Hollywood trainer who can take years off you (without you breaking a sweat)

He’s helped Nigella, Claudia Schiffer and SARAH VINE. Meet the...

Here’s a question for you: what could samuel L Jackson (Hollywood megastar and all-round legend), Nigella Lawson (goddess, domestic and otherwise) and Margot robbie (stunningly beautiful star of the upcoming film Mary Queen of scots) possibly have in common with a dumpy middleaged mum like me?

On the face of it, nothing: but, actually, the answer is David Higgins.

In the case of Jackson, Higgins helped the 70-year-old actor repair the agony of a dislocated clavicle while on the set of the movie Kingsman. In my case, he fixed the agonising lower back pain that dogged me after the birth of my youngest child.

I don’t normally keep such stellar company, and back then — 2004/5 — neither did David. He was in his early 20s (he’s 36 now) and not long in the UK from Australia, via Los Angeles. He’d not yet built up his reputation as one of the best body rehabilitation coaches in the business; nor was he in demand by the likes of Claudia schiffer and Naomi Campbell for his ability to help sculpt a shapely glute.

He was, of course, always Higgins — earnest, rather serious, self-effacing — but, unlike now, he didn’t have half of Hollywood’s A-list on speed dial.

For my part, I was on my knees. I had two toddlers tearing around the place, forever swinging them around on my hips, and had had two C-sections in the space of 16 months. I was back at work full time and life was manic. I was exhausted, stressed and desperately out of shape.

In an attempt to regain some semblance of my pre-baby body, I had signed up for hot yoga classes. I thought the combination of sweating and yoga would fast-track me back to fitness.

Apart from the fact that doing yoga in a room of people dripping with sweat is neither a pleasant nor a particularly hygienic experience, what I hadn’t realised was that the heat warms the muscles and ligaments and makes stretching easier. Great for most people, but for me, already quite bendy naturally but with no core strength, it made me super-stretchy and super unstable.

SO stretCHy, in fact, that some time around the third session I managed to pull my lower back clear out of whack. I could barely stand up straight when I left the studio, and walking was incredibly painful.

It took quite a few days to regain any sort of normal movement. even then, my lower back remained agony.

Walking, driving, sitting, standing . . . it just seemed to hurt all the time. the constant pain and discomfort began to wear me down. I was grumpy, restless and I slept badly.

My GP sent me for tests and it transpired that as well as having mild scoliosis (hitherto undiagnosed), two vertebrae at the base of my spine were compressed — a common but agonising complaint.

I was referred to a specialist, who recommended surgery, but having already undergone two C-sections, I was loathe to sign up to more operations.

I wanted to try something else: my doctor suggested Pilates.

And that is how I came to meet Higgins. He was teaching a ‘reformer’ Pilates class — that is to say, using the pulley machines that have become fairly commonplace now but which, back then, were still quite novel — in a rather unglamorous warehouse in West London.

right from the start it became apparent that Higgins was a rare proposition. He had extraordinary attention to detail and, despite our clear cluelessness (we were five beginners), he seemed infinitely patient. He directed the class through slow, targeted, gentle movements designed to re-align posture and strengthen and lengthen the muscles.

the principle, he explained as he walked through the class adjusting hips and legs here and there, was to tackle the underlying issues — poor posture, misalignment, muscle weakness — that had led to our injuries in the first place. the pain was the symptom; the reformer Pilates was the cure, rebalancing, realigning, rehabilitating.

By the end of the first session, I was bizarrely exhausted. We hadn’t done anything energetic. Unable even to identify half of the muscles he was instructing me to use, I realised quite how weak I was, how little I understood my own body and the way it moved.

But that night, for the first time in ages, my back was less sore than normal. I booked a second class. I am not exaggerating when I say that it took just a few more sessions with Higgins for my back to be fixed completely. realigned, stretched, balanced, strengthened and — joyfully — mobile.

the pain had receded completely, my sleep had returned (infants permitting) and that awful grumpiness that accompanies constant physical discomfort had gone. I went from needing an operation to good as new in just a few weeks.

As with all forms of exercise, there are good teachers, bad teachers and a myriad in between. Higgins is in a league of his own.

It’s not just his downto-earth attitude and impeccable manners (unlike many in his profession, he’s no diva), it is the fact that he is passionate about movement and the need to get it right. Form and function are inextricably linked in the body. Poor form leads to bad function, and you don’t have to be an elite athlete like tennis champ Andy Murray for an injury to ruin your life.

Bad movement, misalignment, areas of weakness in the body are what, in many cases (barring unfortunate accidents), can lead to painful injuries which, if untreated, can be debilitating.

In Higgins’s new book, the Hollywood Body Plan: 21 Minutes For 21 Days to transform your Body For Life, he writes about the moment he first realised this.

‘When I was a kid,’ he says, ‘I remember seeing an old man whose spine had collapsed. He was walking at almost 45 degrees, and I remember thinking: “I want to help that guy”.’

As a teenager growing up in Australia, one of four brothers (his poor mother), Higgins got into Aussie rules football, playing at state level for Victoria.

then, at the age of 19, he was badly injured by an illegal tackle.

His ribs were torn from his sternum, and he dislocated his shoulder. In agony, he was told he

could never play contact sport again. that was when he discovered Pilates. through trial and error, he taught himself how to build up strength and movement in his injured shoulder, learning how to repair himself from within.

And that is the core principle of david’s new book of gentle exercises and what I, over the years, have learned from him. that it’s all very well having others manipulate your body when it’s in pain or out of shape, either through massage or physiotherapy or,

in extremis, surgery. but if you can learn to understand the way your body moves yourself, your own areas of strength and weakness, then you can contribute to the healing process yourself, from within, through targeted movement.

January is a time of year when many of us take up exercise, perhaps after a prolonged period of inactivity. Injuries are common. In our enthusiasm to shed those extra pounds, it’s easy to overdo it — like I did with that hot yoga class. It doesn’t take much to pull yourself out of, rather than into, shape.

It was my great good fortune to stumble across david all those years ago, when he’d only just graduated from cleaning gyms for £5 an hour and before he had built up his awesome reputation as the man to call when you’ve got a body like Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot’s or tom Cruise’s to keep in shape.

over the years we have stayed in touch — not only because he’s very good at what he does, but also because he is one of life’s good guys. I couldn’t possibly afford him now, of course, and neither could most people (when not working on set he now trains clients out of an extremely swish gym in Knightsbridge called bodySPace).

but that doesn’t matter so much because the book — with its simple pictures, easy explanations, generous advice and healthy recipes — tells you pretty much all you need to know.

If you want to make 2019 the year you finally get on top of all those annoying aches and pains, all those little niggles that have been bothering you and preventing you from enjoying a fit and active life, this is a great place to start.

It will help you build the foundations for a stronger, healthier and more effective body.

oh, and it will also give you a very nice bottom.