- Tracy Anderson devotees are frustrated over rising prices and power struggles in the Hamptons.
- It costs $5,500 to book a preferred mat for the summer — on top of the $900 monthly membership.
- Drama recently arose when a client got the schedule changed — and others started a petition to reverse it.
Tracy Anderson clients are up in (toned) arms, griping about skyrocketing prices and favoritism at the upscale fitness studio’s Hamptons locations.
For Hamptonites, a Tracy Anderson membership is a status symbol akin to owning a waterfront home in Southampton or nabbing an invite to the billionaire Michael Rubin’s annual White Party. But while the high-intensity dance cardio class has always been a favorite of the 1%, some devotees say the two Hamptons locations have turned into a chaotic, overpriced mess.
TA charges up to $90 per 55-minute drop-in class at its Sag Harbor and Water Mill studios — nearly double the price of a Hamptons SoulCycle or Barry’s Bootcamp class. To reserve a mat for the summer out East (which essentially lets people save their favorite spot in a class), clients have to be members (which costs $900 a month) and pay a $5,500 mat fee — a price that’s nearly doubled in the past five years.
Then there’s “Vitality Week,” a series of wellness activities and workout classes led by the chain’s eponymous founder. Anderson is charging just under $6,000 for four days, or eight times the price of a similar summer Hamptons retreat hosted by her fellow celebrity trainer Anna Kaiser.
“It’s a little bit ridiculous,” said the makeup artist Dani Levi, a TA member who goes to classes in the Hamptons.
The prices mean only the wealthiest people can afford to attend TA. Which has laid the groundwork for some titanic power struggles. “They’re queen bees September through May in Tribeca, but when they’re mixed together, the dynamics shift,” said one former trainer who worked in the Hamptons in recent years. “That’s the point of this whole thing: power and ‘I have money’ and ‘Do you know who I am? Do you know where I live?'”
“You can’t just work out; you can’t just enjoy it,” another former Hamptons trainer added. “There’s always drama.”
(Some people who talked to Insider asked to remain anonymous for professional reasons or for fear of becoming a social outcast for criticizing Anderson’s business. Anderson didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Major drama played out earlier this summer at TA’s Water Mill studio. One morning slot was intended to be a MyMode class using the $4,000 equipment set Anderson launched last year. (The set includes a custom wooden staff, a box, and weights.) But a wealthy client who’d paid to reserve a mat for the summer asked the studio to change it to a regular dance class, and the studio complied. The woman’s classmates were furious and started a petition to change the class back to MyMode, multiple people said.
In the Hamptons, much of the tension arises between longtime members (many of whom are friends with Anderson) who feel entitled to having everything cater to them and younger nonmembers who do drop-in classes, said one nonmember who attends Hamptons classes.
“If by mistake you go to class, and it happens that you go to a mat that is not your mat, you may have someone screaming at you,” she said. “It’s the Hamptons.”
Many of Anderson’s followers have been frustrated by the chaos. Several pointed out that TA’s longtime Hamptons studio manager left just before the summer season, and a current Hamptons trainer said the manager hadn’t been replaced. In prior years, this studio manager had a pulse on which women would actually show up for their reserved spots, said the Hamptons classgoer. “Members can be booked all the time, but half of those ladies don’t even show up,” she said.
Nonmembers have had an especially hard time getting into classes this summer, people said. Members have priority booking for classes: They can register a week in advance, while nonmembers can’t book until two days before the class. One person who attends drop-in Hamptons classes said she tried to get into classes for weeks but couldn’t get off the waiting list. She said she finally made it in after emailing a specific TA employee — a loophole her friend told her about.
Many TA trainers who work at the NYC studios avoid teaching in the Hamptons during the summer months, the former trainer and a current trainer said. Hampton trainers typically don’t get paid more, they’re cut off from their lives, and the schedule can be more intense and the clients more entitled, the two people said. Instead, the company flies in trainers from TA’s California and Madrid locations.
Katia Pryce, the founder of DanceBody in NYC, worked as a TA trainer more than 10 years ago. Pryce said drama in the Hamptons was nothing new. “Everyone’s mad at each other,” Pryce said. “It’s all mean-girl vibes all the time.”
Despite Anderson’s antagonistic reputation, her diehard fans remain loyal
Anderson rose to fame as a celebrity trainer in 2006 after landing Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna as clients. She opened her first fitness studio in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood in 2009 and now runs an empire with locations in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Los Angeles, and Madrid, as well as a $90-a-month streaming platform. She sells TA-branded apparel, workout equipment, and even the custom flooring found in her studios.
Amid her success, Anderson has developed a reputation for being cutthroat. She’s accused former TA trainers of stealing her “method” — a dance-based workout in a 95-degree room with 75% humidity — bad-mouthing them to employees, clients, and the press. Last year Anderson sued one of her former trainers, the Sculpt Society founder, Megan Roup, accusing her of copyright infringement and breach of contract. Roup denied the allegations, and the suit was later dismissed.
Despite Anderson’s reputation, her followers are devoted. A-listers such as Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. have had TA trainers come to their Hamptons homes for private sessions. One woman, Elisa Arcaya, called TA classes her “daily mass” and said they’d helped her cope after her son was in a coma following a golf-cart accident. Another, Arianna Siegel, said TA attendees “become literally addicted to it.”
But being a TA regular in the Hamptons will cost you. Every spring TA sends out the summer prices via email, prompting a frenzy of aggrieved text messages, Levi, the Hamptons member, said.
On top of their $900 monthly membership, there’s the mat fee. In 2018, the price to reserve a mat for the summer was $3,000; this year it’s $5,500. “It’s jaw-droppingly insane,” the former trainer who made the “queen bees” comparison said. This year’s Hamptons Vitality Weeks — one in July and a second this month — cost $5,995 (or $1,200 virtually), more than triple the price in 2012, when the event was called “Hamptons Detox Week.”
But that’s not deterring Anderson’s fans. Irene Nederlof flew from Amsterdam for July’s Vitality Week as a birthday gift to herself, selling a couple of bottles of vintage wine at auction to help offset the cost. “It’s not cheap, but it depends on what you appreciate in life,” she said.
Claudia Saez-Fromm, a real-estate agent in New York City, said she’d attended Vitality Week several times, including this past July. She has friends who fly in from London and Miami for the event. “It connects us,” she said. “That’s why we like the method: It connects all these like-minded, entrepreneurial women.”
Even as some Hamptonites gripe about TA in their group chats, they’re hesitant to do so in public. “I think no one wants to appear that they don’t have the money,” Levi said. “Especially having very big homes in the Hamptons, multiple kids in private school, I think that the Tracy Anderson bill is the last thing on their list.”
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