Billie Eilish is officially a newly-minted gym-goer. During a recent interview with Apple Music, the singer shared details about her Happier Than Ever tour, including how she’s ramped up her fitness routine in hopes of staying physically prepared for her active performances.
Partway through the interview, host Zane Lowe asked Eilish how she approached her recent tour in light of her previous experience performing after spraining her ankle during a Milan show. In hopes of staying injury-free for her shows, the "Bad Guy" singer has picked up a gym habit, she revealed.
"I have been working on my bones and my body for the last — since [getting injured] really," says Eilish in the video. "And more seriously for the last, like, four months, I've been like completely changing the way that my life is involving fitness. Like I'm a gym rat now, like when the [censored] did that happen? I don't know but it did. It started with 'I can't get injured anymore, can't do it, not going to let myself live like that.' Because I lived like that for years."
Eilish has developed multiple injuries while touring, and previously gave up dancing after becoming injured, as revealed in her documentary, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry. “Everything I’ve ever loved, I’ve had to quit,” she says in the film. “I used to dance like 12 hours a week. And then I got injured. I tore my growth plate in my hip, the bone separated from the muscle. It was the most depressing year of my life. I just laid in bed; I couldn’t move. Since then, I have not danced.”
Adding gym sessions to her routine has “changed [her] life,” shares Eilish in the new Apple Music interview. “I started working out really heavy in May-ish, but then especially coming back from Europe, I started working out at the gym for the first time and every day,” she tells Lowe. “And I know that’s something a lot of people do, but that was not a thing I did. And it’s become such an incredibly huge part of my life and it makes me feel so much better as a person and the way that I can move on stage now, I feel so much better.”
Eilish is right that the benefits of exercise can include strengthening your bones and making you feel more limber. Workouts such as strength training or running can improve your bone density, and workouts that improve mobility can lower your risk of forming injuries.
Here's to hoping that Eilish's fitness routine keeps her pain-free and primed for her signature high-energy performances.