If we weren’t already a nation obsessed with the Beckham family, then watching Victoria and David in the Netflix documentary Beckham surely cemented their place in our hearts. Even though its focus was David’s epic football career, one of the big questions to emerge following its release–according to Google Trends at least–was about Victoria, and specifically her workout routine. Internet searches on the topic have shot up by 5,000 percent around the world over the past 30 days. The toned arms on display in the campaign imagery for her new Victoria Beckham Beauty fragrance collection might also help to explain the surge in interest. We called up her trainer, Bobby Rich, to get some details.
“We’ve been training with weights regularly, for four or five years now,” Rich tells me over the phone. “It’s as much mental as it is physical. Victoria treats training like brushing her teeth–it’s something she wants and has to do and it sets her up for the day. It’s just part of her lifestyle–in fact, I train both of them five days a week, in person. When they’re on the road, it’s remote, five days a week. Nothing changes.”
With a background in judo (he was a British judo champion five times, an Olympic reserve and is the founder of GRIPGI), Rich treats his clients–including the Beckhams–as though they are athletes. “I come from a performance background and instill the work ethic and mindset of an athlete in my clients–that means training in the region of three to five times a week,” he explains. “The way I do that is by looking at the year as a whole–taking into consideration the peaks and troughs–and separating it into blocks.”
The blocks include “mini cycles of strength, hypertrophy, power training, endurance training, cardiovascular, that fit into themes of recovery, maintenance and intensity,” Rich explains. “If we were on strength training, we might have a 75 or 90 minute session because there’s a little more rest involved due to heavier weights, while other times it might be a 50 minute session. They kind of do what they’re told [laughs]. It’s the priority for the pair of them.”
Separating the year into blocks has its benefits, including being able to stay on track to hit fitness goals even amidst intense and busy schedules. “I’ve got to take those external stressors into consideration because my client may have a goal in the gym, but what else is going on in their lives? Victoria just launched her fragrances, so she was on the road, traveling from New York to Miami, he says. “Although she still wants to train five days a week remotely, we might pull the foot off the gas knowing that the week ahead is crammed with stress, promo, and stuff like that.”
Training consistently but introducing workout chunks of varying intensity, he says, is the secret to a honed figure like Victoria’s. “It might sound intimidating at first, but it works. If you want to try this at home, you can start by breaking it down into what’s manageable for you, whether that’s six or three months,” he suggests.
“You need to consider what you can maintain. When you do these fads–where you’re just eating chicken and spinach every day for lunch and waking up at 5 a.m. to do an exercise you don’t enjoy–you might be able to do that for six weeks, but after that you’ll never do that workout again.” His advice is to find an activity you enjoy so you can sustain a regular workout pattern and be consistent. And be prepared to wait to see results: If you’re eating a balanced diet and training five days a week, you’ll feel many health benefits immediately, but changes to tone or weight can take more than two months of consistent effort.
For Victoria, it’s all about weight training, which you might have seen her doing on Instagram. “We don’t have a commercial gym set-up with lots of fixed weight machines, so we use the space we’ve got,” Rich says. “She does a lot of dumbbell, barbell and bodyweight work, and I incorporate lots of functional and compound movements–using two or three joints and muscle groups–each time.”
While some still actively baulk at the idea of weightlifting for fear it will create bunched-up muscles, Victoria is proof that that’s a myth. “If you’re doing weight training three to five days a week, getting bulky is not going to be an issue,” confirms Rich. “It’s only when people are doing two to three sessions a day, five or six days a week, that they start building that kind of muscle.”
Weight training is particularly important for women, especially if they have had children or are going through the menopause. “There’s a five percent decrease in bone density for every child you have, because the baby absorbs nutrients away from the body, so it’s really important that you start considering bone health early–that’s just one of the benefits of weight training,” Rich says. During the perimenopause, you’re also more at risk of osteoporosis, not to mention that muscle mass helps with metabolism, which naturally decreases as we get older.
“When it comes to strength training, it’s tough to build lean muscle mass–and I’m not talking about mass in terms of size, but rather the quality of the muscle,” he says. “The difference in Victoria’s muscle now [versus five years ago] is that it’s not necessarily bigger, but the quality of muscle and the health she has from having stronger joints, tendons and ligaments is marked. It’s taken a long time and a shift in her mindset from thinking about short term to long term, but now it’s just part of her day and she loves it.”
The one rule I gleaned from speaking to Rich about creating a good workout routine? Consistency. Being diligent and getting to the gym–regardless of your preferred workout–is the secret to achieving results. Rich says it’s about eating clean, training hard, and training smart, but all of these elements require consistency.
Victoria is nothing if not dedicated to the cause–she’s eaten the same lunch (of grilled fish and steamed vegetables) every day for 25 years, according to her husband. While most women are unlikely to go that far, her workout routine is proof that when you put hard work and effort in, you get results.