The first time I heard the name Valerie Waters, somebody was asking me about this Hollywood trainer who was suggesting that women use 5-8lb dumbbells to avoid getting too big. My initial reaction was to double over giggling. I'm very mature that way. After all, women can't get too big. They don't have enough testosterone. How many times have we all heard or repeated that one? Here's the kicker. How big is too big? Everybody has a different ideal or goal. Sure, women can't get as big as pro bodybuilders without chemical assistance, but if they work hard and have the right genetics, can they get as big as the fairly muscular Monica Brant? Or the smaller but still ripped Jillian Michaels? Sure they can. What if that's not the look they want? What if they're striving for sleek and lean like Jessica Alba or Gwen Stefani? If you put a figure competitor's arms and quads on that person, they're not going to be happy. They WILL be too bulky. The disconnect isn't a matter of physiology but a matter of expectations and communication.
I caught Valerie Waters "Movie Star Fitness" seminar at FitcomXpo last week and she was brilliant. She's made a career out of creating a very specific look - fit arms, lean tight legs, great butt, small waist, visible ab lines, no jiggle, very feminine. It's what you see on her clients like Jennifer Garner and Kate Beckinsale. The look is not overly muscular, not hard and ripped, no 6-pack, no veins or striations, no bulk. It's the classic look of healthy actresses and models, not the starved skinny-fat look, but something elegant, lean and ultra-fit.
How do you achieve that? She recounted Alwyn Cosgrove asking a room full of fitness professionals if it's possible for women to get too big. They all said no. Then he asked, "What if a woman wanted to gain size. What would you have her do?" The crowd gave all the standard strength training advice. Then he asked, "Wait, you say they can't get too big but you know how to make them bigger? So, if they didn't want to gain size, what would you do differently?" Awkward silence, mumbling, crickets. The best most people could come up with was maybe to feed them less and have them do more cardio. Wrong answer. According to Valerie, the programming for movie star fitness is very specific.
By this point in the seminar, I totally GOT what she was saying. She's not crazy or misinformed. She's not in any way against strong athletic women. She's not trying to keep us dainty and weak, or to promote an unhealthy ideal. She's just found a very specific niche market and has mastered the ability to deliver results for them. I'd seen the jaw-dropping photos of her clients and I was on the edge of my seat wanting to know HOW she achieves this look. The foundation of her workouts is actually quite similar to other effective programs (like say Turbulence Training) that rely on total body workouts, minimized or eliminated rest periods, circuits or supersets, heart rate elevated the whole time. The difference is in how she loads the exercises and how she creates progression. She doesn't start heavy and go heavier. She increases difficulty by adding new exercises, more complex combinations, balance elements. She likes intense interval cardio for fat burning but doesn't use it exclusively. She'll also include some moderate cardio. She likes big compound movements that burn a lot of calories, but toward the end of a workout when fatigue is setting in, she'll include isolation movements like bicep curls. She also has some killer crazy moves that hardly anybody else uses. For example sliding reverse lunges that keep the muscle under constant tension for the whole set. Or planks where you alternate sliding one arm forward 6 inches, causing every muscle in your core to fire. She included a sample workout in her presentation and I tried it yesterday. It was a pain in the ass, literally. My butt doesn't know what hit it. I'll definitely be incorporating some of her moves into my own workouts. I can't wait to try sliding Spiderman climbs on my next TT workout!
Anyway, it gave me a new perspective. I'm as guilty as anybody of telling women that they can't bulk up without first asking them to define bulky. I know that my own fitness ideal changes all the time, so I can't presume to know what anybody else has in mind. Now I have a better understanding of what it takes for women to stay strong but small, or to lose a little muscle without starving, wrecking metabolism or turning to mush. If you want to learn more, check out her program, Red Carpet Ready, which by the way, I do NOT own. I'm trying to resist buying one more damn thing, but her routines are really creative with a killer emphasis on legs and glutes, so I imagine that it's only a matter of time before I cave. You can also visit her site ValerieWaters.com.
