Yasmin Karachiwala is the go-to fitness trainer for Bollywood celebrities

Mumbai: While Katrina Kaif made a lot of hearts skip a beat with her killer looks in Bang Bang, Deepika Padukone is also back, scorching the screen in the song Lovely from her soon-to-be released film, Happy New Year. And, both have one person to thank, fitness trainer Yasmin Karachiwala.

Yasmin’s journey as a fitness trainer started nearly 23 years ago, but it took a turn when she started pilates training eight years ago. Her first celebrity student was Kareena Kapoor and after that there was no looking back. She has trained Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif, Alia Bhatt, Preity Zinta, Ileana D’Cruz, Amrita and Malaika Arora and many others.

So, how different are her celebrity students from each other? Yasmin says, “Everybody has their weaknesses and their strengths and I enjoy working with all of them because they all have different kinds of bodies and different needs. Like Deepika is an only pilates person, we don’t do gym at all. And Katrina loves to do gym, and she does whatever the requirement of the hour is. So we do gym and a lot of high-powered workouts. Alia has just started working with me two months ago, so she’s very excited because everything is very new for her. Alia does pilates every day, and gym on alternate days.”

Yasmin admits actresses have started taking their fitness more seriously these days. “Priyanka did a role like Mary Kom recently and Katrina did acrobatics in Dhoom 3. It’s not like an actress takes the first shot and then a stunt double does the rest of the scene while she is there just for her face. All actresses are working hard to fit the roles that they have been signed for. And they are not behind men when it comes to performing in action scenes. While men go for muscles and six and eight pack abs, for actresses it’s more about being lean and flexible,” she says.