Adele training ‘like an athlete’ for first tour in seven years

Adele is training “like an athlete” twice a day so she can walk around dozens of extra stages in her first tour for seven years.

The 35-year-old plans to walk five miles a night across every inch of a multi-pronged stage during a series of summer shows in Germany.

About 80,000 people are expected to attend each of the 10 concerts at the bespoke, open-air arena in Munich this August.

The singer-songwriter has ordered concert bosses to create an “intimate” stage set that allows her to walk out into different parts of the crowd in an effort to replicate her Las Vegas shows to a much smaller audience of 4,200.

She said she wanted “to be able to connect with the crowd” and so needed to improve her stamina to move around.

“I was like, build me a stage out in the crowd. And they were like, ‘Well, we can’t get you there unless you walk there on a stage’,” Adele said.

“I’m obviously exaggerating a little bit, but I think I’ll probably get a good four or five miles in a night walking. So I really need to get my stamina up, I’m working out twice a day.

“All I have been doing is that. I’m training to be an athlete because I have some shows in the summer,” she told those attending her concert at Ceasars Palace in Las Vegas.

Close to you
She said she was in training because she wanted to be closer to fans, and doing shows in front of such a large audience has always left her feeling “a little bit disassociated” in comparison with smaller venues.

“How is it possible there’s 100,000 people here to see one person? That doesn’t make any sense, and it always felt so far away,” she explained. “This show has absolutely just made me not scared of performing in any capacity anymore. So I’m excited about this show.”

Following the birth of her son, Angelo, now 11, Adele overhauled her lifestyle, which had included sugary cups of tea and cigarettes every day.

She went on to lose seven stone in two years through changes to her diet as well as lifting weights and circuit training, and has reportedly quit drinking, after claiming she was a “borderline alcoholic” in her 20s.

The Grammy Award winner cancelled her initial Las Vegas “residency” in January 2022 just hours before it was due to begin, because it had “no soul”, forcing thousands of fans to change their plans at the last minute.

She described it as the “worst moment of her career” as she delayed her comeback, but also spoke of how she has overcome her serious stage fright.

“For a very long time I was very, very scared of not just the big crowd, just crowds in general,” she said.

Anxiety attacks’
Adele had previously said she “would never do festivals” because of the size of the audience, which are similar to the numbers she will play in front of in Munich, and described how stage fright caused her to have “anxiety attacks” on stage for fear she “would not deliver”.

After she finished her last tour in 2017, she admitted she did not know if she would ever tour again.

The Munich shows are due to run from August 2 to August 24. Tickets are still available despite an initial scramble when they first went on sale with 260,000 people queuing for hours.

The cheapest tickets cost a reported £281, while the most expensive, stage-side seats fetched more than £1,000 each.

Tickets are still available for all nights of the show priced at several hundred euros each. Second-hand ticket touts are selling tickets at even higher prices.

Some fans have called the prices of the tickets “criminal” and “vile”, while the cost of hotels in Munich have also soared during August, with the German city one of a number in the country to host matches as part of football’s Euro 2024.