The gates of the Élysée Palace usually open only for limousines. The
presidential staff park their vehicles outside the small courtyard on the
rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. But several times a week, they make an
exception and the tall wooden doors swing open and a chic young woman drives
on to the gravel aboard a motor scooter. Julie Imperiali, 26, comes to give
Nicolas Sarkozy his workout, applying her patent method to make him stretch,
sweat and run. Putting the President in touch with his pelvic floor, the
former dancer and gymnast sculpts his shape and boosts the famous energy
that earned him the name “Speedy”. She has been doing the same for Carla
Bruni, the recently installed Première Dame, for the past four years.
Imperiali says that in ten months she has helped Sarkozy, a teetotal chocolate
addict, to drop nearly 4kg (8.8lb) and two trouser sizes. “His body has
radically changed,” she says. “He is a dream pupil. He is always ready and
motivated.” Her method - focusing on the perineal muscles at the bottom of
the pelvis - not only improves posture and delivers a healthier body and
mind, but it also improves the sex lives of all her clients, Imperiali
claims.
“Sexual relations are better if the male perineum is in good shape. The
problems of premature ejaculation are often due to the perineum,” she says.
Pilates and yoga also stress these muscles as part of the body's core, but
working the perineum has long been a French favourite, especially for women
after childbirth. “The Anglo-Saxons are a bit prudish about this and say
that they don't know what we are talking about,” Imperiali argues.
The presidential trainer, who is as svelte and self-possessed as you would
expect, described what she calls her Tectonic method while sitting in the
flat near the Eiffel Tower that she is turning into an exercise space.
Building on her success among a circle of wealthy clients, she has just
started an internet (www.tectonicworkout.com) business with Marc Imperiali,
her businessman husband.
The former French aerobics champion and dancer met him when she was working at
the Ritz hotel health club, a favourite spot for fashionable Parisians. That
is also where she ran into Bruni in 2004. The supermodel-singer and former
foe of monogamy was intrigued by the big “balance ball” that Imperiali uses
for her sessions.
“Something clicked. We got on and she hired me,” Imperiali says. “Carla is une
bonne vivante. She loves beer. She smokes. She likes good food. But she
obviously has an irreproachable constitution. I didn't have to change much
in her diet. She felt better and better. She had a back problem and we fixed
it. Sometimes we were doing five days a week with 90-minute sessions.” Bruni
brought Imperiali to the President after the couple's lightning courtship
and marriage last winter. Super Sarko had made running the image of his
presidency when he jogged out of the palace in shorts accompanied by
François Fillon, his Prime Minister, on the day that he took office in May
2007.
A running president was a French revolution and Sarkozy was widely mocked. No
French leader had ever proceeded at anything beyond walking pace. No one
could imagine the stately Charles de Gaulle or François Mitterrand breaking
into a sweat. The images of the pint-sized Sarkozy pounding the pavements
did not work because he looked silly. His [posture was awkward and he was
thick around the middle. Last winter, as part of a makeover of the
presidential image, Sarko kept the T-shirts and shorts out of sight and
began jogging in the seclusion of the sumptuous high-walled garden between
the palace and the Champs Élysées. Since last April, Imperiali has been
running alongside him. She has also changed his eating habits and broken his
evening chocolate consumption, she says. “He was un sportif, but he didn't
have the right methods. He used just to run and run and run without being
aware of his body.
“We worked with a cardiometer and reworked his way of running. Now he runs
faster and more solidly. He is doing about 10kph in the garden. I see him
between two and four times a week. We run for 15 to 45 minutes then do
muscle reinforcement and stretching. He doesn't talk much about work. He
needs to blow off the stress. We talk about everything and nothing,
sometimes about intimate matters.”
The President, who is known for his hot temper and impatience, is all charm
with Imperiali. “I had imagined him très speed and he certainly is but at
the same time he is very human and kind. He can be impulsive too.
“Sarkozy is the first French president to have a personal trainer so I am very
honoured. The first time I arrived at the Élysée, I was super nervous. I
asked my husband to take me in the car like a little girl going to school.
Going into the palace in a tracksuit and trainers worried me. Passing
through the Republican Guard in the corridors was surreal. Now I drive into
the courtyard on the scooter!”
With Bruni, Imperiali coaches indoors, working out to soft music. “Carla says
‘Julie, I can do my gym alone but I will never do it so well as with you',”
she says. Imperiali confirms the general view that the Bruni-Sarkozy
marriage has calmed the “Hyper-President”, who was in a bad state after
Cécilia, his last glamorous wife, walked out on him in October 2007. “Carla
has a very healthy way of life. She is not a jet-setter. They complement one
another. Sometimes he says to her ‘Thank you for Julie'. You can feel the
complicity, the way that they take care of one another.”
Imperiali, who grew up in a small town on the edge of the Alps, puts
everything down to her dedication to fitness. “I have lived and breathed
sport since I was a little girl,” she says. Her method of “Tectonic
Wellbeing” is a mixture of diet, stretching and other sports techniques. “My
work is 60 per cent psychological and 40 per cent sport. It enables you to
reconnect the head with the body.
“The perineum is the key to the method. It was taboo for a long time. It was
something for pregnant women. But the perineum is the floor of our body and
if it's not kept in shape it is as if you had a house with no floor. You can
become incontinent, your organs descend and you have bad posture. By
becoming conscious of your perineum you become aware of the interior of your
body.”
So how do you get in touch with your perineal muscles, I ask with Anglo-Saxon
modesty? “You have to imagine that you have a burning need to urinate and
hold it in. That works for men as well as women,” she says.
Imperiali, who took a sports degree at Lyon University, says that you should
be constantly aware of these lower muscles. “You should hold in the navel so
that the four walls of the house - the abdominals, the laterals and lumbar
muscles - are really rigid. You should base your breathing on this and
little by little it becomes automatic. Your waistline shrinks and it's as if
your wearing a corset.”
The right food is also crucial, says Imperiali, who, like Sarkozy, is a
non-drinker. “But I am married to a Belgian, who is a big eater and drinker.
I am in favour of excess. I learnt from him and my clients that you have to
make do. Idon't forbid anything. Everything is a question of balance. I
advise my clients to dissociate things and put others together. They should
eat pasta with vegetables or meat with vegetables. Junk food horrifies me.
It is better to eat a protein bar than a ham sandwich.” And you should drink
a lot of water and, when you over-do it, take a day off food to detox.
Imperiali charges her clients £100 to £150 an hour. She won't name any others
apart from Karen Mulder, a Dutch former supermodel, but talks of other
“members of the government”, business people, lawyers, and Qatar and Saudi
princesses. Most clients are women and she sometimes travels with them on
holiday. “I give eight or nine sessions a day. I allow half an hour to get
from one to the other by scooter or motorbike. That's enough in Paris,” she
says.
She is now expanding the internet business, started last March, which is aimed
at people who cannot afford personal trainers. You sign up for €1 a day
(90p) and Imperiali prescribes a 20-minute routine and eating programme and
supervises your progress. “It's not a slimming concept. It's about wellbeing
and it's real coaching,” she says. “You choose between programmes for
sculpting your body or losing weight. We have 200 internet clients now and
it turns out that most of them want to sculpt.”
Her method is not sweat free. “There's no gain with no pain. But you don't
have to torture yourself to get into shape. The beauty of my method is that
it can be adapted to everyone.”
