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My Body

Jackie Warner on Shooting DVDs, Treadmill Intervals, and Looking Like Scarlett Johansson

Jackie Warner

Jackie Warner spent three seasons in front of the camera on Bravo's Work Out, running her Beverly Hills gym, and causing midwestern housewives to question their sexual orientation. The show ended in 2008, perhaps in part due to comments that Warner may or may not have made about one of the male trainers on her show. She is currently at work on a new show, Thintervention, and has just released a new DVD.

The two weeks prior to shooting, it’s about me doing everything that’s going to be on that DVD. First of all I have to come up with a workout program. Then I make sure that it’s simple enough for people of mid-range to do. Then, I work it into my training sessions, so I get used to the program, because I know I’m going to do it on camera. And, I work myself out, because I know I’m going to be doing those moves myself and they need to seem fluid. So, that’s what happens prior to....

The day of the shoot is just about making sure you feel confident. In your make up. Then it’s all about timing, staying with the music, timing, counting, because is about beats per minute. That’s a lot more difficult than what it sounds. You really have to stay with the timing, in unison without looking at each individual. And if one person messes up, what people think is that we can just stop and cut and do something over, but that’s not true. Whatever the segment, let’s say it’s a five minute segment, you can’t have one mistake during that segment, or you have to reshoot it in its entirety. It’s about 10 to 12 hours of solid work.

When I train, I do about half an hour of cardio, and train with weight resistance for an hour. So, I’ve got about an hour and a half of training six days a week. I take Sundays off. I’m the only trainer that pushes two cheat days a week. I cheat on Saturday and on Sunday for one meal, and that’s what I’ve been promoting for 11 years. One cheat day works for about three percent of the public. I take the weekend off.

When I work with clients, what I do is I set them up for failure. I work with a particular muscle group till it can’t be worked anymore. By the way, I don’t just train, I do a lot of emotional work with my clients — it goes a lot deeper than a DVD can go. There’s nothing like one-on-one interaction.

For women, I encourage them to eat 1500 calories per day; under nine grams of sugar and 450 calories per meal, and 150 calories per snack. So it looks like this: Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner. That’s how you should be eating every day of your life. You should never have more than nine grams of sugar per meal, or fat.

I recommend my clients do 20 minutes of cardio every other day. If you just want to get started and keep it simple, just get on that treadmill and fast walk. Crank the ramp up to 15 for a fast walk at 3.5 for 2 minutes; lower the ramp flat, run at 6.0 for two minutes; one minute walk to cool down, and repeat three more times. That’s a high intensity interval training, and the goal is get faster and faster. You’ll burn about a pound a week with that workout.

[On how she looks like Scarlet Johanssen.] I get that all the time! I take that as a huge compliment…obviously. I don’t see it, but I get it all the time. People come up to me and think I’m her older sister. Even my mom thinks that.