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Exclusive: Elle Macpherson's personal trainer reveals the supermodel's fitness secrets


April 22, 2016
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Personal trainer Nicola Addison's steady and consistent approach to training has gained her a firm celebrity following, with the likes of Daisy Lowe hitting her gym Eqvvs in London's trendy Knightsbridge. Elle Macpherson, aka 'The Body', revealed in the past that she often turned to Nicola to help her stay in shape – and now the fitness guru has revealed what it was like training the Australian supermodel.

elle macpherson© Photo: Getty Images

Nicola has trained stars including Daisy Lowe and Elle Macpherson

"Elle's kind of an anomaly. She's very active," Nicola told HELLO! Online exclusively. "She leads a very busy life anyway. Her favourite thing on a weekend would be to do a long bike ride.

"She's very, very active so with us it was very, very specific in that we needed to build muscle, so we got her doing resistance training and we kept her really long and supple with flexibility work."

Nicola revealed that she was impressed at Elle's wealth of knowledge. "Elle really knows what works for her and what doesn’t," she admitted. "Also, she's definitely of a personality type that has done all of the research and knows what she's doing."

elle macpherson© Photo: Twitter

Nicola revealed that Elle would train "five times a week" when she was in London

She later added: "She knew you had to work at it. That was really what was refreshing with Elle."

Training the model until she moved to America, Nicola revealed that Elle was a dedicated client, who would train "five times a week" at Eqvvs – and added that she lived up to her nickname 'The Body'.

"She's not that by accident," said Nicola. "She worked really hard and always trained hard, always did well with her food, always looked after herself and has done for years. That's not accidental."

When it comes to all things health and fitness, Nicola explained that she and her team focus on setting realistic goals for clients. She revealed that when they first launched, Daisy Lowe would hit the gym but "doesn't like exercise", so they tailored her workout plan.

elle macpherson© Photo: Getty Images

The Australian beauty is renowned for her incredible figure

"The biggest thing for Daisy was we needed to make it fun," confessed Nicola. "Daisy, like I'd say 90 per cent of our clients, really doesn't like exercise, you know. She's doing it because it’s a needs must. With Daisy, it was a lot like old school PE classes. Throwing balls around, crawling, slamming things."

Nicola admitted that she thinks there's "a great deal of pressure" on stars to achieve their fitness goals, because they are "in the public eye". "Their job is their body in the end. If their body's not working or looking good, they're not going to work," she explained.

There is one star whom Nicola particularly admires for their dedication and figure. "In the studio, for the girls, we're all just obsessed with Beyoncé," she revealed, describing the singer and her new Ivy Park clothing range as "really inspirational for women". She added: "I think she is looking incredible."

beyonce© Photo: Getty Images

The fitness guru described Beyoncé as "inspirational"

Nicola's years of experience have seen her training people for a wide variety of health goals, but she admitted the biggest fitness mistake people make is that they "will go crazy for three weeks, and then not do anything for three months".

She added: "Walking 30 minutes every day is a base line of just being healthy. The biggest mistake I think is stop-starting, or an all-or-nothing approach. We just have to get it into our head that we're going to have to do something regularly and no-one else is going to do that for us."

Nicola Addison and her team can be found at Eqvvs Training, Knightsbridge, London - eqvvs.com.

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