Vicki Anstey: 'It was hardcore 24/7'

From the advertising industry to the Andes, fitness trainer Vicki Anstey has scaled every peak. Fiona Adams listens in awe...

It is a Friday afternoon in late February when I finally meet fitness trainer and entrepreneur Vicki Anstey at her Barreworks studio in the heart of Richmond. We have tried to hook up a couple of times over the past month, but as I discover, Vicki is a very busy woman. 

The studio – which offers barre and ballet workouts – is warm and welcoming, yet – with its weights and other exercise paraphernalia lining the walls – also dedicated to fitness. The only downside is that there is not a chair to be had in the place. And so, for the first time ever, I find myself conducting an interview cross-legged on a floor cushion. While I shuffle about and change position, Mortlake resident Vicki is clearly happy and comfortable in her space.

“Barreworks is an amazing place!” she enthuses. “We’ve been here 10 years now and I have an incredible team. So many of our current clients have been coming forever and demand is still high. We have new people all the time.”

Clad in lycra, which – she confesses in a slightly embarrassed tone – takes up most of her wardrobe, Vicki is certainly a walking advert for health and fitness. Today her hair and skin are flawless and her smile bright. A far cry from the Vicki I’ve been watching on TV pushed to the edge of endurance as recruit number 17 in Channel 4’s brutal survival series, SAS: Who Dares Wins. 

Last year the Ministry of Defence announced that, from 2019, SAS selection would be open to women for the first time. In response, Channel 4 decided to send 25 men and women to a remote part of the world where they would live together for 11 days, having their mental and physical strengths tested to the limit. Mel Deane, Vicki’s personal trainer, suggested that his client apply. Recently turned 40, and divorced from the husband she met at university, Vicki was in the mood for a challenge.

“I thought Mel was joking. I hadn’t honestly thought about it… but I had got to the point where I could do life on my own and make decisions for myself, and I couldn’t get SAS out of my head.”

After a tough physical assessment in Newcastle, involving bleep tests, press-ups and carrying 20kg jerry cans, Vicki found herself being sent for cardiopulmonary exercise and psychiatric testing. Still not sure whether she was actually on the show, she received two boxes containing kit which she had to wear for training. Finally, she was given a week’s notice to be at Heathrow towards the end of September. Even at the airport, the recruits – as they were now known – were not told their final destination: the Andes, in Chile.

Vicki spent her childhood in North Yorkshire with her sister, Alix, mother Heather, a nurse, and father Michael, a metallurgist who ran his own business. 

“Looking back, I realize that the landscape was amazing and it was a beautiful part of the world to grow up in. Obviously, I didn’t really appreciate it at the time though!” she laughs. “I wanted to be somewhere with a bit more action.”

So, after A levels, Vicki set off for the University of Bristol to read French. With her degree safely secured, a career in advertising beckoned, first at agencies, then at Ikea and finally at Eurostar, where she headed up the advertising and marketing department. But while her career was definitely on an upward trajectory, the glitz and the glamour had begun to pall.

“I began to get a bit tired of it. When I started out it was all quite exciting, going to parties and the BAFTAs, but then you take the shine away and you’re basically selling furniture or train tickets. I just didn’t find it as fulfilling. 

“Also, in that kind of world, you almost have to neglect yourself. I started to question why I was giving everything of myself to something I no longer loved. I was neglecting my health, my fitness, and I was also drinking too much. That was the first shift into really looking after my body.”

Thus chastened, Vicki started running and, crucially, discovered something called the Lotte Berk method – an exercise technique drawing on ballet that forms the basis of modern barre – in a class under the arches of Kew Bridge. The workout changed her life and career.

“I created a new rule for myself, that I agreed with my boss at Eurostar: ‘You can have as much of me as you need for the rest of the week – every evening if needs be – but on Monday and Tuesday I’m going to do these classes that I love.’ Gradually it began to reframe my priorities. I’d never been particularly athletic, but I started to think: ‘I can do this; and if I can do it, anybody can.’ 

“I also had my marketing hat on. I’d always had a notion that I wanted to run a really beautiful shop – I have a good eye. But, as things have turned out, this studio is the shop and barre is what I’m selling…”

Eventually, she quit her job and took on the studio. As the business went from strength to strength, so did Vicki; fitness and exercise became a way of life and a state of mind. This afternoon she has already done three hours.

“Honestly, I’m obsessed by it now. It’s a lifestyle.”

Does she ever have days when she allows herself simply to do nothing? To go on holiday and just do a bit of yoga?

“No, never,” she insists. “It’s just too hard to come back. And, truth be told, this is how I relax, although it’s also how I push myself.”

An average week consists of British Military Fitness in Richmond Park, CrossFit at Rosslyn Park, running with her dogs, classes at her own studio and – her latest obsession – slacklining: walking along a suspended length of flat webbing. Plus, of course, several sessions with Mel Deane. 

Little doubt, therefore, that Vicki is fit enough to have taken on SAS. Having watched the series, however, I am genuinely in awe of how she coped with not only the relentless physical challenges but the mental ones too.

In the opening episode, the recruits’ bus is hijacked and the pressure builds and builds. There are freezing rivers to cross, ice pools to be submerged in, mountains to climb, cliffs from which to jump, beastings in the parade square – all while the recruits are sworn and shouted at. 

Food and rest are in short supply and recruits are frequently removed, blindfolded, from their barren bunkers for questioning. Anyone can leave at any time, while some are actually asked to leave, which they must do without question. Nor are there any concessions for the female recruits, who are expected to carry as much as the men, run as fast and last as long. All recruits live cheek by jowl, sharing sleeping spaces and crude toilet facilities, regardless of gender. 

So was it all as brutal as it looked?

“Yes, it was hardcore 24/7,” says Vicki, who made it to the final. “There were occasions when we had a laugh and mucked around, but you knew that at any second that could all come crashing down. You lived in constant fear and anxiety, on pure adrenalin. Lights would go off at 11 pm and you’d think: ‘There’s no point in even taking my boots off. I’ll just sit at the end of the bed until someone comes through the door screaming at me to get out on the parade square.

“The worst bit was that permanent state of anxiety. Four or five days in and it was really quite overwhelming. You don’t know what’s coming next. We pretty much take for granted the control we have over our lives, but here there was a total loss of your own time.

“There were so many great bits though – certainly the people that I was there with, all amazing individuals. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. You feel fiercely protective of each other: you are looking out for someone else’s life and they’ve got your back too.”

The final involved endless interrogation and mental torture. After seven hours Vicki chose to quit.

“You can be as mentally tough as you like, but nothing prepares you for that. I was freezing, colder than I’d ever been in my life. We’d had no food or sleep for 48 hours and were physically at our lowest ebb. I started to feel that I had done enough. I’d completed every single task, but I was starting to worry about my mental state, so I made a rational decision to withdraw.”

Just listening is exhausting. But Vicki, despite the hardships, loved the experience and has emerged a different, stronger individual.

“I’ve learnt that I’m capable; that humans are capable of a lot more than they think,” she reflects. “I’m not saying we should all endure hard times and awful things, but if you push yourself – put yourself in situations that you think you can’t cope with and come out of them – you get a deeper sense of who you are. It’s so empowering. If we all got a bit grittier, a bit more resilient, the world would be a better place.”