This Victoria's Secret Angel trainer and his secret weapon are coming to London

Stephen Pasterino does not prescribe sit-ups or crunches. He has banned squats and planks, he does not recommend barre or Pilates, and will not countenance lunges. Pasterino — he prefers P — trains a gang of Victoria’s Secrets girls, including Nadine Leopold, Hannah Ferguson, Devon Windsor, Romee Strijd and Blanca Padilla, and spent three intensive weeks in his Bowery studio in the run-up to the casting on September 4, teaching classes absent of any of the moves usually used to turn models into Amazons.

Instead, Pasterino’s modus operandi is low-intensity interval training, building the “mind-muscle connection”, and creating “symmetry in your physique”. He is in London to spread the gospel and launch his secret weapon to the London market — the P. Volve ball, a piece of equipment that is, he says, the reason his studio is poaching disciples from SoulCycle, once the byword of the NYC fitness scene. You can get one for £46 on his website — about the price of two classes at a boutique London studio.

This magic weapon is a ball you wear between your thighs — which does not sound like rocket science, though it took two and a half years and 30 prototypes to get here. It’s designed to target “the belly button to the mid thigh”, and area that is “notoriously hard to reach,” Pasterino notes.

Strap it to your thighs, squeeze and then complete small, functional movements like side and back steps, toe points and leg raises. “You can feel the muscles working. The inner thighs are muscles that are hard to turn on and change.” As is the lower stomach, he notes. “The ball facilitates that.”

Working out with one takes a bit of getting used to. As Pasterino observes, “it’s very hard to get a ball to stay between your thighs”.

Even with the adjustable straps, you have to do a fair amount of squeezing to keep it there, which doesn’t hurt too much at the time, but the next day my legs are fizzing. I cycle to work and work out regularly; the ball made me feel positively unfit, which probably meant it was working.

Pasterino specialised in rehabilitation at the Gray Institute, a functional training institution, and you can trace this lineage in his workouts. This, for a start, is where the aversion to sit-ups started.

“Many abs workouts are exercises that put pressure on the back. The P ball tightens everything up, but without putting pressure on the back.” Plus, these moves can distort the silhouette. “With planks and sit-ups, the muscles start to build out. It looks unnatural. My clients don’t want a six-pack — they want to be lean and toned. They want a waist.”

Indeed, his emphasis is on sculpting, whether you’re a 21-year old VS model, or one of the women in their 30s, 40s or 50s who attend his waitlisted classes. Each session takes an hour and typically involves “15 or 16” small movements, stepping, stretching, elongating the body, with the ball, resistance bands, or light weights. He sticks to eight reps apiece — unsurprisingly, he doesn’t like the AMRAP (as many reps as possible) mantra that underpins most high velocity HIIT classes.

A second New York gym is coming, and Pasterino streams videos live from his website, and has subscribers tuning in from Indonesia, Dubai and Australia.

Above all, “the idea is not to burn your body out. It’s to get keep the stress levels low — you get muscles working, not breaking down. It’s low impact and sustainable.”