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5 Things Jennifer
Aniston Always Does To
Get A Sculpted Upper
Body
Straight from her trainer.

BY AMANDA LUCCI MAR 28, 2020

CHRISTOPHER POLK/E! ENTERTAINMENT / GETTY IMAGES

There are a lot of impressive things about the

one and only Jennifer Aniston, but here's just
one of them: The Morning Show star is
literally so in shape that her trainer,
Gloveworx founder Leyon Azubuike, says it's
difficult to keep up with her.

"She works so hard, and I’ve never really seen

anything like it," he tells Women's Health. "You
constantly, as a coach, have to stay on your
toes and make it challenging."

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Clearly, her effort in the gym is paying off—

her sculpted arm and back muscles are all the
proof you need. Here are the rules Jen and
her trainer swear by for a strong upper body.

1. She always starts with

mobility work.
"You can’t just hop into an explosive
workout," Azubuike says. "It’s very important
that you get your mobility work in, and [work
on] your range of motion" before you start to
go hard.

"That’s where a lot of people get it mistaken,

because they feel like if they’re sweaty, and
their skin is warm, that they’re actually
warmed up," Azubuike says. So before Jen
starts a tough upper-body workout, she
stretches out with 15 minutes of yoga-based
moves and then foam rolls before turning up
the heat with cardio.

Here are her go-to warmup moves:

Cat Cow

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How to: Start on hands and knees, knees

under hips and shoulders over wrists. Tops of
feet should be Sat on the mat. Inhale,
bringing gaze up to the ceiling and belly
button toward the ground. At the same time,
open chest and move tailbone toward the
ceiling. Then exhale and curve back toward
the ceiling, pushing shoulders and chest away
from the mat. Draw belly button toward
spine, and tuck tailbone under.

Bird Dog

How to: Start on hands and knees with toes

tucked under, knees under hips, and
shoulders over wrists. Reach left arm forward
while reaching left leg straight back with foot
Sexed. Pause when foot and hand are in line.
Return to center, and repeat with right arm
and left leg. Keep back Sat throughout.

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Downward-Facing Dog

How to: Start on all fours. Tuck toes and lift

hips into air, extending legs to straight and
shifting weight back into feet so body forms
an upside down "V" shape.

Butt Kicks

How to: Start standing, core engaged. Bring

right heel behind you to touch right glute.
Bring right foot back down to ground, then
repeat on the opposite side. Continue
alternating sides, and speed it up for an
added challenge.

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Jumping Jacks

How to: Start standing with hands by sides.

Jump legs open, slightly wider than hip-
distance, while bringing hands up overhead.
Jump legs back together and arms down by
sides, then repeat.

Jump Rope

How to: Start with feet together and arms by

sides, elbows slightly bent and hands clasped
like you're holding the handles of a jump
rope. Keeping elbows close to ribs, start
making circles with both forearms in one
direction while hopping feet forward, back,
and side to side.

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2. She combines pushing

and pulling exercises in
each upper-body
workout.
Jen is a longtime fan of boxing with
Azubuike. "It's the longest workout I’ve
actually stayed with consistently other than
yoga," she told In Style. "There's something
about the mental aspect of boxing—the drills,
your brain has to work, you're not just sitting
on a bike. It's amazing."

But to sculpt her entire upper bod, Azubuike

follows up her time in the ring with moves
that strengthen the opposite muscles she's
using to hit the bag. "With Jen, we like to
focus on a lot of push and pull," he says.
"Boxing is a very front-dominant sport, so you
want to pull it back."

For the Friends star, that means rows. Rowing

motions are great to counteract a boxing
workout because "you’re pulling the arms
back and you’re working on that posture, so
now we have a good balance," Azubuike
explains. Jennifer has been known to knock
out a plank sequence on the reg—holding a 2-
minute plank is a breeze for her—so in the
"pull" phase of her workout, she especially
digs doing renegade rows.

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Renegade Row

How to: Start in plank position, holding

dumbbells in either hand on the ground. Pull
right elbow toward the ceiling until right
wrist is near ribs, then lower it down. Repeat
on opposite side.

3. She focuses on one

move at a time.
While it may be tempting to do a bunch of
similar arm moves like triceps dips and triceps
extensions back to back, Azubuike says that
he breaks his upper-body workouts with Jen
into separate sets so she doesn't tire out
before she can get all her reps in.

"We want you to feel the burn at the top of

the set, like the 12th or 15th rep, but you
should always be able to complete it," he says.

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4. She sneaks abs into

every workout.
Azubuike never ^nishes an upper body
workout (or any workout, for that matter)
without throwing in some core-focused
moves. "Say it’s a Monday, we’re doing
triceps. We might slow it down and work
some triceps, and then we’ll put a core
activity on the end of that," he says.

As for the core moves Jen loves? You guessed

it: more planks. "We love to incorporate all
the various types of planks—forearm plank,
low plank, high plank, side plank," he says.
"That's one of those exercises that has all the
abdominal regions ^ring together."

5. She challenges
herself.
Jen is always looking for ways to level up her
upper body workouts. "She's working so hard
sometimes, she starts to change the move,"
Azubuike says. "We might be in a traditional
forearm plank, and she might start to do in
and outs with her legs. She’s like, 'It's too
easy!'"

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Even if you don't have plans to hit a red

carpet anytime soon, Azubuike says it's
important to push yourself wherever you are
in your ^tness journey. "What a lot of people
don't realize is that it’s not necessarily how
often you’re working out, but what your
actual intensity level is," he says. "It’s all
about gauging where you are as an individual
as opposed to con^ning yourself to, 'Oh, I can
only do this on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.'"

But it's still fair to say that Jennifer Aniston is

basically superhuman, according to her
trainer: "She's a very, very special athlete."

Jennifer Aniston isn't just driven in the gym.

Watch this video to see how she's used that
talent to see serious gains on the big and small
screens too.

LEARN MORE
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AMANDA LUCCI
Amanda Lucci is the audience engagement manager at
Women’s Health.

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