Let’s get Physical

Over the past few years personal trainers have become awfully big for their running shoes, opening gyms willy-nilly, with a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Thank heavens for the new generation of specialists, with a more tailored approach – if you’ve got a problem, they’ll solve it, says Hannah Nathanson

Hannah Nathanson

20 April 2012

The ladies’ man

Tim Weeks, 32, is the trainer you can trust with your life. He looks at the bigger picture and the long-term trajectory rather than the quick fix. ‘It’s so obvious that the majority of people miss the need to make fitness work with their lifestyle, to find ways to enjoy it,’ he says. Tim was down to the last six to compete for Team GB in the triathlon at the 2004 Athens Olympics when a bike accident ended his competitive career. He then moved into performance coaching, for which he was on call 24/7 for athletes, including the Australian Olympic team and the Ironman Triathlon World Champion Chrissie Wellington.

COME THE REVOLUTION Tim is the new kid on the block and specialises in training women, claiming that a woman’s bottom (technically, her glutes) is the cornerstone of her body: ‘It is the building block to a perfect bikini body and it needs to be twice as strong as a man’s because all the angles around the hips are designed to have children.’ He makes his clients ‘bulletproof’ by strengthening their glutes and stomach so that when they exercise, every muscle does the job it’s supposed to. He also works very closely with fertility experts to help women increase their chances of becoming pregnant.

WHERE On the run. Tim fits into his clients’ schedules, either at their home or en route to their workplace. Clients often text him from restaurants if they’re unsure what to eat.

STAR PULLING POWER The fashion pack have all signed up, including Bella Freud and Sam Cam’s Vogue-editing sister.

PERFECT FOR Professional women in their late twenties or early thirties looking for bikini bodies, and aspiring mothers.

SECRET STRATEGY Walking up and down hills: ‘It’s one of the best things a woman can do to engage her bum.’

EQUIPMENT Tim believes in keeping it simple and is a strong believer in the power of ‘the clam’, a Pilates position that involves lying in a foetal position on your side and opening and closing your knees.

TOP TIPS Keep it simple. A strong bottom is as important for high performance as it is to avoid injury. Quality over quantity.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH ‘That’s fine, we don’t have to do any more.’ Tim has the opposite approach to a traditional personal trainer. If a client says they’ve had enough, he trusts them.

£120 per hour (timweeks.co.uk)

Barre hopper

Seattle-born Niki Rein, 33, has brought barre fitness to Britain after its success in the US. A combination of yoga, Pilates and ballet, barre-based fitness lengthens the muscles and delivers fast results: ‘Perfect if you want your body to shrink and you want to do it quickly,’ says Niki. Before opening Barrecore in Chelsea in November 2011 with co-founder Andrea DeBellis, Niki taught yoga and dance for 13 years and was a disciple of Gwyneth Paltrow’s fitness guru Tracy Anderson.

COME THE REVOLUTION Programmes are tailored to a client’s body type; circumference measurements are taken before creating a dance routine based on the client’s goals. Difficulty increases throughout the eight to ten sessions and measurements are taken again to see how many inches have been lost. Programmes are constantly changing because of the vast catalogue of exercises. The soundtrack to your streamlining is usually Rihanna and Whitney Houston mash-ups.

WHERE The Barrecore studio on King’s Road. In some circumstances instructors will go to clients’ houses.

PULLING POWER Michelle Pfeiffer, Demi Moore, Olivia Wilde and Kelly Osbourne have all joined the barre.

PERFECT FOR Yummy mummies wanting to shrink their hips and thighs.

SECRET STRATEGY Working the thigh muscles to exhaustion before working the bum by doing the ice-skater glute exercise (hands on the ballet bar, you’re bent over at 90 degrees from the hip, with one leg extended behind you that you pulse up and down).

EQUIPMENT The Garuda apparatus, a cross between a Pilates reformer, a Pilates Cadillac and a chair. It helps with flexibility and strength, mostly using your own body weight. And, of course, the barre.

TOP TIPS Four is the magic number. Your results increase by 50 per cent when you go from working out three days a week to four. Form and flexibility are the most important factors to work on. Sugar and light flour are the enemy – but are allowed as an occasional treat.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH ‘This is when change happens’: when you are shaking while holding a pose.

Ten private sessions with Niki, £1,600; one session with another instructor, £95 (barrecore.co.uk)

The biomechanic

Tim Jones, 32, is a functional training and biomechanics specialist. This means he looks at the body based on its movements rather than muscles; he constantly observes and assesses the way his clients move. He became interested in functional training after sustaining rugby injuries in his twenties: ‘I wanted to find a new way of exercising and rehabilitating myself.’ Tim launched TJF Personal Training in 2005 with his wife Ariane, who is also a personal trainer.

COME THE REVOLUTION A lot of personal training focuses on highlighting people’s faults and trying to improve their problems, whereas functional biomechanics is based on success. Tim chooses movements a client can do and slowly adapts them to become harder. He avoids what he calls the ‘mirror training’ of traditional exercise, which is based on aesthetics and considers the body solely from a front-on perspective. Functional training recognises three planes of movement in the body – lateral, frontal and horizontal – by using all three you work three times more muscle fibre and can triple results.

WHERE Primrose Hill.

PULLING POWER Eva Green, Jim Sturgess and James Caan from Dragons’ Den are all functional fans.

PERFECT FOR Sedentary City workers and globetrotters. ‘I have clients who come off a flight and ring me immediately because they want to get their body moving again.’

SECRET STRATEGY Makes his clients run to the top of Primrose Hill at the end of an hour’s workout, ‘To get them ahead of the game.’

TOP TIPS Run outside against the elements. On a treadmill, the machine runs for you and you run toe-heel rather than heel-toe, which isn’t natural. Do something every day to move your whole body. It doesn’t need to be intense, just five to ten minutes of natural, functional movement can be enough. If you have a desk job, get up on your feet and do some arm swings and rotations or fake tennis shots.

EQUIPMENT Tim doesn’t really believe in machinery but uses the TRX – two rings hanging at the end of adjustable straps – for suspension training.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH ‘I’m as far from being a drill sergeant as I can be. I just try to make them laugh.’

£100 per session, minimum booking ten sessions (tjfpersonaltraining.com)

Boris’s secret weapon

Londoners are typically time-poor, so Jon Denoris, 41, specialises in ‘playlike’ training that clients can weave into their busy lives. He’s the man responsible for keeping Boris Johnson on his toes. Jon uses his expertise in the psychology of peak performance and what makes a high-level athlete. In 2010 he opened his own studio, Club 51, where he works on programmes designed for high-level sportsmen, or anyone wanting radically to improve their times. He also specialises in healing long-term injuries and before opening Club 51 did rehab work at The Princess Grace Hospital.

COME THE REVOLUTION With his time-efficient weight-loss programmes, Jon focuses on high-intensity interval training at different times during the day. ‘Adjusting the timing of a workout can have a huge impact. If you put the training session at a specific point of the day, it maximises weight loss,’ he says. Jon aims to make exercise more like play by incorporating parkour (free-running) and flatlining (using a tightrope but on the ground). He describes it as ‘like Montessori but for fitness’.

WHERE At his Mayfair base or a park near your workplace.

PULLING POWER As well as Boris, Jon has sculpted Whitney Port from The Hills, Jo Wood and Estelle.

PERFECT FOR Tired business executives and lethargic workers.

SECRET STRATEGY ‘Stealth training’ – getting clients to wear weighted jackets around the house for a couple of hours a day.

EQUIPMENT The Nike Fuel Band, a wristband that tracks 3D movement as well as running and allows Jon, a Nike Master Trainer, to track a client’s progress.

TOP TIPS You can’t out-train a poor diet.Surround yourself with energy-givers; make sure the people around you are going to act as a support tool. Get an initial assessment and get tested. Having a coach as a sounding board is a really valuable tool.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH ‘Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.’

Training one-to-one with Jon from £150, subject to availability. The 21-day fat-loss plan at Club 51 costs from £1,250 (clubfiftyone.co.uk)

The flexible friend

Tony Diamond, 44, is the first to incorporate a technique called myofascial release, first developed by osteopaths, into traditional Pilates and yoga moves. In case you’ve never heard of it, the myofascial is the connective tissue from muscle to muscle or muscle to bone; by stimulating its release you can relieve pain caused by sporting or other injuries. Tony has been a Pilates and yoga teacher in India, Rome and London for the past 15 years. He is highly sought-after both for his ability to sculpt the body, and to promote recovery from major injuries and minor niggles.

COME THE REVOLUTION Myofascial release hasn’t been used alongside yoga and Pilates before. Tony believes that you don’t need to put stress on the body to improve physique: ‘I improve the body through nurture, rather than pounding it,’ he explains. He has also designed ‘hot Pilates’, which helps clients to deepen movements in temperatures of 22-24C.

WHERE The Yotopia centre in Covent Garden, The Third Space gyms in Soho and Marylebone and at clients’ houses.

PULLING POWER Regular clients include Premiership footballers.

PERFECT FOR Sports fanatics, runners with shin splints, triathletes and body-builders with tight muscles.

TOP TIPS Stretching is the most important thing because losing movement in the body makes you look old. Wake up early and exercise earlier in the day. Diet: it doesn’t matter how much exercise you do, if your food’s not clean, then you’re not going to achieve your goals.

SECRET STRATEGY Sprinting followed by yoga poses in Hyde Park: ‘The sequence of sprint-yoga-sprint works the myofascial tissue.’

EQUIPMENT The Magic Circle, a 30cm plastic ring that you put between your knees or hold in your hands and push together to help strengthen the body.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH ‘Visualise the body you want and it will come true.’ ES

Personal training from £55 an hour (tonydiamondflow.com)

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