Mostly, however, the users are saddened by the fact that “Erin”, the longtime face of Down Dog, may no longer be our savasana pal. “I’m only in this app for Erin,” reads one response on Instagram.

Who you train with is an emotive subject in a virtual fitness market which, according to the app Dr Muscle, is expected to be worth $15.2bn in 2028. Fitness apps, which range from tracking apps to instructive platforms, boomed during the pandemic and the habit has stuck as people find virtual training more convenient, less exposing and invariably cheaper than the gym. Down Dog, founded by Benjamin Simon in 2015, uses pre-recorded routines to offer a range of practices for different competencies and needs. It has more than 500,000 subscribers (middling compared to Peloton’s 5.9mn members), but inspires tremendous loyalty: more than 100,000 users complete a practice every day. 

I had assumed that the serene yogi in a crop-top who helps guide each practice was an AI creation: Erin has such a blank robotic charm. As the classes are guided by a range of different voices for you to choose from, it seemed that she, too, must be some kind of fancy avatar. Further probing revealed, however, that Erin Gilmore is a real-life “yoga, meditation, breathwork teacher and mentor” in San Francisco, who sees a “healer”, has “big feelings” and considers the Barbie movie a “beautiful work of art”. She tells me the app is simply “expanding the options while I’m pregnant with my second baby” and she “is still working with [Down Dog] behind the scenes”.

Of Nike’s Kirsty Godso, one person says: ‘I have a much better relationship with KG than I have with most people in my life’

What kind of relationship do you have with your trainer? And how invested can you be with someone you see only online? An informal Insta-survey reveals a febrile landscape of one-way love, for both men and women, in which the cult of personality is key. Peloton sparks the most ardent flames of adoration, especially for Tunde Oyeneyin, a bestselling author and keynote speaker; Rad Lopez, a boxer; Cody Rigsby, a fitness “guru”; and Jess Sims. There are others. “I will follow Robin Arzon anywhere,” says one devotee of Peloton’s head instructor, while FT Weekend’s Shannon Gibson prefers “an emotional lap” with Adrian. 

Tracy Anderson’s acolytes are so obsessed with her “fitness methodology” that they are shelling out an extra $5,500 to “reserve” a mat in her real-life classes (on top of the $90 monthly subscription) and describe themselves as “Tamily”. Online users are similarly devoted. “I feel like Tracy Anderson comes to my flat and works out with me,” says Kerri Lipsitz, an interior designer. Other users love the post-class online “locker” chat.

Mindful movement and meditation maven Melissa Woods also comes up often, usually followed by the words: “I love her”. Another writer describes her “inordinately close bond” with Pilates instructor Julie Pujols, “the French girl go-to who looks like Brigitte Bardot”, whom she has met once but thinks of “like my friend”. 

A few people (like me) want to punch in and out of classes with no engagement. Others seek a far deeper connection on the mat. Dr Amina Abdeldaim, an allergist in New York, speaks for many when she says: “If it doesn’t seem like I would be friends, I don’t exercise with them.” Others go even further. Of Nike’s Kirsty Godso, one person says: “I have a much better relationship with KG than I have with most people in my life.”

The most favoured instructors among my poll group are friendly, motivating and boast an aspirational body-type. Users want a glimpse of fallibility: “I like that she acknowledges the class is painful”, says someone of Julie Pujols. But they hate a faker. “One trainer pretends to be really out of breath, I suspect to make us feel better,” says one user of the Nike app. “That really fucks me off.” 

Age can also be an advantage: “a slightly older trainer who looks great, gives me hope.” And while there doesn’t seem to be a huge appetite for plus-size instructors (on the contrary, many favourites are intimidatingly bionic), there is a general aversion to trainers who don’t seem authentically athletic — “as if the demonstrators are models and not sports people” — or where they look too underweight. Given that fitness is already so emotive, like food, there is an unspoken rule that a trainer should inspire; and while people want drive and motivation, they want trainers who are kind. 

Personally, I want a trainer to look fantastic, show the techniques clearly and push me to meet new goals. I would never join a chat post workout, and doubt I would follow a virtual trainer outside the class. I’ll be curious to see the new models that Down Dog next employs. The beauty and success of Erin, I now realise, was that I barely thought of her at all.

Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com

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This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jo Ellison

See user @neuronush (“sharing awareness” to her 95.5k followers), who explains that ADHD sufferers hate loud noises, noisy eating, slow walkers and making plans. Well, I fully loathe slow walkers. And I’m weirdly sensitive to bangs. Meanwhile, @doctorshepard_md red-flags the fact that I’ve been labelled “moody and sensitive” and that I “fidget in my chair”; @usamedical offers an adult ADHD test in which he asks whether, I “have trouble remembering appointments” or feel “overly active”; while @connordewolfe suggests I might have “hyperfocus”, whereby I become obsessed with random tasks. 

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jo Ellison

Are you “doing” semaglutide? In recent weeks, the drug has become the subject of public (and private) discourse as we debate the ethics and efficacy of the weight-loss aid. Naturally it’s controversial – what discussion of weight loss is ever not? 

I know several people who have been prescribed Ozempic (a semaglutide brand name), and I’ve been a fascinated onlooker as the drug has taken hold. Yes, I should caveat that evidence suggests that most users regain most of the weight they’ve lost, and it’s important to highlight how little we still know about its use long-term. But for people with disordered eating habits or yo-yo dieters, Ozempic offers a gateway to another world. From anecdotal conversations with other users, it has an interesting effect on one’s appetite for alcohol as well.

The Ozempic conversation is one where I’ve been keen to hear the user’s voice

While I would never personally consider injecting myself with anything except life-saving medicine, the Ozempic conversation is one where I’ve been keen to hear the user’s voice. Fiona Golfar started taking her course of treatment in December, and her transformation has been fairly astonishing to see. But the more intriguing thing I have observed about Fiona, who has been on a diet for the entirety of the time that I have known her, has been the fact that for the first time in our relationship we talk far less about what she’s going to eat. She has kindly agreed to write about her experiences on Ozempic here – I hope you can read it with an open mind. In an arena where we are incredibly quick to pass judgement, Fiona offers an unexpectedly sympathetic point of view. 

There can be no controversy about the home shared by artist Maro Gorky and her husband Matthew Spender. The Tuscan farmhouse that the couple moved into in the late ’60s is among the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The decoration has been evolving over many years, but the different landscapes and treatments all come together as a resplendent whole. The writer Vanessa Nicolson first visited the farmhouse as a child: her mother was a friend of Maro’s mother, and the house was an artistic hub of bohemian bonhomie. The children of famous artists (she of the Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky, he of the poet Sir Stephen Spender), the couple have been witness to many generations of creatives, and have rather ribald recollections of them all. If not all their experiences have been easy, the house itself is an expression of unfettered joy: a technicolour riot best described as Charleston meets Pompeii.

Lastly, I am honoured that Marta Ortega Pérez agreed to grant an exclusive interview to this magazine. The daughter of the Inditex founder Amancio, she has inherited the same approach to the media: this is only her second-ever business interview. Now the non-executive chair of Inditex, she is the leader of a high-street giant: the company’s apparel and footwear enjoys a global market share of 1.6 per cent. She’s also striking-looking, fabulously well-connected, funny and obsessed with art. I went to their headquarters near A Coruña, Spain, to find out more about one of the most influential women in the fashion world. 

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jo Ellison

Francesco is the third generation of the Sersale family to be involved in Positano’s Le Sirenuse, a sprawling oxblood-coloured testimony to old-world glamour that first opened in 1951. The hotel has done much in the intervening decades to cultivate the very sensibility Francesco is unpicking: thousands of tourists – mostly American, mostly couples – flock to the hotel’s terraces each summer in search of their own slice of lemon-scented Amalfiana, and the Sirenuse sits at the fore of any itinerary for affluent adventurers in search of their own neo-realist Italian fantasy. Blame John Steinbeck, that midcentury Baedeker who arrived in Positano on an assignment for Harper’s Bazaar in 1953 and was quickly captivated by the “old family house converted into a first-class hotel” managed by the Marchese Paolo Sersale, who happened to be mayor of the town.

“Positano bites deep,” wrote Steinbeck in his dispatch. It’s an observation that has become an unofficial slogan for Le Sirenuse, which sells T-shirts printed with those very words from its boutique opposite the hotel. 

While Dolce Vitality sounds pretty, it’s as punishing as hell

Steinbeck was smart enough to recognise the geological and economic challenges presented by promoting a town that clings so precipitously to a vertical escarpment. “There are about 2,000 inhabitants in Positano and there is room for about 500 visitors, no more. The cliffs are all taken.” He clearly didn’t reckon on social media. In fact, some five million visitors now chug along the Amalfi Coast each summer, and its towns have become an essential feature of the influencer life – #AmalfiCoast has more than 514m views on TikTok. Having witnessed the tidal surge of visitors attempting to move along Positano’s narrow lanes on the last Sunday in October, I can only imagine the glorious absence of visitors that Steinbeck once enjoyed. 

For Francesco, who joined the business in 2020 after a stint in New York, the future of Positano lies in the opportunity to open up the region to travellers by offering a quiet extension to the season. For the past year, he has been working on Dolce Vitality, a week-long programme, open to 24 guests, of walking, sunrise yoga, massage and fasting (or let’s call it very mindful eating) that bookends the summer months – when the weather is cooler, the plant life is more abundant and the crowds are largely gone. 

So far, so brutal. And I’m doing an abridged version of the official week-long programme, which involves daily yoga and Pilates (plus personalised body-composition assessments, tailored pescatarian or vegan menus, and daily massages). We’re taking part in only two of the customary five hikes, I’ve rescheduled the sunrise yoga for a more humane 9.30am, and I’m not even considering the wellness menus because there’s no way I’m forgoing the breakfast buffet: an orgy of gluten-rich, dairy-heavy, carb-loaded deliciousness that would make any self-respecting wellness guru weep. That would be la vita insanity.

But you don’t have to sign up to a week’s wellness programme in order to pimp your Amalfi adventure for the healthier. Anyone can enjoy the myriad walks that interconnect the isolated hilltop villages. Sure, people are familiar with Il Sentiero degli Dei – The Path of the Gods, a former mule track that runs from Bomerano to Nocelle, just above Positano. But why shuffle up a hackneyed tourist path with hundreds of other people when just alongside it is the almost unknown Croce di Nocelle, a circular walk that takes you to the summit of Monte Vagnula, with its dramatic cliffside hideaways, before plunging back down through the village of Montepertuso and past the old merchants’ villas of Liparlati? Or there is the Casterna Forestale, a four-hour walk through cypress and pine forests which, between 1951 and 1976, was taken every Sunday by a priest from nearby Vico Equense – and where you are unlikely to encounter another soul.

While Dolce Vitality sounds pretty, it’s as punishing as hell

The hills offer an entirely different perspective on a landscape that one could reduce to a few clichéd sunset views. But they aren’t easy. On the second day, walking alone with Giovanni because my daughter has refused to leave the hotel balcony (and who can blame her?), we ascend a seemingly endless concrete stairwell that is no more emotionally fulfilling than doing 30 minutes on a stairmaster. But when the concrete finally gives way to the mountain paths, one is immediately struck by the seabird’s vantage. The air feels different, smells different; it all looks almost Alpine in its lushness. There’s something psychologically reassuring, too, about walking ancient paths once used by villagers for whom there existed no other routes. Giovanni recalls his grandfather schlepping down the mountain with sides of pork to trade for firewood multiple times a week. Children would walk these paths to school. When people attribute the long lives and fortitude of Italians to their Mediterranean diet, they forget that, until recently, huge swaths of the population used to walk a daily marathon as well. 

Back at the hotel, the massage therapist tends to my tender calf muscles with the ministrations of a sumo (regular Dolce Vitality guests have the option of Theragun “percussive” massages). I then consider leaping into the spa’s ice-cold plunge pool – but opt to eat a pizza and drink a Limoncello spritz instead. The morning yoga, led by a sweet American, Jennifer Warakomski, further saves my muscles from spastic atrophy. 

Meanwhile, Positano has begun its gradual shift into the long winter hibernation. The beach jetty is dismantled and the boat crews start saying their goodbyes. There’s a chill in the evening, and I can book a restaurant with ease. I take a last dip in the Mediterranean and feel the exquisite melancholy that accompanies the final gasps of summer heat. After three days, I not only feel vital, I feel like a Roman goddess. Albeit one whose glute muscles are so sore she needs to grip her ass walking through the airport on her way home. 

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jo Ellison

Although last year we were spared some of the more pernicious Covid variants, the HTSI fun house has recently been plagued by a buffet of basic ills. And, as we start a new year in which we might optimise our overall immunity, I am drawn towards ingredients and tonics that will put me back in finer health. Recently, I was intrigued to hear Professor Tim Spector of King’s College London, a specialist in genetic epidemiology, argue that we could eradicate a host of common ailments (as well as weight issues) if we ate at least 30 different plants a week. It didn’t matter much about your diet, whether dairy- or gluten-free or vegetarian – instead we should be eating as many different vegetables, fruits, nuts and spices as possible to encourage a greater diversity of gut microbes. As new year challenges go, I think it’s quite a good one. While I had not heard of yuzu kosho or sea buckthorn until I read about them in this week’s Food & Drink section, in an effort to stimulate my microbes I will be giving both a try. In particular, I like the sound of the yuzu kosho, a spicy fermented condiment that, according to its fanbase, promises to “pop” your every meal.

Feeling good is as much about our mental health as our activities or diets, and two other articles in the issue reinforce that fact. Kate Chapple writes candidly about how equine-assisted therapy helped her to process her grief following the death of her father. And Louis Wise talks to Rachel Whiteread, Phyllida Barlow and Alison Wilding about a friendship that has been foundational to the trio’s long careers. The sculptors are about to mount a joint exhibition, Hurly-Burly, to which each has contributed at least four works. But it’s the role they have played as each other’s advisers, champions and occasionally mentors that is really cause for celebration here. Having someone you can vent, laugh, cry and be with in a crisis is always key to a healthy psychological outlook: these “friendly witches” are testament to the power of pals.

Having someone with whom you can vent, laugh and cry is the key to health

We also have more straightforward feelgood items: from the fashion story shot by Rasmus Weng Karlsen and stylist Kristine Halken in cycle-friendly Copenhagen to an interview with the German über-facialist and creator of the “vampire facial” Dr Barbara Sturm. Sturm speaks to Kathleen Baird-Murray at home in Gstaad, shortly before she heads to London to host an “anti-inflammatory Haus”. We’ve also got the latest sex aids, should you be interested; it would seem a dereliction of duty not to include something so fundamental in an issue about getting the very best from life. 

Lastly, take a tip from Léo Walk, this week’s Aesthete, and clear away your excess furniture. The French dancer and choreographer describes life near Père Lachaise, and the apartment from which he enjoys a Paris-delicious view. “I keep my home quite empty and minimalist,” he says of his spartan living room. “The more space there is for dancing, the better I feel.”

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jo Ellison