Cross Training for the Complete Body with Hollywood Trainer Jeanette Jenkins

Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side, it is Wellness Wednesday, and joining us today is celebrity fitness trainer Jannette Jenkins. She's breaking down the science behind getting a good workout and feeling good too. It's Wednesday, July seventeenth. I'm Simone Boyce.

I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to share women's stories, to laugh, learn and brighten your day.

Danielle, this is such an exciting day on the show. We get to talk about our love of fitness because you know we're both fitness girlies.

Yes, indeed, how many times are you going to talk about your protein intake?

I'm not going to talk about.

It that much. Not that much, Okay. I want to know more about your fitness journey though. I'll start like I'll tell you I have been working out for what seven eight years now, but I feel like I spent so much of that time not knowing what I was doing at all, Like being in the gym and having men correct me on my form and I.

Just didn't know what I was doing.

So I feel like once I got the knowledge about having proper form about what exercises worked for my body. That's the moment that everything changed. What was the moment? How'd you learn experimentation? There's really no other way. It's just trial and error.

I like that.

I've learned that doing weighted cardio is what my body responds to best. And that's what makes me feel good too, is having an elevated heart rate through those workouts, because I have a hard time doing static cardio like you know, forty five minutes on the treadmill or stare master. I just I have too much add for that. So I like a little more like aggression. We've talked about this. You love to lift weights too.

Oh yeah, I feel like strong body, strong mind. But I didn't always feel that way.

Actually.

I grew up as such a creative girl, like I wanted to write poetry and write music and sit in my room and watch TV. And my mom is a big fitness girl, and she said to me, we got to move our bodies.

We got to move.

I don't care what you do, we gotta do it.

And so we laugh now because I think she tried to put me in anything like soccer, gymnastics, and I would you know, I just hate it it all, and one day I started to dance and then that was it. I fell in love and I loved being in touch with my body, and so I think dance set me off on the right track. Since then, I've been working out and you know, now my sort of litmus test is I only pack in a carry on, and so can I lift my carry on, which I pack very

Well, you touched on something that I think is really essential when it comes to everyone's fitness journey, and that is finding the movement that brings you joy. Because if I don't like running like it's not going to get done, I'm not going to do it. The body of the mind does not benefit. So we gotta be centering joy in our movement.

Speaking of the word joy, I don't know if this resonates for you, Simone, but when I have been at some of my saddest moments, I will make sure that I'm moving. Like I remember when I got my heart broken, the first thing I did was sign up for a triathlon because I was like I'm so sad, I'm just gonna lay in my bed and.

Never get up.

I better sign up to train for something.

Listen, I'm sure a lot of us have been doing these experiments with our fitness routines, going through some trial and error, and honestly, it can seem overwhelming these days because if you feel like you're bombarded with fitness information and misinformation all the time, I mean, you're not alone. There's always a new trend, new gear, and new promises of the perfect weight loss solutions in my algorithm all the time.

Oh yeah, the new trends are just the worst. There's always just so much noise, and it can really be hard to decipher what's truth from what's fiction when it comes to what actually helps us live healthier lives. So instead of sifting through tons of books, tons of Instagram posts, tons of magazines, tons of articles, our guest today is here to cut through all of that noise in thirty minutes.

As she should be after three decades of teaching experience. She's the creator of the Hollywood Trainer Club, which is her own virtual gym that you can join, and her roster of celebrity clients includes Pink, Alicia Keys, Tracy Ellis, ross Nia Long, Serena Williams, and Olympic gold medalist Laurie Hernandez, just to name a few.

I love a lot of things about Janette Jenkins, and one of those things is that she approaches fitness and training from a heart centered place and a scientific perspective.

You're so right, Danielle. I love the way that she does both.

And just to hype up her bona fides for a second, Jeanette studied human kinetics at the University of Ottawa and has earned over eighteen international certificates, so she knows a thing or two about living healthy. Plus she's part of the Hella Sunshine family. Shout out Hella Sunshine Collective.

We're getting into all of that and more after the break stick with.

Us, Jeanette.

Welcome to the bright Side.

Welcome Jeannette. I'm so happy to be here.

Okay, So, Jeannette, you have been in the fitness game for thirty.

Years thirty four to be exact.

Now, every trainer I know has their own approach like, Yeah, some trainers have a pilates base approach, some have a strength based approach, some have an endurance based approach. Can you describe the Net Jenkins fitness philosophy?

Because I'm a planner, I'm a virgo, we are architects. So very early in my career, I made a tagline for my business and it was called cross Training for the Complete Body. Yeah, and that was actually my first VHS series was Cross Training for the Complete Body. And it was actually before even CrossFit existed, So this was before I was literally using cross training as a terminology. And the reason why was because I came from the

The range of motion that they needed.

I know from my experience of working with so many athletes that that was a commonality. I think personally, the category mobility was created so that the tough guys could do stretching without it being called yoga or pilates.

You know, my grandfather before he passed away at ninety years old, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he thought long and heard. He had this full life, and you know what he said to me, what I wish I would have stretched more?

Oh my god, at.

Ninety he really said that, that's all.

And he was serious. He was like, he called me Dolly.

He said, Dolly, you stretch every day, right, so you're you're onto something. If we rewind a little bit, yeah, how did we get to this? Janette Jenkins that we know what got you into fitness initially.

So my initial love for fitness literally came from having an older brother. And I think that older brothers need to get the dow props that they deserve because I didn't. I I think wasn't. Caitlin Clark has an older brother, and so it does. Like Sabrina Yenesco, like a lot of really good female athletes have an older brother that they played with when they were kids, So like.

Look into that.

I don't have the research, but I know I hear it quite often. My case, I had an older brother who was like literally Olympic level like Gregel Roman wrestler, but he was an all around athlete and he literally was one year older and he was my hero.

It was like I want to play with him.

So as a little girl, it's like my mom would be like take your sister with you, take yours as our white day, oh wherever.

You know. He was literally like my babysitter.

But I just wanted to play, and so I ended up playing all these sports at a young young age so I could play with him. And then you know, when the kids are picking teams and you get picked before all the other boys, so you're not like last I was like, oh shit, I'm good because they're picking me before they pick like have these guys. So we'd be playing like flag football and they'd be like, well like Roger's little sister, and I'm.

Like, Cathleen, I run. It was a huge compliment.

So like there you are, like six years old and you're being like picked before some of the other guys.

I was like, I'm good, So, Jeanette.

Eventually your client list grew to include people like Alicia Keys, Tracy Ells, Ross Pink, Serena Williams, and olympians Lori Hernandez and Sean Johnson. Well, I know it's hard to choose a favorite, so we're not gonna make you do that, but I do want to hear some stories about tenacity, about work ethic. Who's a client who's really blown you away in their training?

I mean, hands down, Pink is pretty incredible when it comes to like all of the components of fitness, the strength, cardio, flexibility work.

She fully accepted that it.

Was important to do all of it, being able to do acrobats and aerial silks, dance perform and you know, and she still has that pressure where she's doing covers of like Women's magazine and stuff, so of course she still wants to look amazing, and I understand that that type of pressure, and like I would started training Pink in twenty eleven, right when she had her baby.

After she had Willow, who's now thirteen.

We took a year training to get her ready for her first video release of Try, which was the first song to be released on the Truth About Love album and I'll never forget. We'd not have been training maybe like six or seven months, and they were gonna start working on the choreography, and her team was like, we need your trainer to come into the studio. My life at studio because like it was really a sound stage at Sony.

I was like, Oh, she big time.

Like normally when I go and get someone's choreography, it's like in a little dance studio.

I was like, we pull up to the Sony lot.

They got entire sound the whole like sound stage and one silk hanging from the ceiling.

I was like, Oh, she a bass balls. So do you call her Pink when you're in sessions with her?

Sha? Of course, Asha, I call Alisha. That's my girl.

And that's the thing is that we respect each other like I respect her. She is a boss, and I show up on time early, I'm prepared.

I don't mess around.

Like the thing with celebrities is they have so many things on them that have to get done, hiring the best makeup artists, hairstylist, wardo. It's like, if you're not the best and you're not helping them make their career better or helping make their day better, helping make everything better, then you're out, like they will replace you so fast. So that was the most incredible respect, like feeling like if there was a bucket list client.

I could have, she would have probably been.

In just because like everything that she does physically I already loved. So when I walked in and they played the song for the first time I'd never heard it, I actually started crying. And then when the video was done, I remember, I fully remember, there's literally a picture of us walking the streets of New York going to train in Tribeca, and that was the day that she showed

It's like you're part of the team.

Is there a client who has a story or a success story that particularly stands out to you, Like, is there a celebrity client that came to you with a certain goal in mind that they like really achieved or had some setbacks.

I mean they all have like incredible stories. One I can think of, just for performance wise, would be a Journey Smollett.

She did incredible.

Action sequences in Birds of Prey, which was a Harley Quinn movie, and like the amount that we trained, like literally she would know the choreography that she would get from the stunt director and we would be like every day in the backyard like practicing her actual choreography.

And she killed it in that movie.

And she's actually doing a TV show right now, an action one with Apple TV.

Cool.

Yeah, it's a called Firebug and so it's gonna be released in January and it is.

You're such a good hype woman.

I know. I love my girls. It's amazing.

I love them, And you asked me, and it's like, yeah, I'm super proud of her because doing action is not easy, like to learn all the martial arts sequences and stuff. Like I trained also Paula Patten for Mission Impossible, and we again it's like you're they have a stunt coordinator and they and the stunt coordinator teaches them what to do, but then it's up to them to continue practice and practice and practice so that when it's time to shoot, they got it and they're ready and they look good

It's one thing to do the fight choreography. It's another thing to make it look effortless and seamless. Yeah, that takes a lot of training and practice.

You have trained people who are the best in the world of what they do, right, like Serena Williams, Alicia Keys, Pink, the list goes on.

You have really intimate moments with these women.

Yeah. Is there a through line in these people that you see that you think helps make them successful?

Okay, uh, well, first of all, I want to rewind on the Serena one because that was like so long ago. I literally just pulled up some bitches. It was like in two thousand and seven was when I met her, and I can remember actually too. She DMed me on Twitter when before like when it was actually Twitter and asked me if I could do some nutrition stuff with her. So I did a metabolic test on her, which was really cool because you don't always get to do metabolic testing on clients.

And that's what the test said, right, But uh.

Yeah, and then you know the through and then I did a little bit of yoga and pilates with her, and what I noticed through that was that her genetics were phenomenal. I remember a couple of times saying to her, your genetic phenom She'd be like, what do you mean by that? I was like, girl, they don't make them like you, like your muscle integrity and everything is just incredible.

I love that you mentioned genetic body types. Yeah, so ecdomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot of debate on it because this the genetic body types were made up by a psychologist slash scientist researcher by the name of Sheldon. Everybody studied them in psychology.

He made these.

Body types based out of observation. Okay, And so the important thing that you can see is, and that is scientifically known, is that we're all biogenetically unique.

So basic, how do we identify that? Then basically, what you need.

To realize is that when you do a strength training program, and simone does a strength training program, and all three of us could do the exact same strength training program, and what we are going to look like at the end of it is going to be completely different. And so I think it's it's cool to have the name so people can kind of, Okay, I'm more of this

And then a mesomorph.

Would be more of your athletic body type, like a gymnast, like a Sean Johnson, like a Jana Jackson, like a pink like a me you know, like we're more muscular people. We have what's called more medium fast twitch muscle fibers. Then an endomorph is somebody who is more volumptuous. It's your more like Marilyn Monroe type of Ashley Graham, right, like someone who's more volumptuous. Then you have sometimes people who are kind of like a mix. I always like

Like, but she's also muscular.

Yeah.

Right, So here's the biogenetically unique. There will never be another Naomi Campbell, there will never be another Ashley Graham, there will never be another Serena Williams. Well.

I think it's cool to have this framework because it does help minimize that urge to compare yourself to other body types that you might see online. And also the cool thing is you can still change your body type through the training that you do.

No, you can't change your body type, but you can do the best that you can with your body type. Otherwise, yes, if you just lifted weights, we'd all just be able to get as big as we want it. But it doesn't happen that way. Some people can just look at weights like you put weights in my hand. I'm gonna put on some muscle. It's my genetic makeup. And research has shown that medium fast twitched muscle fibers they hypertrophy the most.

And we start lifting weights and we look jacked.

Yeah, And I know from my experience, and I have had so many women who are mesomorph body types too, will say to me, Jenett, I gotta you know be in this movie Da da da, You cannot make me jacked, And I'll be like, Okay, No, problem, Like I understand the plate.

So it's important really before you are training to really understand your body type.

Yeah, is to understand it based on what your goals are trying to be right and to love the body type that you have. Right, So like someone and here's an example, right, So we used Ashley Graham as an example, as like an endomorph body type, Ashley can train as much as she wants. She's never gonna turn into a Gigi hadid do you know what I'm saying. So a Gigi would be more of an ectomorph, and Ashley's an endomorph and gg can train till the cows come home.

That's what I'm trying to say is that.

You can do the best that you can in both performance and esthetics with what you have. Like, the problem that I see over and over in the fitness industry and even more so because of social media, is people who don't want to accept their genetic makeup, like this is your genetic makeup, love your body. Do not go through your entire life trying to change who you are. You will be absolutely miserable because you're never going to

I'm learning so much and just talking to you, and I love hearing you debunk some of the narratives that we constantly run up against online, and I think for a lot of women, one of the biggest challenges is navigating all the conflicting advice around diet, exercise, metabolily. It's really hard. So I do want to point to a twenty twenty one study from the journal Science that found that metabolism doesn't drastically slow down as we age, at least not until after sixty.

We all grew up.

I grew up hearing that your metabolism is going to start rapidly declining once you hit I don't know, end of your twenties. What's your take on metabolism these days? What's the latest science on metabolism and muscle.

I know I've seen some of this research as well.

Yeah, and I personally from my own personal experience of someone who's lived in the fitness industry and how I personally feel from like twenty to now I'm turning fifty. Yeah, Like, yeah, no, I don't get the results at fifty that I got when I was twenty. So maybe they are right when it comes to metabolism, but the hormones are definitely changing, and in order to get the results of both muscle hyperchaphe and fat burning, you need to be having proper

We all get to be twenty one once, so like, live.

It up when you're twenty, live it up when you're thirty, live it up when you're pregnant, live it up post mommy, live it up in your menopause years. Like what I'm saying is that through all the stages, be grateful that your body is up, it's strong, it's moving, it's healthy, and be grateful for the years that you've had in it and that it.

Carries you through your life.

One of my favorite ways to justify anything I want to do is say, on this day, I will be the youngest I ever am on this very day.

That's or never be younger in the mess.

Yeah.

True.

It is a good perspect As you get older, you appreciate the wisdom of Like, I have no desire to go back to I was in my twenties.

I loved it.

I had a great time ripping and running these Hollywood streets. I got some stories, girl, But I'm perfectly content in my cozy little almost fifty, you know what I mean, doing all my virtual work and being able to travel around the world and work out my own schedule.

Like you know, I have my glass of wine and.

Like you appreciate all the eras. Okay, Jeanette, we have to take a short break, but when we come back, we want all the details on your workout routine.

So don't go anywhere, y'all.

And we're back with celebrity fitness trainer Jeannette Jenkins. Okay, Jeannette Tell me what your workouts look like. Now, like, how many days a week are you working out?

And what do you do? I work out every day seven.

Yeah. And the reason is because if you were to look at all of the research, okay, and there is enormous amounts of this.

Exercise literally delivers.

You hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of health benefits. Like number one, it decreases your risks of heart disease. Heart disease is the number one killer worldwide. Number two, It helps stimulate new brain cell growth. It helps with your cognition, It helps with hormonal regulation.

It helps so that you can be nice to the people.

It help race weather, Spintata said in Legally Blonde, Happy people just don't kill their husbands, right.

It helps with like circulating oxygen through the body, and like it helps decrease your risk of so many illnesses, and the list goes on and on and on.

It helps with digestion and elimination.

It helps so that you can actually have Like I understand that a lot of people work out because they want to look good.

It helps you look good.

Well, Okay, So at the beginning of this convo, you gave me the Jeanette Jenkins philosophy.

Yeah, and it was like cross.

Cross training for the complete body.

So Monday, what are we doing?

So mondays, I usually start off with cardio because I'm like, yeah, it's Monday, boss to the wall. So it'll either be a cardio And this is exactly how I designed my club, right, So I have a virtual gym, the Hollywood Trainer Club, and every.

Day somebody logs in.

They have these various types of workouts, So cardio could be a mixture of like cardio kickboxing, cardio drills, cardio sculpt but yes, it is a cardio workout, and or if I decide it's an outdoor run, it's.

A is that like thirty minutes or that's an hour.

It could be arranged from thirty minutes to hour.

Myself, personally, I enjoy doing at least thirty to forty five minutes of actual cardio. I will do a good fifteen to twenty minutes of foam rolling and stretching.

Love it, okay.

And then the rest of the week, are you strength training three days or more?

No, I will strength train sometimes only two days, two to three because I'll.

Do one day a heavy lower body okay.

So that's heaviest weight, because I think that a lot of people don't understand that, like especially women, that heavyweight training is necessary to keep your bones strong. So we're talking like six to ten repetitions so that you can get maximum out of your muscle maximum hyperchurphee.

Now there's an more enormous amount of.

Resource that shows that if you're doing pushing the most weight you can in that six to ten rep range, then you're gonna get the most muscle hyperchape. So yes, as a woman who's getting older, I want to make sure that my muscles, you know, are are strong and that they look good. I'm trying to get that hypertrophy and my body so right, So you need six to ten reps. Baby, If you can do more than ten reps, you need to increase the weight.

Okay, okay, you heard it from Janette.

Then same upper by core and then so that's three days. Then I always have a day of either yoga or pilates or a mix of the both.

Movement is such a huge part of your ethos, Like, yeah, where does that come from?

It literally comes from a place of service.

Honestly, here's the CrossBridge, right, I grew up in government housing.

Okay, so that means my little butt was broke.

But my family was really full of love and we had a lot of fun, and I watched Oprah all the time, and I learned really young.

That you have to find what you love to do and find a way to offer it to millions.

And so I was like, Okay, that's what I'm gonna do, and that became my love for fitness. So then as I was going through college in the nineties, basically I had to decide that, you know, you're going to college, you have to decide what are you gonna do that's gonna make money. And I was like, it has to be something still that's around sports, because this is what

Hour, whooh, that changed me forever.

I was like, oh my God, like you in sixty minutes, you can take someone who feels like shit, who might feel depressed, whom I feel sad, and you can totally just flip their world around and they walk out, and that affects the rest of their day. It affects if their mother, it affects how they mother, it affects their children, it affects where they go to work, it affects their

Where that tears coming from.

Because I think that that's how everyone found me. Like every single celebrity client that found me found me because I was loving what I was doing. It wasn't because I was like, oh, oh yeah, I did this photoshoot for shape and or you know what I mean, or like I think sometimes there's a lot of people in fitness that are in there because.

They're like, look at me, look at me, I'm so cute.

I'm so It's like if you're in fitness, because you're there you really want to service people and you really want to help them, whether it's helped them perform, help them with their you know, be better athletes, help them so they can move, help them be Like the give back to you is enormous. The people who take your class, they can see the difference.

They know the difference between someone who's there.

Who's in their face, who remembers their name, who encourages them, who like versus someone who's like up in the mirror looking at themselves, can't even remember your name, you know what I mean, Like it's a different you're showing up with a completely different intention.

A lot of times, I think people show up for that one hour. It's the one hour they have for themselves, so you really give them a gift.

Totally such a big heart, Jenette, Oh, I love how deeply you care about fitness, because it's so much bigger than just fitness. That term, I feel like doesn't even be get into As a.

Business woman, I have learned like you, I look at everything on masses. So then I decided, okay, yeah, let

But the point is that.

I always looked at the business of things, right It's like, Okay, then I need to make more streams of revenue. That's what the Hollywood Trainer started, is that I was getting asked all the time, can you do the Today Show?

Can you do Good Morning America? Can you do this? And I was like, I'm not doing these shows for nothing, like I pay exactly nobody knows.

And I said unless I have something to sell, and so I said, okay, let me make a product. And that was the birth of cross Training for the Complete Body. I literally looked up Hollywood Trainer and nobody had that website and I was like, well, they keep asking me because they're.

Like, we need a Hollywood Trainer trainer. I was like, okay, Hollywood Trainer dot com. Thirty dollars, there we go.

I'll give you a Hollywood Trainer And exactly like I didn't. I no, I wasn't in fitness because I wanted to be on TV. I was in finness because I actually wanted to be with the people.

Yeah, before we let you go, we love to leave our bright side besties with some practical advice that they can implement immediately. So for anyone who's listening who feels like they've maybe hit a plateau with their workouts, what's a piece of advice that you can offer them for a breakthrough?

Okay, the first is I want you to know. Number one is confidence looks sexy on everyone.

So whether you're at the top of your program, whether you're feeling a plateau, whether you're at the bottom, just own who you are and what you're going through and be sexy about it. Like there's gonna be times where you might be twenty pounds heavier, you're bloated, Like, have a couple extra wardrobe items, you know, a couple of those flirty dresses that you know with the empire waste and stuff like you have to adjust for those times.

They have like let me tell you, and nobody walks around flexed all the time.

No, absolutely not.

So number one, Please always be confident, even at the bottom, you know what I mean. My other top one is also own your happiness because I see a lot of people and it's I think It's a normal thing as.

You go through your years of like, oh.

I'm going to be happy when I get married, or I'm going to be happy when I have kids, are going to be happy when I get this job?

Like you, literally, it is your choice.

Every day if you want to be happy through it.

It's harder to do in practice. It's really good advice even on.

The daily basis and you're like, Okay, you know you want to experience this, or you want to go eat at this restaurant or whatever, make the plan and go.

If someone can't go with you.

You know, one of the greatest things I learned is that when you go do the things that you love to do, you know what happens. You meet people there who love the same thing that you love. You meet people who are at your level doing the things that you love to do.

So like, yeah, don't wait, make your life happy.

Make your life happy, Jeanette beautiful last words, thank you so much for him hanging out with us.

You're welcome, Thank you, Jeanette.

Jeanette Jenkins is a celebrity trainer and fitness expert. She's the founder and president of The Hollywood Trainer LLC.

That's It For today's show, y'all Tomorrow, we're joined by Olympic champion and commentator Sonya Richards Ross. She's here to talk resilience, winning gold, as well as what to expect at the summer's Paris Games.

Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm simone Voice.

You can find me at simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.

I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok.

That's ro b A. Y See you tomorrow, folks.

Keep looking on the bright side.