High Heels
Paris. I love everything about it. I want to eat it, smell it, breathe it, and become it when I’m there. The city of light always teaches me something new. Catherine Deneuve has famously been attributed as saying, “A woman, of a certain age, must choose between her face and her ass.” Sad, but true if you decide to either stay or to become very slender as you enter middle age. The choices are: you’ll have a gaunt face and a little waist or a juicy fresh face with a fleshy figure. I fall into the latter category more than the former, and it’s my greatest intention to split the difference. That said, I love to eat, but I’ve disciplined myself to become one of those people who loves to work out as much as I love to eat. It’s a positive cycle, because that’s what kids do- run hard and chow down all day long.
I take my two daughters to Paris twice a year to visit the friends who have become my family from the many years I lived and worked there as a model. Eating too much is never the challenge. I learned years ago from French women that the more water you drink, the better you can maintain your silhouette. The real challenge is finding a spot to work out. Daily exercise routines are just not part of Parisian culture as much as it is part of a New Yorker’s. We’ve got a gym on every corner in every price range in Manhattan. In the prosperous, style conscious, bustling center of Paris’s Marias district, the closest gym you can Google is two miles away.
My girlfriend, Deseriee Gruber, one of the creators of Project Runway and the founder of the new website Modelinia.com (http://bit.ly/11VyRT), an I.M.D.B. for fashion models, turned me onto Frederic Vaché at Phisics gym (http://bit.ly/mffSx). The mantra at Phisics is “Training to Measure,” a fitting description since he serves the elite of the fashion world, most notably the eccentric English designer, John Galliano, who now heads the house of Dior, into a poster boy for a tight and toned club land physique. In fact, it feels like going to an underground nightspot. The gym is off the street at the top of the ramp for an underground parking garage, just off the monument to the Bastille. The door is behind a gate in an elevator-sized courtyard. Walking in, I cracked a sly smile when I saw an empty bottle of what was once some very good red wine sitting next to the trash can by the front door. Inside the training floor was tiny and tidy, in the way that Europeans have mastered from living in spaces that date back to the middle ages, with sloping walls and ceiling beams made from rough hewn tree trunks. The lighting was low and sexy, the music was great, and the equipment was ultra –modern and totally teched out. Frederic greeted me at the desk. Small and spry, rather like his famous client Mr. Galliano, but more like a dancer, all of his muscles were lean and the expression of his strength completely understated, detectable only by his incredible and intransigent posture. As we introduced ourselves and outlined the webisode we were shooting for Modelina.com (http://bit.ly/11VyRT) that day, on the subject of “How to Walk in High Heels”, I asked for a power bar. The French always surprise me in really funny ways. “I don’t have that’ he said politely in a bubbling staccato cadence that sets French apart from the other romance languages, “I can offer you fructose that comes from a lab in Monaco”. Out came a little container that looked more like under eye cream with a sports figure logo on the label, the thick serum reminded me of the oral polio vaccines the doctor administered to me as a child. I’m accustomed before a hard work out to putting a shot of muscle recovery powder, a potent amino acid mix, into my water. I asked Frederic, if he had the equivalent in stock. “Would you like an espresso?” I laughed at the French idea of sugar and caffeine as performance fuel and at the seemingly “purist” nutritional fitness ideas of my own. “A petite café is sports drink here.” He looked at me like I was a little stupid. Another thing I’ve learned to love about the French.
Our entire training session involved the use of the Imoove machine (http://bit.ly/zlMf0). It’s a generation next elliptical trainer. The base of the machine is half of a sphere the size of a hula -hoop with a round bottom and a flat deck, ringed by a jungle gym railing with resistance bands attached. On the circular deck, where you stand barefoot in the middle, there’s a chart that looks like a map of the solar systems orbital rotation and big dots with the numbers 1-6 placed in strategic positions on the deck like a dance chart. (Warning -get a pedicure before you go, you have to be barefoot). Frederic took me through a series of stances in yoga as the machine rocked back and forth, side to side, and up and down as though I was on a boat in a choppy sea. Sometimes I held the bands and other times I used my arms for balance, but never for a single second did my abs or glutes have an opportunity to rest. We moved on to poses taken from surfing and skiing and then finally walking in a lot of different patterns as the rolling deck beneath my feet moved faster and faster sometimes making short stops and changing direction entirely. Very quickly, I grew to love it. Especially when we did boxing combinations on the moving pedestal, it was like getting punch drunk without the damage.
The Imoove is amazing for balance and coordination, and because of the way it moves in an elliptical pattern, you get a chance to work all the tiny connective muscles that normally don’t engage unless you are doing a seasonal sport like surfing or skiing. The movements also gave me a sense of fun and of travel, to Brittany for surfing or cross -country skiing in the Grand Teeton National Park. The rotational movement on my ankles and the constant rocking, Frederic told me were completely theraputic for aligning the spine and skeletal structure which are run ragged by walking around in high heels.
We finished our session. It was love for both of us. I’ll be back. My body’s his to do what he does to make it better and he’s my go to guy in Paris with his cool demeanor and futuristic technology. On the way out, I asked for water. Frederic opened up the Smeg fridge painted with a Union Jack, stocked with Evian and really good champagne, and handed me a cold one. Vive la France!
Phisics 16-18 Rue St. Antoine Paris 75004 Tel 0142789727 or 0684545079 www.phisics.fr (http://bit.ly/mffSx).
Click Modelina.com to see the whole show and get a lesson in how to walk in high heels from the Robb Sisters.
–Veronica
