Rugby star Ilona Maher is clearly having a lot of fun on Dancing With the Stars—including during the hours of dance rehearsals. Maher, 28, shared a video posted by her dance partner Alan Bersten, wearing purple workout gear and sitting on a coach while watching him clown around. “It’s not much, but it’s honest work,” Bersten captioned the post. Maher is an athlete, model, and now a dancer—here’s how she stays fit, strong, and happy.
Maher’s diet is tailored for athletes, and she can’t start the day without coffee. “Starting with breakfast, eggs are so great with the amount of protein they have so I’m always eating eggs,” she told Eating Well. “I love bacon—it gives me joy—so I’ll eat some bacon with it and a piece of toast or some other carb, whether it’s oatmeal or potatoes.”
Maher enjoys quality protein from real foods. “My lunch and dinner are about the same. I’ll have a lot of protein, carbs and a lot of vegetables,” she told Eating Well. “I snack a little more than I used to. I love having a protein source in that snack, whether that’s an apple with peanut butter, beef jerky, cold-cut meat, but I don’t really like protein bars.”
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Maher is trained to play in different environments. “We play in such hot environments sometimes—like Singapore; Hong Kong; Perth, Australia, during heat waves, and as high as 114 degrees—so we get into heat acclimation,” she told Mind Body Green. “Preparing yourself to be able to perform in that environment starts back home… For example, we’ll sit in the sauna after we did a bike session in a heated room with sweatshirts and sweatpants on. Or we get into a hot tub with our sweatpants on.”
Maher relies on her teammates to help rebound after a tough game. “You’re not out there alone, and you’re not losing on your own,” she told Mind Body Green. “You’re losing with this other group of women who are going through the same stuff. So it’s really important to be with them and connect with them, laugh about it, talk about the parts that went well, the parts that went bad, what to take from it.”
Maher says her “beast, beauty, brains” mantra is about being multifaceted. “I think we put people in boxes like ‘Oh, they’re a rugby player. Oh, they’re a nurse,’ when people can be so much more than that,” she told Eating Well. “For me, I’m a rugby player, and that’s what everybody sees, but I’m also smart. I like to be beautiful and feminine in my own way. To me, I think girls get afraid of trying out new things in fear of being pigeonholed, but I can be all of those things because I get to decide. It’s my own narrative I get to write.”
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