Meghan Markle’s Royal Wedding Fitness Routine Takes Hold in Houston: Everything You Need to Know About the Lagree Method

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series on Houston’s burgeoning exercise scene — and the fitness boutique trend.

All eyes are on bride-to-be Meghan Markle as she prepares for her May wedding to Prince Harry. It may be sad, but it’s certainly true that every bride is under pressure to get fit before they get fitted. From boot camps to kickboxing, options abound.

The Suits actress needed to choose the best fitness regime before she finds her place in the British regime. And Markle is sticking with a celeb-approved workout to get wedding ready: The Lagree Method.

The method, favored by the famous, including Victoria’s Secret models, Kim Kardashian West and Michelle Obama, dates back to 2001. Sebastien Lagree opened his first studio that September. Classes have evolved since then, but they still center on The Megaformer. The machine is said to burn fat, increase flexibility, improve endurance, and jump-start the metabolism using a sequence of resistance and counter-resistance periods.

The Houston Area has four official Lagree studios, spanning from West University to Spring. PaperCity spoke to Deb Miner, owner of Wicked Core (which has two of the four studios) to learn more about the princess worthy “Pilates on steroids.”

“Lagree has been around 10-plus years, but it’s new to our area,” Miner tells PaperCity. She opened her first studio in Spring in October 2016. By May of 2017, she’d opened her second, this time in Tomball.

Opening two studios back-to-back was a whirlwind, but Miner fell fast and hard for Lagree. “I took my first class downtown and just fell in love with it. I thought ‘Oh my goodness, I have to do this!’ ” Miner says.

She took her first class in May 2016,  just five months before she launched her Spring location.

The full-body conditioning workout method sparked an entire life change for Miner, who recently taught her 1,000th class. “I’m a CPA, I was a CFO,” she says. “I left the corporate world behind to do this.”

The Lagree Way — Shaking Yourself Fit

The Megaformer M3S was designed to bring together elements of Pilates, cardio, and weight training. Despite its similarity to Pilates and her personal gym’s name, “Wicked Core,” Lagree is not simply a core-focused Pilates class.

“People get too hung up thinking that it’s Pilates,” Miner notes. “It’s truly not Pilates. It’s full-body, and we spend about half the class on legs.”

Strength training, cardio, flexibility — it’s all combined in one high-intensity, low-impact workout.

The Megaformer uses adjustable spring-loaded resistance for customizable resistance. The Lagree Method has more than 200 exercises and more than 1,000 ways to perform each of them. Each exercise can be modified to your level of fitness by adjusting your position and the springs to either beginner, intermediate, or advanced.

This level of personalization means it can be used by men and women of all ages, even if they’ve had injuries.

On the machine, your slow, deliberate movements activate slow-twitch muscle fibers, which means more stamina and higher oxygen capacity of your muscles.

All of that allows your body to burn energy for longer periods of time. Activating slow twitch muscle fibers helps you “lean out,” because they don’t make you bulk up the way fast-twitch fibers do, Miner says.

This approach is responsible for the rapid change in body composition, according to Miner. “After three weeks of doing classes you feel stronger and even look different in the mirror,” she says.

The Megaformer “makes you sore in spots you didn’t even know existed,” she says. The obliques are a regular target, a muscle group many other workouts overlook. There are ways to modify the workouts to make them harder or easier. But across the board, you should expect to shake.

“Your muscles are literally shaking in the class. Our slogan is ‘Embrace the Shake!’ You notice that for sure within 10 seconds of your first exercise,” Miner says.

Classes are 45 minutes long. For best results, people should take classes three to four times a week.

Wicked Core

Miner offers both private classes and group classes, which have 12 Megaformer machines available. With so few machines, “it’s as close to personal training you can get without paying for personal training,” Miner says.

Wicked Core sells class packages, ranging from 1 to 20 classes for $35 to $400, respectively. Memberships are also available, starting at an eight-class package at $168 to an unlimited package for $300. Look online—some packages have commitments for a certain period, and others do not.

The appeal appears to be widespread.

“People that were never into fitness have come around,” Miner says. “A lot of clients that had never really worked out before tried it and love it.” On the flip side, “some clients have tried everything under the sun to work out, and this is what they stuck with.”

Miner wants people to take the same approach to The Lagree Method that she took to opening both Wicked Core studios. “Jump in and try it. Just run with it,” she says. “If you overthink something, it’ll never happen.”

HIP Fitness at 2294 W Holcombe and Sculpt Fitness at 3334 Edloe Street also offer the Lagree classes.