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What are some activities you can do, no sweat, thanks to muscle memory? I can dribble a soccer ball, weave a lanyard into a staircase pattern, and summon lyrics to any Top 40 song post-1995.

Alison Brie’s recall includes jumping from the high corner ropes of a wrestling ring, her body in a horizontal plane, and landing crosswise on the body of another human as they fall in perfect coordination to the ground (a crossbody). She can also hurl herself—again horizontally—onto someone’s back and hold on while that person spins (a crucifix). Not only that; she knows how to hold her frame upside down, legs straight up toward the heavens, while supporting herself by grasping the torso of the human below her (a 12 o’clock suplex). This is how I find her on a Sunday in February, in a wrestling ring with pink ropes, her body upturned on pro wrestler Chavo Guerrero Junior’s and pointing to the sky.



“It really does come back pretty quickly,” says Alison, stretching afterward, as if she is referencing a golf swing or how to French-braid. “By season four of GLOW, we have the muscle memory. The thing to relearn is the fearlessness and commitment. You can’t do any of the moves halfway.”

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The Netflix series about the ’80s TV show Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling is entering its fourth and final season, and it has changed a lot for the 37-year-old. It marked the first project for which she was number one on the call sheet, and the first (and, she imagines, only) time she’ll be in a show requiring dramatic acting, broad comedy chops, and major physicality. Since GLOW debuted in 2017, Alison has been vocal about how it seismically changed her. “It helped with my relationship to my body times a million,” she says. “Before, I always felt at odds with it; I wanted it to be something it wasn’t. But I didn’t have the tools to do that in a healthy way.”

Now, after four seasons, Alison has a confidence that stems in part from seeing her body as useful rather than merely aesthetic. Even Alison’s stuntwoman has noticed the shift in her as she learns to trust herself more: “Alison’s training on GLOW has made her more comfortable doing her own small stunts in other projects,” says Helena Barrett. “She’s gotten through four years of a highly physical role with zero injuries,” echoes her trainer, Jason Walsh, CEO of Rise Nation. “She’s doing the jumps, the flips, the lands. That’s typically not what actors do.”





“I like to lead the charge against people thinking that strength training makes women bulky.”

Alison says she used to approach fitness all wrong. “Everything was cardio, cardio, cardio.” Nine years ago she started working with Walsh, mostly out of a sense of obligation. “I thought, I’m in my late 20s, I should probably start doing some strength training.” What she did with Walsh changed when she started preparing for GLOW.

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“It took the motivation out of being skinny for Hollywood standards and made it about being strong for lifting other women, literally. There was a real goal.” Because of that, Walsh has Alison focus on “primitive movements”—warming up by crawling or rolling, then pushing and pulling a heavy sled, performing trap bar deadlifts, and doing squats, presses, or lunges with a FitFighter (a handheld steel hose).



I mention that after she entered the GLOW ring, it looked to me as if her body shrank as she got stronger. “I’m glad you said that, actually, because being small was a side effect of being super fit and muscular,” Alison replies without missing a beat. “I like to lead the charge against people thinking that strength training makes women bulky. Jason uses my body as an example at the gym, because I can lift more than a lot of people. You can pack a lot of muscle into a lean little body.”





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Given the ways her physical self has changed over the past four years, I ask Alison if she still grapples with body dysmorphia, something I’d read affected her, growing up in L.A. “Oh, definitely. Still do!” she says, matter-of-factly. In the past, she felt it had a hold on her. “I go back to red carpet photos where I thought I looked so horrible, and there are some where I now think, God, I looked beautiful. And I’ll remember: An hour before that I was in tears; I thought I was so disgusting. I think it’s something I’ll probably be working through my whole life. And depression too.”

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Mental illness runs in Alison’s family; her maternal grandmother had schizophrenia and went through periods of homelessness. “The rest of my family then dealt with the trickle-down effects of trauma,” she says. “And that meant depression more than anything.” The issue traces a line on both sides of Alison’s genealogy and occasionally “comes out of nowhere and really blindsides me.” While some of her loved ones have benefited from anti-depressants, Alison says being active is her way of combating the condition. “When I’ve been in a really serious depression, I’ll drag myself to a yoga class—even if I don’t want to be around people—tears streaming down my face. But, Get in class, get out of your head, get blood flowing. It ends up helping eventually.”





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Working out six days a week (three days with Walsh, three days of activities like hikes and riding her Peloton) is one way Alison maintains her mental wellness. She also credits “open communication” as something that helps. “I’m so lucky I’m married to a really wonderful, open person,” she says of her husband, actor Dave Franco. “We have great lines of communication, and I can talk often about my feelings.” Dave gave her perspective when she was in the depths of self-loathing about her body. “It’s been funny talking to him about it. He said, ‘Before I knew you, I’m not sure I believed body dysmorphia was a real thing. It’s so interesting to me what you see—and what I’m seeing when I’m looking at you—and the frank discussions we have about it.’”



A streamlined diet is another thing that keeps Alison’s mental state balanced. “I used to feel more out of control with it,” she says, describing how intense sugar cravings would lead to unhealthy choices and spin her into sadness about her body. “Being more diligent has been helpful for me mentally.”



You wouldn’t believe how diligent. As Alison gets closer to shooting a season of GLOW, she ups her lean protein intake, removes sugar, and doesn’t eat carbohydrates after 4 p.m. For breakfast, she has oatmeal with protein powder, then she works out and has a post-sweat chocolate and sea salt Après vegan protein shake. A few hours later she’ll make a tuna salad with spinach and whatever she has on hand—olives, avocado, cucumber. For dinner, she whips up ground-turkey stir-fries; one from a Gwyneth Paltrow cookbook calls for eggplant, and another she makes with onion, ginger, garlic, and low-sodium tamari sauce. When she’s not prepping or shooting, she tends to eat vegan or vegetarian.

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Nutrition is just part of the logistics she’s navigating as she preps for the Netflix series and shoots Happiest Season—a rom-com led by Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis about a gay couple who go home for the holidays and have to pretend to be straight. She’s been flying back and forth between Pittsburgh and L.A. and exercising in apartments and trailers. “I have workouts for any type of situation,” she says. Her routines from Walsh are heavy on calisthenics done at a slow tempo, like pushups and Bulgarian split squats. She also uses the PulseTread app for intervals on the treadmill. For recovery, she is loyal to foam rollers, her Theragun, and Epsom salt baths after ingesting a few drops of CBD oil.

A car is idling outside, ready to take Alison to a flight back to Pittsburgh for Happiest Season. (She’ll also appear in this spring’s Promising Young Woman, a chilling #MeToo revenge thriller.) In a week, she’ll be back in the ring, rehearsing with all the women of GLOW. “It’s exciting!” she says. “My chance to rebond with all the girls.” Does it feel as if you’re on a team more than a cast, I ask, knowing that Alison was a full-fledged theater nerd and unlikely to have soccer in her muscle memory. “One hundred percent,” she says, beaming. “And I feel like the captain. I want to motivate everyone.” She’s going to miss her character, Ruth—mullet perm and all—when she has to say goodbye, but she’s taking wrestling, and all its lessons, with her. “It’s part of me forever.”





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Photographed by Aingeru Zorita Fashion director Kristen Saladino Hair Mark Townsend for Dove Hair Makeup: Molly R. Stern using Armani Beauty Manicure: Emi Kudo at Opus Beauty using Chanel Le Vernis.

This article appears in the May 2020 issue of Women’s Health, available April 21. Subscribe now.