My favorite pastime as a Bassett Baby (Angela Bassett fan as my friend Gabbie likes to call us) is arguably archiving. And chances are I will talk about this more at length in the future but to make it short, I love collecting videos, pictures, scans and interviews of hers on my computer. Right before the start of the semester I spent a week digging through thousands of old newspaper clippings to find hidden Angela gems.

One such gem I found was actually Angela's workout routine for What's Love Got to Do With It as told by her personal trainer back in the 90s. Now I unfortunately am not one to go to the gym very frequently. I have tried and succeeded in the past but only for about a month or two. And that was almost eight months ago now 😬

If you ask me, these probably aren't the best conditions for me to try a workout routine as extreme as Angela's when she was preparing to become the rock legend Tina Turner. But I only have 10 days of my gym membership left before I leave the country for five months so I might as well give it my best. Who knows if the gym at my university in the US will have a StairMaster?

Requirements

The Spokesman Review - August 8, 1993

According to the article, since she only had 30 days to get in shape, Angela's workout routine would last 1h30 to 2h a day, six days a week and included

• 20 minute warm-up on the StairMaster
• 6-8 sets of 12 repititions each for arm and back muscles with weight machines, dumbbells and barbells for an hour or so
• 12-15 reps of leg extensions, leg curls and calf raises (assumably in the same hour)
• 30-50 reps with a lighter weight on the leg-press machine
• unknown number of squats and lunges with barbells
• 10-15 minute cool-down on the StairMaster

This of course does not include her dance training. Needless to say, I will not be able to do all of this and I am also 99% sure she never did ALL of this in one single day but alternated these different exercises on different days of the week. Since I won't make it to the gym six days a week, I will try to pick my favorites of these for one day. That is my plan.

Since there are some diet tips in this clipping as well, I will also try to eat similarly on this training day because if pre-What's Love Angela and I have one thing in common, it's our screwed up metabolism due to a low-cal diet (mine isn't a conscious one, I just often don't eat enough on accident).

Breakfast

Unfortunately, I was unable to cook any eggs because we didn't have any clean pots. So I opted for two fried eggs instead (six would be a bit much for me). Additionally, I ate some oatmeal with honey and raisins. I would say, a successful start.

See my yummy breakfast to the right.

:)

Workout

1. First things first, the StairMaster. Now, I have been eyeing this machine for a long time now but never actually went on it so this is the perfect motivation to finally try it out.


Since Pump Up The Jam has always been on my workout playlist, I started with that (referencing the article) and climbed on the StairMaster level 3 for 20 minutes. It was pretty chill but I did start feeling it in my butt around 13 minutes. I also imagined Angela on the StairMaster next to me in the 90s, a very beautiful sight (in my mind) indeed.

2. The first arm exercise I did was the Butterfly machine. Now I'm not sure just how crazy Angela was but I chose to interpret the 6-8 sets as 3-4 on each arm because I'm still on beginner level and I wanna manage to go on more than one machine 😂 so I did 10kg, 4 sets on each arm with 12 repititions each. So far I'm doing well, let's see what we'll do next.
3. The next machine I went on was the bench press. Since I don't have a spotter, I'm not using the barbell but the machine was hard enough lmao. I tried to do 3 sets of 12 repitions of 15kg but had to split the third set into 6 and 4 repititions (for reference, my arms are literal sticks).

4. For the leg exercises it didn't specify the amount of sets so I did my usual 3 sets of 15 repititions with 20kg on the leg extension machine.
5. For the first time I also tried the calf press with 10kg (level 4). I did 3 sets of 15 repititions which was definitely enough for the beginning 😅 I already know my calves will hurt tomorrow.
6. The rowing machine is one of my faves and I did 25kg 4 sets of 15 repititions.
7. Another one I hadn't tried before was the leg curl machine. I decided to start with 20kg, 3 sets of 12 repititions.
8. Before the final leg exercise on the leg-press machine, I opted for the pull down machine for my arm and back muscles with 25kg 3 sets of 12 repititions.
9. Finally the leg-press machine. I had to keep reducing the weight to make it through the 30 repititions (I used to do 3 sets of 15 with heavier weights). I settled on 29kg and did 3 sets.
10. Now an hour and around 20 minutes later I'm doing the cool-down on the StairMaster again but this time only for 10 minutes because my strength is officially leaving me.

Now unfortunately I forgot to have a protein drink before my workout so for the sake of this experiment I decided to treat myself to one after (I've never had one with my workout).

Lunch/Dinner

After my workout I went to the store to buy me a drink and food for "lunch" which I also probably should've eaten before the workout but hey I'm not perfect.

Apparently Angela ate a can of tuna for lunch. I hate tuna. Did I buy a can of tuna? Yes, I did. Did I attempt to eat it for the sake of this experiment? 🤢 yes, I did. I'm not gonna talk about how much it smelled like my cat's food and how I only managed to finish about 70% of it but I'm proud of myself for trying 😭 it's supposedly healthy after all.

In addition Angela would eat vegetables and complex carbohydrates. I had to google what that is and it seemed like the snack bowl filled with chickpeas, couscous, lentils and hummus fit the definiton pretty well and it tasted good, too.

It was near impossible to find a good vegetable snack. I opted for a so-called crudités salad with 76% vegetables in it 😂 unfortunately I was too full from the carbohydrates, I didn't manage to eat any of it until hours later.

For my protein drink I found a nice banana-flavored one.

Aside from the (disgusting) tuna (yes I ate it straight out of the can, which my sister later told me is not the way to do it), the food was very good and filling. So much so that there was no room for dinner left.

My Conclusion

Though as a beginner with no personal trainer - and no motivation to get into Tina Turner-shape within the next 30 days - I was unable to do all the exercises Angela probably did on a daily basis - and I certainly did less sets and had to leave out the weights and squats and lunges (mostly because I was too self-conscious to go into the weight room and also didn't have a spotter) - I found that the exercises themselves were fun and a lot of them already part of my own routine.

I tried out three new machines including the StairMaster, which is my favorite result from this experiment and I was fully tired at the end, which isn't a point I push myself to every time I work out. I like using Angela as a workout motivation to push myself to be my best self. After all, who doesn't wanna have Angela Bassett arms?

But, of course, I also know even she herself has never replicated that insane routine six days a week again in her life. What she had to put her body through for What's Love Got to Do With It was brutal and I'm glad she now gets to work out on her own terms. She's certainly never stopped looking fit and beautiful and her arms are forever legendary 🥰