Trainer leaves ‘Le Reve’ for new NBC competition
As the strength and conditioning coach for “Le Reve,” Mat Miller trained some of the world’s top athletes.
As one of the 10 instructors on “Strong” (9 p.m. Wednesday, NBC), he trained an L.A. waitress with zero self-confidence and 32 percent body fat.
The process, he says, is basically the same.
“Everybody has a body, and we all work the same way,” Miller explains. “We all have the same joints. We all have the same muscles. … Reaching up to put something on a shelf or pressing 225 pounds over your head, they’re the same movement, technically.”
For “Strong,” the 34-year-old Las Vegan was paired with 25-year-old Nicole Bentley. The two trained together, ate together and competed in a grueling series of physical challenges together. The show is basically “The Biggest Loser” meets “American Ninja Warrior” with some of the gamesmanship of “Survivor” — or, for you younger readers, MTV’s “The Challenge” — thrown in for good measure.
Miller says he watches a lot of reality TV, but he wasn’t prepared for the strategy and the inevitable backstabbing. “We thought it was just going to be a competition and it was going to be, straight up, whoever wins stays, whoever doesn’t goes.”
Instead, the winner of each week’s challenge is able to send one or even both teams into an elimination battle inside a tower designed to test the strength and conditioning of both trainer and trainee. That sort of game play, Miller says, “put an enormous weight on all of our shoulders, on top of actually just competing” — which they often did with actual weights on their shoulders.
Miller spent eight years training the 90 cast members of “Le Reve” in 20-minute increments, 3 to 11 p.m. Fridays through Tuesdays. In addition to teaching them “movements and exercises that would enhance the show and their longevity on the show,” he was able to get cast members back into performance shape just six weeks after they gave birth.
“Working at ‘Le Reve’ allowed me to work with so many different types of athletes: swimmers, acrobats, gymnasts. And they were all the best at what they did,” Miller says. “So it really allowed me to learn a lot of different methods in order to achieve success.”
The opportunity to appear on “Strong” was too good to pass up, though, so Miller resigned from the aquatic show shortly before filming began.
“I still consider ‘Le Reve’ my family, and I miss working with them every day. But there comes a time when you have to pick yourself up and try to make a bigger impact,” he says. “And I felt that the platform that this show stood for was everything that I stood for, which is teaching people to focus on their nutrition. And eating enough, not restricting calories. And making sure that people understand, especially women, that lifting weights is healthy for them, and what they should be doing, and not just cardio-ing themselves to death.”
That last statement could well be the mantra for “Strong.” Executive produced by Sylvester Stallone, the series begins with the premise that it’s no longer just enough for women to be skinny. As a result, each episode’s stunning transformation that shows off the hard work of that week’s eliminated contestant also highlights each woman’s muscle gain. In addition to their new bodies, the women are competing to win weekly $25,000 challenges leading up to a $500,000 grand prize.
Since filming ended, Miller has been focused on a different type of instruction, working at Exotics Racing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, as well as training friends on the side. Now, as “Strong’s” debut nears, he’s biding his time to see what opportunities may come from the series.
But Miller has one particular goal in mind.
“More than anything, honestly, I’d love to go back for a second season.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch
