Dakota Johnson is heating up the red carpet in an ab-baring look. At a Madame Web photocall in London on Wednesday, the Fifty Shades star showed off her incredible body – including washboard abs – in a cropped blazer and skirt. How does the 34-year-old approach diet and fitness? Celebwell has all the details on her lifestyle habits.
Luke Worthington, who is one of Dakota’s trainers, told Vogue that the star prefers working out at night. “No matter how long her days were, we would get the workout done. Dakota is more of an owl than a lark, so workouts were often late at night, rather than early morning – we were quite often at the gym at 9pm,” he said.
“Dakota likes to get her heart rate up and feel like she’s had a workout, so I had to make a structure that worked for her,” Worthington said about her “strength basis” workouts, which generally lasted 80 minutes, four times a week. She did mini circuits of upper body, lower body and core exercises. “We did a lot of single leg glute work, which tends to make it a little easier for people to focus on the specific muscles they’re trying to work,” he added. They also did a lot of “single leg hip thrusts, TRX hip abductions and single leg deadlifts.”
Dakota would also do bouts of boxing between circuits. “[Boxing] is what I call disguised cardio, because you’re focused on learning and practicing the skill, rather than on how hard you’re working,” Worthington said.
Dakota also gets her steps in. “Walking is a great form of low intensity steady state cardio (or LISS),” Worthington told Vogue. “LISS training has been shown to have positive effects on emotional wellbeing, sleep patterns and even hormonal health. The advantage of LISS over something like HITT training is that there is a much better risk to reward ratio – we can all enjoy the same benefits with minimal-to-no risk of injury, and no real recovery time required. You can walk every day.”
Dakota gets at least 10 hours of sleep a night. “I don’t have a regular [wake-up] time,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “It depends on what’s happening in my life. If I’m not working, if I have a day off on a Monday, then I will sleep as long as I can,” she continued. “Sleep is my number one priority in life.” She confessed that she’s “not functional” unless she gets at least 10 hours. “I can easily go 14 hours.”
“I will get in a bathtub at any moment, any time of the day,” Dakota added to WSJ. “If in the middle of the day, I’m like, ‘Oh God, what is this world?’ I’ll get in the bathtub.” She added, “I find water really grounding.”
Twice a day meditation sessions also help with her anxiety. “I do transcendental meditation,” she explained. “I’ve been really into breathwork recently and that’s been helping me a lot with anxiety.”