Former Spice Girl and current style icon Victoria Beckham is certainly no stranger to the gym. While I’m sure having one of the most famous athletes in the world for a husband provides some healthy motivation, the fashion and beauty mogul has put in decades of her own hard work to maintain an enviable physique.
Curious as to what exactly Posh Spice does to keep her workouts spicy, I did some research into her routine. What I found is that Victoria recently swapped lots of running and endurance work for area-specific weight training sessions, which has contributed to a huge increase in her overall strength and muscle tone. According to this article from Women’s Health, Victoria’s trainer Bobby Rich encourages his superstar client to focus on quality over quantity — instead of exercising for hours each day, she’ll lift heavy for anywhere from 35 to 90 minutes with attention to proper rest, recovery, and mobility.
The holidays are on the horizon, and I’ve been looking for ways to push a little harder in the gym before some inevitable downtime. So I decided to try working out like Victoria Beckham for a full week to see how my body would respond. As a reminder, what’s right for Posh may not be right for you — especially if you’ve just started a regular exercise routine. A certified personal trainer can recommend an appropriate program that’s suited to your abilities and fitness goals.
Check out what happened when this fitness writer drank apple cider vinegar every day for 10 days like Victoria Beckham.
What is Victoria Beckham’s workout?
Before Bobby Rich came around, Victoria started each workout with a 45-minute run on the treadmill, followed by an hour of full-body muscular endurance exercises like barre (her former trainer was low-weight, high-rep queen Tracy Anderson). She also frequented SoulCycle classes and often hit the mat for Yoga sessions.
Now, her routine is split into heavier weightlifting blocks geared towards targeting her upper body, lower body, and core in varying durations. And like before, mobility training through Yoga and stretching remains important.
I wanted to sprinkle in a little of the old and a little of the new, so I incorporated both training styles into my week of working out like Victoria. This was my schedule:
DAY 1:
45 minute run
60 minute barre class
DAY 2:
60 minutes of heavy lower body weight training
DAY 3:
30 minutes of Yoga
DAY 4:
45 minute run
60 minute barre class
DAY 5:
45 minutes of heavy upper body weight training
15 minutes of core training
DAY 6:
60 minute high-intensity cycling class
DAY 7:
30 minutes of Yoga
I worked out like Victoria Beckham for a week — here’s what happened
Ready for an intense week full of different fitness approaches, I hit play on my Spice Girls playlist and set out to exercise like Victoria Beckham for seven days straight. Here’s what happened:
I understood why she made the shift to weight training
I’ll admit that when I first started exercising almost 25 years ago, my workouts looked a lot like Victoria’s old routine: plenty of cardio and virtually no real strength training. It wasn’t until I started lifting weights more regularly that I really saw the benefits of exercise outside of pure aesthetics — weight training makes you stronger, and when you’re stronger you can move through life a lot easier.
By including parts of Victoria’s old regimen in my week, I could see how concentrating primarily on cardio and muscular endurance had caused her to hit a plateau. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge cardio junkie and do some form of it every day. However, it’s vital to integrate some form of heavier strength training not only for your overall health, but even for those aforementioned aesthetics — working with heavier weights will result in a leaner physique.
The variety kept things interesting
I’m a sucker for routine, so my workouts almost always follow the same basic structure: 30 to 45 minutes of lifting and 30 minutes of moderate or high-intensity cardio. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about straying from the usual, but throwing a few new activities like Yoga, barre, and cycling into the mix kept the week interesting and engaging — it’s much harder to go on “auto-pilot” when you’re trying something you don’t regularly do.
It was also interesting to exercise for different durations each day. I really had to resist adding more activity to the shorter days, and by the end of the week, I realized that I’ve probably been overtraining a little in my regular regimen. Bobby Rich had to convince Victoria that sometimes a 30-minute workout is more beneficial than a 90 minute one, and that’s definitely a lesson I learned as well.
I lost focus on the longer workout days
The week’s variety kept me on my toes, although I did find myself getting bored and distracted towards the end of days that incorporated 45 minutes of running with 60 minutes of barre. I’m not sure if it was due to the duration or the activity (or a combination of both), but I had a really hard time staying focused during the last 15-20 minutes of my workout.
To be fair, it’s notoriously hard for me to exercise at home using a video, and that’s exactly what I did for my barre workouts. If I was taking a live class at a studio, or if I was working one-on-one with a trainer, I doubt I’d get bored.
I realized that I need to start doing Yoga more often
Honestly, I thought the “boring” part of the week would be the Yoga-centric days — I’ve always kind of hated Yoga, and dreaded relinquishing one of my workout days to doing fancy stretches on a mat (a very simplistic and unfair way of looking at the practice, I know).
By the time I reached Savasana after that first day of Yoga, I realized that my overall mobility and flexibility needs a lot of work. Many of the poses were really difficult for me to execute correctly and with good form, and that was a bit of a shocker.
I worked out like Victoria Beckham for a week — here’s my verdict
Victoria’s current routine doesn’t look all that different from mine, so like her, I’ll be continuing to focus on getting stronger — while throwing some Yoga into the mix. Trying a few new activities kept the week interesting, but I’ll probably only come back to the muscular endurance-based workouts when I can’t make it to the gym.
