janet jackson: janet's abs take best washboard award

No flab: Janet's abs take best washboard award

LOS ANGELES — It's crunch time for Janet Jackson and envy time for the rest of us.
On Grammy night last week, the Staples Center crowd buzzed about the singer's amazing six-pack abs when she stepped on stage wearing low-cut jeans and a long-sleeve pink crop top.

The next day Jackson's taut midsection was discussed on the Today show. Weatherman Al Roker said he thought he'd seen her on the cover of Men's Health, a magazine known for men with muscular abs.

"I think she's the fittest female celebrity around," says her trainer, Tony Martinez, who began working with the singer five years ago. "People can do their laundry on her stomach."

According to Shape's Winter 2001 issue, Jackson, 35, began seeing nutritionist Tony Perrone in December 2000 and eventually dropped four sizes, to a size 0. The formerly chubby singer started getting buff about a decade ago.

"I'm still really insecure about my body," she told Shape. You'd never know from her Grammy outfit.

"She's just so shy about that," Martinez says. "Her body is tremendous. She puts a lot of hard work into that. She's a very humble person."

He laments how Jackson's abs get all the attention, when he says her arms, back and legs are incredibly shaped as well. He works with her one to two hours a day, five or six days a week, and accompanies her on tour. She works her abs only 10 to 15 minutes a day, three times a week.
"Whenever you do any kind of exercise you're always contracting your stomach," Martinez says.

Her favorite ab exercise? Hanging upside down from a bar and lifting her body from her midsection. He mixes up her workouts with boxing, basketball, tennis, snowboarding and hitting balls in a batting cage. Next up: surfing, if Martinez gets his way.