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| Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy |
The gates of the Elysee Palace usually open only for limousines. The presidential staff park their vehicles outside the small courtyard on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. But several times a week, they make an exception and the tall wooden doors swing open and a chic young woman drives on to the gravel aboard a motor scooter. Julie Imperiali, 26, comes to give Nicolas Sarkozy his workout, applying her patent method to make him stretch, sweat and run. Putting the President in touch with his pelvic floor, the former dancer and gymnast sculpts his shape and boosts the famous energy that earned him the name “Speedy”. She has been doing the same for Carla Bruni, the recently installed Premiere Dame, for the past four years.
Imperiali says that in 10 months she has helped Sarkozy, a teetotal chocolate addict, to drop nearly 4kg (8.8lb) and two trouser sizes. “His body has radically changed,” she says. “He is a dream pupil. He is always ready and motivated.” Her method — focusing on the perineal muscles at the bottom of the pelvis — not only improves posture and delivers a healthier body and mind, but it also improves the sex lives of all her clients, Imperiali claims.
“Sexual relations are better if the male perineum is in good shape. The problems of premature ejaculation are often due to the perineum,” she says. Pilates and yoga also stress these muscles as part of the body’s core, but working the perineum has long been a French favourite, especially for women after childbirth.
On the run
The presidential trainer, who is as svelte and self-possessed as you would expect, described what she calls her Tectonic method while sitting in the flat near the Eiffel Tower that she is turning into an exercise space. Building on her success among a circle of wealthy clients, she has just started an internet (www.tectonicworkout.com) business with Marc Imperiali, her businessman husband.
The former French aerobics champion and dancer met him when she was working at the Ritz hotel health club, a favourite spot for fashionable Parisians. That is also where she ran into Bruni in 2004. The supermodel-singer and former foe of monogamy was intrigued by the big “balance ball” that Imperiali uses for her sessions.
“Something clicked. We got on and she hired me,” Imperiali says. “Carla is une bonne vivante. She loves beer. She smokes. She likes good food. But she obviously has an irreproachable constitution. I didn’t have to change much in her diet. She felt better and better. She had a back problem and we fixed it. Sometimes we were doing five hours a week with an hour or 90-minute sessions.” Bruni brought Imperiali to the President after the couple’s lightning courtship and marriage last winter. Super Sarko had made running the image of his presidency when he jogged out of the palace in shorts accompanied by Francois Fillon, his Prime Minister, on the day that he took office in May 2007.
A running president was a French revolution and Sarkozy was widely mocked. No French leader had ever proceeded at anything beyond walking pace. No one could imagine the stately Charles de Gaulle or Francois Mitterrand breaking into a sweat. The images of the pint-sized Sarkozy pounding the pavements did not work because he looked silly. His posture was awkward and he was thick around the middle. Last winter, as part of a makeover of the presidential image, Sarko kept the T-shirts and shorts out of sight and began jogging in the seclusion of the sumptuous high-walled garden between the palace and the Champs Elysees. Since last April, Imperiali has been running alongside him. She has also changed his eating habits and broken his evening chocolate consumption, she says. “He was un sportif, but he didn’t have the right methods. He just used to run and run and run without being aware of his body.
“We worked with a cardiometer and reworked his way of running. Now he runs faster and more solidly. He is doing about 10kph in the garden. I see him between two and four times a week. We run for 15 to 45 minutes then do muscle reinforcement and stretching. He doesn’t talk much about work. He needs to blow off the stress. We talk about everything and nothing, sometimes about intimate matters.”
The President, who is known for his hot temper and impatience, is all charm with Imperiali. “I had imagined him tres speed and he certainly is but at the same time he is very human and kind. He can be impulsive too.
“Sarkozy is the first French president to have a personal trainer so I am very honoured. The first time I arrived at the Elysee, I was super nervous. I asked my husband to take me in the car like a little girl going to school. Going into the palace in a tracksuit and trainers worried me. Passing through the Republican Guard in the corridors was surreal. Now I drive into the courtyard on the scooter!”
Nothing is taboo
With Bruni, Imperiali coaches indoors, working out to soft music. “Carla says ‘Julie, I can do my gym alone but I will never do it so well as with you’,” she says. Imperiali confirms the general view that the Bruni-Sarkozy marriage has calmed the “Hyper-President”, who was in a bad state after Cecilia, his last glamorous wife, walked out on him in October 2007. “Carla has a very healthy way of life. She is not a jet-setter. They complement one another. Sometimes he says to her ‘Thank you for Julie’. You can feel the complicity, the way that they take care of one another.”
“Tectonic Wellbeing” is a mixture of diet, stretching and other sports techniques. “My work is 60 per cent psychological and 40 per cent sport. It enables you to reconnect the head with the body.
“The perineum is the key to the method. It was taboo for a long time. It was something for pregnant women. But the perineum is the floor of our body and if it’s not kept in shape it is as if you had a house with no floor. You can become incontinent, your organs descend and you have bad posture. By becoming conscious of your perineum you become aware of the interior of your body.”
So how do you get in touch with your perineal muscles, I ask with Anglo-Saxon modesty? “You have to imagine that you have a burning need to urinate and hold it in. That works for men as well as women,” she says.
Imperiali, who took a sports degree at Lyon University, says that you should be constantly aware of these lower muscles. “You should hold in the navel so that the four walls of the house — the abdominals, the laterals and lumbar muscles — are really rigid. You should base your breathing on this and little by little it becomes automatic. Your waistline shrinks and it’s as if your wearing a corset.”
The right food is also crucial, says Imperiali, who, like Sarkozy, is a non-drinker. “But I am married to a Belgian, who is a big eater and drinker. I am in favour of excess. I learnt from him and my clients that you have to make do. I don’t forbid anything. Everything is a question of balance. I advise my clients to dissociate things and put others together. They should eat pasta with vegetables or meat with vegetables. Junk food horrifies me. It is better to eat a protein bar than a ham sandwich.” And you should drink a lot of water and, when you overdo it, take a day off food to detox.
Imperiali charges her clients £ 100 to £ 150 an hour. She is now expanding the Internet business, started last March, which is aimed at people who cannot afford personal trainers. You sign up for euros 1 a day and Imperiali prescribes a 20-minute routine and eating programme and supervises your progress. “It’s not a slimming concept. It’s about wellbeing and it’s real coaching,” she says. “You choose between programmes for sculpting your body or losing weight. We have 200 Internet clients now and it turns out that most of them want to sculpt.”
Her method is not sweat-free. “There’s no gain with no pain. But you don’t have to torture yourself to get into shape. The beauty of my method is that it can be adapted to everyone.”
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| Aamir Khan training with Satyajit Chourasia |
Operation eight packs
From the Aamir Khan experience, Satyajit says it takes solid work for 11 months. “Sir (Aamir) could not give proper time only during the release of Taare Zameen Par.” The first step was getting a gym in place at his Pali Hill residence. The equipment of choice were a power cage (“It’s an injury-free set-up”), a cable-cross pulley, two-three benches, 1,000 kg of dumb-bell sets and free weights.
Start with measuring your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and Body Mass Index (BMI). The diet should have 40 per cent carbohydrates, 45 per cent proteins and 15 per cent fats. “If your technique and diet are right, the packs would begin to show in two-three months.”
Aamir subsisted on half kg chicken and 15 egg whites taken at an interval of two hours. “He ate eight meals like this. One can add a piece of brown bread to that. In place of chicken, it can be any roasted or boiled protein item. His lunch comprised one bowl of dal and green vegetables, but no rice.”
Dinner may include a roti. But Satyajit insists that one goes low on carbs after 9pm. “Soup and egg whites are on anytime.” Another thumb rule is keeping oil consumption to three teaspoons a day and cutting sugar intake to zero. Also, both smoking and drinking are completely off.
For the workout, Satyajit made a routine for eight-day cycles. “Start with a 10-minute warm-up. Follow up with 50 minutes of stomach exercises, including 700 to 1,000 counts of abdomen crunches, weight-training concentrating on two body parts a day for an hour and a half, round off with cardio for 30-45 minutes. It could be the arms (triceps and biceps) for Day I, chest and back for Day II, shoulder and legs for day III… Cardio and stomach exercises are a must daily. But do take rest on the fourth and eighth days of the cycle.”
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Though it is a relentless regimen, there is hope for those who give up after getting there. “Sir has stopped exercising as he needs a normal body for his next role as a painter. It is heart-breaking to see the packs go. He was 68 kg at his peak. Now he has already gained two kilos. But muscle memory is good. He is still doing cardio, still on his diet. So if he resumes exercise, he will be back in shape in two-three months.”
Mobile muscle mantra
Now the secret of the eight packs is being marketed on the smallest of screens — the cellphone. Any normal person can get a body like Aamir’s, all for Rs 50 — or so they promise. “The game is about building a body like Aamir in 13 months,” says Ajit Kashyap, marketing head of Indiagames, UTV’s interactive division.
One can get the entire training programme, comprising the arm, leg and chest exercises. It is divided into three different stages. Phase I, for the first three months, is common to everyone. Once the body is toned, one has to choose which kind of body one wants to go for — better muscles like Salman Khan’s or more stamina like Akshay Kumar’s. The third stage intensifies the specialised regimen.
For each exercise, there is a graphic Aamir, complete with the Ghajini hair-cut, demonstrating the posture himself. “Today everyone is into fitness. Forty-five per cent of the country’s population comprises the youth. So getting the exercise regimen right on one’s mobile screen would help one do it by oneself,” feels Kashyap.
The other favourites
Hrithik Roshan: Hrithik has been training with me for five years. His basic was good but he needed to improve his physique for Dhoom:2. We achieved that in four months. He is very regular. He suffered a knee ligament tear during shooting six months ago. He still exercised with a knee cap on.
Rani Mukerji: Yoga and workouts. She is as regular as she is a good person. Since women can’t take weights, I stress on cardio, stretches and free hands for them. Un logon ko sensual lagna hai. There is a lean muscle layer. That has to be kept tight.
Rising star
Sikander Kher: The son of Anupam Kher and Kirron Kher is an excellent body in the making. Abhi kaam baaki hai uss pe.
Psst…
Harman Baweja didn’t just ape Hrithik Roshan in his hair do, posture and dance style. He shared his trainer as well. He went to Satyajit’s gym for six months. That, of course, was before the release of the bomb called Love Story…2050.
