If you watch any of Shakira’s powerhouse performances, it’s hard to ignore her athleticism. She jumps without missing a note, and gyrates her famous hips while keeping her balance and remembering her lyrics. And she does this over and over again, never losing her breath and barely breaking a sweat.
I was admiring all this while watching the singer perform “Puntería,” her sexy hit from her new album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the other day. And moments later, I got an email from Anna Kaiser, the Colombian superstar’s personal trainer of 13 years. It felt like a sign.
Kaiser—a professional fitness coach, dancer, and choreographer known for her star-studded and loyal client list—has been running her studio on New York’s Upper East Side (which happens to be where I live) since 2013, and now has locations in the Hamptons and Connecticut. She met Shakira when she was cast as a dancer in the video for “She Wolf” in 2009, and has been training the her—virtually and on-site at the star’s homes in Spain and now Miami—ever since.
After Kaiser and I connected, she offered to train me for a week and turn me into a superstar—or at the very least show me what all the fuss around her workouts was about. Today, seven sessions later, I totally get it.
“We should feel happy when we wake up in the morning, we should feel energized.”
I have been into fitness since I was a teen, and Kaiser’s custom workouts are like nothing I’d experienced before. The in-studio and virtual classes range from dance mashups to HIIT, to sculpt, to her signature Box class—and though different, they all have a common thread in that they focus on balance, core strength, and coordination.
“I want to make sure my clients are getting a completely comprehensive workout and not just a combination of exercises,” Kaiser says. “I want them to be ready for anything.”
I took all the classes, but the Box class was particularly interesting to me, as it incorporates resistance bands in a way that is unique to Kaiser’s studio. Throughout the entire workout, each person is holding and pulling down on their band, which is hung from a horizontal pole on the ceiling, consequently stretching out the spine and keeping the body in balance as specific muscle groups work through the exercises. The fitness box—also common in Pilates—is used to step on, jump on, kneel on, do push-ups on, and more.
While you’re guaranteed a good sweat, the cardio elements in the class are perfectly mixed in with the strength training and stretching, so the experience feels incredibly balanced, and the overwhelming result you get is a boost of energy.
In the end, it all really comes down to longevity, Kaiser says. “We should feel happy when we wake up in the morning, we should feel energized. We should feel connected to our community and our brain should be learning something new,” she says. “If we’re doing, you know, total burnouts for the rest of our lives, of course we’re gonna zone out.”
After my first private session with Kaiser, I considered why Shakira, with all the fitness class options in the world at her fingertips and more dance experience than any of us, may benefit from a workout plan like this. But following my week at AKS, it became clear. After just a few days, Kaiser’s lessons had notably improved my posture, made me sore in muscles I didn’t even realize I had long ignored, and pushed my brain to work as hard as my body, as I had to concentrate on learning and following the choreography in every single class, all to the beat of the club-vibe pop mix coming from the speakers. At one point during a Box class, the lights went off and a colorful disco ball popped out. I loved it; my office gym could never.
“It’s never just gonna be Pilates or dance. … It has to be everything.”Kaiser points out that after a month of attending the classes, your mind knows what to expect from the choreography, and so you are able to push your body harder. But just when you get comfortable, she changes it all up.
“It’s never just gonna be Pilates, or dance, or functional or interval training,” she says. “It has to be everything; otherwise I wouldn’t have clients coming back for more than 10 years—they’d be bored. I’d be bored!”
The whole experience with AKS made me want to reconsider my fitness routine. Usually, I go to the gym to stop thinking; I let my body take over and flow through a series of exercises I’ve perfected over the years. I lose myself in the practiced movements and in the music blasting from my AirPods—mostly Shakira, if I may add. Sometimes, when I really need a stress reliever, I run until I’m out of breath and have to scrunch over on the side of the East River Greenway. And even if I am following a sculpt or Pilates instructor, I rarely use all my brain cells. But is that really the best way? To dissociate? Kaiser says no.
“Your workout isn’t going to be as good because you’re just going through the motions,” she explains. “If you connect your mind to the muscle that you’re working, you’re learning something new in the moment, creating that new neural pathway. So, you’re actually working 12 percent harder than if you weren’t doing that.”
“It is addicting!”The trainer wants clients to know the why behind their workouts, to realize they are exercising every muscle, big and small, in their bodies, as well as energizing their minds. Shakira, Kaiser says, is particularly driven by the reasoning behind the movements. “We love to say that she has a PhD in exercise science,” Kaiser jokes. “She has an insatiable appetite for knowledge. She lights up when she learns a new exercise, movement pattern, or anatomical term, or when she feels something deeply that she hasn’t before. And then we dive into the why, which gets her working with even more enthusiasm and focus.”
With the star, Kaiser says she focuses mostly on full-body strength and endurance, and then adds dance interval moves as Shakira gets closer to touring or performing, to make sure she’s prepared.
I realize now that it’s AKS’s emphasis on multitasking, sculpting the body while engaging the mind, and maintaining extreme alertness and control over oneself that draws even seasoned, world-famous performers like Shakira to this unique workout—people whose careers and lifestyles depend on showing up and being the best.
Kaiser says it’s been incredible to see her longtime friend grow her endurance onstage, always coming at a performance “with strength and power.” But for the trainer, “the brain-boosting and emotional health benefits, or ‘happy factor,’ ” that people get from her classes are her biggest source of pride. “It is addicting!” she says.
So, maybe I’m not a Grammy-winning international pop singer, but for some healthy “happy factor,” yeah, I’ll show up.