A Trampoline Workout With Busy Philipps Unleashed My Inner 10-Year-Old

Photo: Getty Images/Charley Gallay/Well+Good Creative
When I was 10 years old, 3 of my favorite things were Dawson's Creek, Special K Red Berries, and my best friend Lily's backyard trampoline. We used to spend our weekly sleepovers perfecting our backflips and watching Joey try to decide between Dawson and Pacey over bowls of cereal. With that in mind, it's safe to say that I had a major "pinch myself" moment last Friday morning when I found myself bouncing on a trampoline next to Busy Philipps. It's like I was 10 again.

Let me back up to provide a little context here: Philipps partnered with Kellogg's for the launch of their new gut-friendly line of probiotic, prebiotic and fiber-packed cereals, HI! Happy Inside (ICYWW, her favorite flavor is strawberry, too). To celebrate, the brand invited a group of editors to work out and hang out with Philipps, which is how I found myself jumping along beside her. After a quick trampoline session, I wasn't just sweating, I was smiling. And for Philipps, it's the second part of that sentence that really matters.

The actress, who shares her sweaty trampoline workouts from LA's LEKFit studio to Instagram every day, has been vocal about how just how important exercise is, not only to her physical fitness, but also to her mental and emotional well-being. “I sweat every day, I have to," she says.

But when we sit down to chat and sip on post-workout smoothies (again: pinch me), she admits this wasn't always a case. "In my 20s I only worked out when I had to. I always looked at it like a chore," she says. "Then, after I had Birdie, I started working out with Lauren [Kleban, founder of LEKFit] and it became something that I really looked forward to for all aspects of my health."

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Philipps seems to have tapped into something that I personally have been thinking—and writing—about a lot recently: Workouts are, yet another way, to spark joy in life. For one thing, she's found a routine that she truly loves. More importantly, perhaps, over the last decade she's taken the emphasis off the physicality of exercise and placed it on the internal benefits instead. "I don’t weigh myself at all. I can’t," she says. "That was an obsessive thing for me in my 20s, and I think that was really tied to the dissatisfaction of working out and the chore of it, and making it all feel like something I had to do, as opposed to something I wanted to do."

Like my new BFF Busy (sorry, Michelle Williams—she's mine now), I, too, recently stopped weighing myself, and it completely changed the way I approach working out. Instead of suffering through miles on the treadmill or bootcamps I don't enjoy, like Philipps, I've dedicated myself to finding workouts that magnify the mind-body connection. And bouncing on a trampoline—the same way 10-year-old me loved to do every Friday night and Saturday morning—was a reminder that exercise can be fun. In fact, it should be.

Some other things I learned from my conversation with Busy Philipps: She hates disc exercises ("They’re so hard, and also I get so sweaty and then they stick to the floor," she says) and loves recovering with Espom salt baths and trips to the infrared sauna.

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