Halle Berry’s secret to defying gravity
Halle Berry: Exercises with the diligence of an Olympic athlete.
HALLE BERRY is a woman who seems to be ageing in reverse. Having turned 54 a couple of weeks ago, the Oscar-winning actress appeared resplendent in bikini shots she posted to social media recently, and which showed her to be defying the march of time in spectacular fashion. She looked every inch as good as the Bond girl Jinx Johnson she played in almost two decades ago.
How does she get a body that looks — and stays — that good? Even for an A-lister with an enviable genetic advantage, it comes down to hard work. For six years, Berry has hired the LA-based trainer Peter Lee Thomas, 36, and the man she has described as her “secret weapon”, to hone her phenomenal physique. And Thomas says she exercises with the diligence of an Olympic athlete. “She trains incredibly hard and has a lot of drive to push herself until it hurts,” he says.
For her role in her forthcoming movie which gets its world premiere in Canada next week, Berry plays an MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter battling to revive her career. She trained for several hours a day packing in a mix of martial arts, yoga, gymnastics, weight training, and work on the Olympic rings, sharing many of her workouts with her 6.3m Instagram followers. However, Thomas says that there are things we can all learn from her approach. “You can make significant changes with effort at any age,” he says. “And I firmly believe that 50 is the new 28 in terms of what people are physically able to achieve.”
Here are the secrets to getting a Halle Berry body:
Thomas’s trademark is to surprise his clients with different moves and exercises each time they work out.
“About 80% of what I do is martial arts- and gymnastics-based,” he says. “But I weave in all forms of movement inspired by dance, yoga, animal crawling and, on a couple of days a week, we might add weights, some work on Olympic rings in the gym, and running or swimming. It’s about varying what you do as much as you can and doing something different every day.”
With Berry, it’s body weight-based training such as boxing, calisthenics (rhythmic movements involving bodyweight crawling, pushing, and pulling) and dance one day, a run, cycle or swim the next, then a strength-based workout with kettlebells or resistance bands and on another day pull-up movements for the upper body. “Keep things as varied as possible,” he says.
“One of my goals for was ripped abs,” Berry said recently. “I finally got them and it feels unbelievable.”
To achieve this, crunches and sit-ups were out, planks were in, Berry claiming “they’ve made a huge difference for my core strength and definition”.
Including as great a variety of planks as possible — side, rotation, dips — is important, although the star has said “sometimes I’ll just hold a plank for as long as I can. My abs start to ache first, but pretty soon my entire body feels like it’s on fire”.
Natural animal movements are another favourite, as they develop all-round strength and mobility, particularly in the core. Crawling tops the lot — it’s like a plank on the move and something Thomas uses a lot with his clients.
“You don’t need much space to perform a bear crawl and reverse bear crawl [on all fours], lizard crawl [very low to the ground] or scorpion crawl [an advanced move in which you crawl and throw legs over hips] and can do them outside in your garden,” Thomas says.
Berry’s impressively toned legs and glutes are the outcome of yet more effort. Thomas says they focus on keeping the butt area lifted with a huge variety of exercises that target the area including lunges, Bulgarian squats, standard squats, balance poses, and yoga moves.
The horse stance is another staple move for Berry. It’s a static exercise that really builds tone and endurance in the legs and glutes, and is deceptively hard as it involves no movement. Step your feet wider than shoulder-width apart and rest your hands on your hips. Turn your feet out half way, and bend your knees to assume a squat until thighs are almost parallel to the ground. Bring your palms together at your chest. Hold for as long as possible. Feel your gluteal muscles burn.
Berry and Thomas co-founded a fitness company called Re-Spin which markets a range of exercise equipment she uses herself including a corset-style ‘waist trainer’ compression vest made from neoprene that apparently boosts calorie burning. There’s little science behind it, but Thomas says “because it makes you sweat more and increases blood flow, you burn more calories — my wife wears one and swears by it”.
She’s an advocate of the Keto diet approach — she says Thomas “formally introduced me to the ketogenic lifestyle” — which sees her consume relatively higher amounts of healthy fats — from avocado, butter, nuts, and seeds — and lower carbs.
Off the menu entirely are pasta, bread, and potatoes. Instead, she loads up on low-sugar fruits, vegetables, seeds, and plant-based protein such as pulses, as well as sipping collagen-rich bone broth — made from simmering animal bones — which Berry believes “helped me defy my age and look and feel younger than my years”.
She allows herself an occasional glass of ‘clean’ wine that contains no preservatives or sulphates. “While conventional wines often got me buzzed fast and left me with a headache, clean wines didn’t,” Berry has said.
Working out is essential for Berry, and she is said to use a rope all the time. She once reportedly did a fitness challenge in which she completed 1,500 rotations with a rope. Thomas suggests starting with a small 'speed rope' and to get used to skipping fast before progressing to a thick, weighted rope. Alternate between the two and skip for five to ten minutes if you can several times a week. “You can burn 250 calories in 15 minutes of skipping,” Thomas says.
Hiking in the hills is one of Berry’s favourite activities, and walking remains one of the best ways for everyone to get fit. Start on pavements and parks and on flat ground to start with before heading for trails and off-road paths which add challenge and resistance.
Thomas says that as you get fitter and stronger, wear ankle weights while walking to add resistance. “I use ankle weights a lot with my clients when they are walking,” he says, “and wrist weights for other exercises."
Thomas asks his clients to gradually build up to doing old-fashioned cartwheels and handstands, believing them to encourage better strength and mobility.
“If you can’t do a freestanding handstand, start with a headstand against a wall,” he says. Try an easier version of a cartwheel, just springing yourself along on your hands. If your knees can take it, jumping and leaping around is another great way to improve strength and tone.
“Jumps improve power and strength as well as blasting fat because you are using the major muscles in your lower body.”
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