,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-178833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114671392510204907","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}