A woman dressed all in black perches on a mat in a wood-panelled room. She is a tiny figure at the centre of this laminate cube; her immaculately waved blonde hair barely moves as she performs a sequence of exercises, and her expression stays impassive, aside from the odd pout. Welcome to the Tracy Anderson Method Mat Workout.
One of the American exercise guru’s first fitness DVDs, it was released in 2008, when her ascent to fame – or fame adjacency – was just beginning. And a few years after that, I’d find myself loading up the Mat Workout on my laptop every day, ready to embark on an hour of tortuous contortions with the woman best known for kicking Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna into shape.
