The fitness trainer Jonathan Goodair believes that anyone can attain a long, lean physique, no matter what their age or shape.
BY Anna Murphy | 03 January 2011
I have spent my adult life going to the gym, sometimes with a trainer, more usually without. I have done it because it makes me feel good, but also in an attempt to win over some of my more recalcitrant nether regions, my thighs and bottom in particular. Yet however many miles I have pounded on the treadmill my pear-shaped self has remained unmoved.
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Video: Jonathan Goodair demonstrates effective workouts
I am, according to Jonathan Goodair, arguably the most revolutionary fitness trainer working in Britain today, a classic example of where most people go wrong. 'All you have been doing is exercising the same muscles again and again in the same way. In running you overwork your quads and underwork your gluts [that's thighs and bottom to you and me]. The body is a very clever machine. It adapts specifically to what you do to it, so it will find the easiest possible way to find fuel for that - in other words the most calorie sparing.'
Which is why at the heart of the Goodair Total Body Plan - a five- or six-week programme of between four and six 90-minute sessions a week - is what he calls treadmill aerobics. 'I want to work someone in the most challenging way possible, and put in as much variety as possible. I don't just make someone run, I make them skip or walk sideways or backwards, and then put in other movements that challenge their balance, and stimulate lots of muscles, not just the quadriceps.'
I know from bitter experience - six weeks of it - just how challenging treadmill aerobics can be. Indeed, as I sit interviewing Goodair in Home House - the luxury private member's club in London where he is based - I am still out of breath from the training session we have had beforehand.
(Goodair, 44, is in the midst of a typically busy morning. Immediately after our interview he has an hour-long 'bums meeting' with his staff, at which they will discuss state-of-the-art approaches to, er, smaller, perter buttocks. Then it's back to servicing his clientele, which currently includes body-beautiful celebrities as diverse as Alison Goldfrapp, Ralph Fiennes and Lulu.)
Imagine walking fast on a treadmill, then imagine lifting your knees high, like a little girl skipping down the street, then imagine doing that backwards, and sideways, and adding in lunges and squats and crossover steps, and sudden direction changes. This is what Goodair means by treadmill aerobics, and it's exhausting stuff.
You are quickly rendered so out of breath as to lose all speech, but luckily Goodair can hold forth entertainingly on everything from the coalition government to the latest misdemeanours of Coco, his daughter's chihuahua. That is if you even have the headspace to listen: treadmill aerobics is as tough mentally as it is physically, and for the first few weeks your brain is fully occupied in stopping yourself falling off the machine altogether.
Goodair says this engagement of the brain is key. 'Fitness isn't just about having a healthy heart and strong lungs and muscles,' he tells me in his soft Sheffield brogue. 'It is about co-ordination, about neural pathways, about the fact that your brain is connected to your muscles so you know where your feet are going, where your hands are going. If you do this kind of work you end up feeling much more coordinated, your body is much more connected even when you walk down the street.'
This approach continues in the resistance work, in which weights are largely eschewed in favour of stretchy bands attached to the ceiling, a giant pilates machine-cum-torture instrument otherwise known as the Garuda, and a series of free movements - arm swoops and leg swoops in every direction imaginable - that are incomprehensibly exhausting.
Again, Goodair's chief concern is to avoid his client putting on muscle bulk; to encourage instead the development of the long, lean muscle we all covet these days.
'We work across many planes rather than just one. We avoid pressing exercises, which bulk the muscle out. In our workout the muscle has to stabilise more, which exercises all the muscles around it, too. People come to me who have been through lots of trainers, have been bicep-curling 10kg dumbbells or squatting 50kg, and, surprise, surprise, they haven't got that long, lean physique they were after. We are not making you push heaving weights all hunched up. We are making you elongate.'
Goodair himself, chicly attired in black Prada sportswear, is the best advertisement for his approach: long and lean yet so strong and chiselled that even his chin looks as if it has been working out. What are the male and female bodies that represent the modern ideal for him?
'I would say Brad Pitt for men. I think the ideal for women is somewhere between a dancer and an athlete. Nicole Scherzinger [of the Pussycat Dolls] has an amazing long, lean body, but looks very strong as well.' Over the years Goodair himself has worked on many of the world's most famous bodies.
But surely this kind of physical perfection is unattainable for most of us? 'Absolutely. It can be very hard to maintain a super-lean physique all the time, especially for some women, who then give themselves a ridiculously hard time. But you want to find a balance, so you are basically happy with the way you look but still have a life.
'These women who are driven to be super-skinny, so they eat nothing and just do a little bit of cardio … It is not realistic, or indeed healthy, to do that. You want to be in the middle of the healthy range for a woman's body fat percentage - you want to be at 23 per cent, not 17 per cent.'
A key part of fat reduction is, of course, diet. 'You can exercise like crazy but if you are eating too much sugar, drinking too much alcohol, you will put on weight.'
Christina Howells, one of Goodair's five-man team, is in charge of the nutrition programme, and the fact that she is also a top-notch trainer herself, and shares many of Goodair's clients, means that what you are and aren't eating is continually up for discussion as you work out, something that makes sticking to the programme much easier.
The enemy for them both is sugar, not fat. 'It is sugars that transport fat into fat cells, that disturb your body's metabolism, stopping it from burning fat,' says Goodair. 'Sugars make your body a less efficient fat-burning machine.' There is no calorie-counting on the programme, but all high-carbohydrate foodstuffs, be it bread or potatoes or pasta, are verboten. Alcohol is also definitively off the menu.
Having tried other trainers I can confidently say that what Goodair and his team do is in a league of its own. Whereas most other trainers are essentially little more than motivators, taking you through exercises that are so straightforward and repetitive that you could do them equally well on your own if you just had the willpower, Goodair is endlessly tweaking and changing depending on the current diktats of your body.
There is no such thing as a straightforward leg-lift in Goodair's world: there are dozens of the blighters, each involving slightly different positions and/or angles, each working and refining your body in a slightly different way.
Unsurprisingly, the results can be remarkable. Aside from the predictable stories of dramatic weight loss (one woman has recently shed 100lb over one year), more fascinating for a dissatisfied gym bunny such as myself are the stories of specific bodily bêtes noires being dealt with once and for all.
'I had this one woman who was convinced that she would never change the shape of her legs. She had saddlebags - fat on the outside of her legs at the top. She had been to lots of different places and tried and tried. She was fit through all the squats and lunges but she had never managed to sort out her legs. I was convinced we could do it, she was convinced we couldn't, and we absolutely nailed it.' Also of note is Goodair's work with older women.
'If you are training consistently, yes, the ageing process will take effect, but the difference you can make is enormous. The less we do, the less we can do. The body adapts very specifically to what you do to it. You can stay supple and fluid. There is this one lady, I have her doing all kinds of things. I have her upside-down, and she loves it.' He laughs. 'I am sure I am going to kill her one day, but what we do invigorates her. She is fantastic, absolutely game on.'
Of course, Goodair's services don't come cheap - he charges £75 for an hour (plus £25 for non-Home House members) - and are London-based. What's his advice for someone who wants to transform their body the Goodair way on their own?
'You need to do 40 minutes of cardio three times a week minimum, ideally four, plus follow my resistance programme for 50 minutes four times a week [ see the video here ]. You need to keep changing the order you do things, changing the angle you do something. If I were running outdoors I would run sideways, backwards, skip, really mix it up. Dance aerobics would be even better. And I would add in some pilates, too. It is not hard to achieve similar results on your own if you are committed.'
And what kind of results can you expect? Speaking from personal experience, remarkable ones. After six weeks I have lost 5kg in weight, 3.4 per cent of my body fat, and shaved 6cm and 5.5cm off my waist and hips respectively.
Even more pleasing, for someone pushing 40, is that I now have the metabolic age of a 24-year-old. The fact that I don't know quite what that means couldn't matter less: I am, in one regard at least, a twentysomething once again.
To try some of Jonathan Goodair's exercises . To book an appointment visit jonathangoodair.com
10 pearls of Goodair wisdom
1 Stop running in straight lines and mix it up with skips, side-and backward steps
2 Eliminate sugary carbohydrates from your diet
3 If you don't want big muscles don't lift big weights
4 Ask your friends and family for support and encouragement. Why not drag one of them along with you?
5 If you like gadgets treat yourself to a heart-rate monitor or pedometer so you can record your achievements
6 Vary your activities to keep things fresh and prevent stagnation and overuse injuries
7 Find activities you enjoy. Maybe the gym is not your thing and you prefer being outdoors, or more dance-based activities
8 Set yourself small realistic goals that are achievable and flexible so you can adjust your targets and time-frames accordingly
9 Invest in some new gym kit!
10 If your fitness plans go pear-shaped don't give up! Think about what went wrong and how you can avoid this next time
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