Movie Workouts

I am a big movie fan. I collect DVDs; I watch movies daily and love to go to the theater as well. One thing that I am constantly impressed with is the shape that actors are able to get into for their different roles.

You might think that they have a lot of help: trainers, lots of time to work out, funds for whatever they need, etc. which is true but, as we all, know there is know solution to getting into great shape other than putting in the work with diet and exercise.

A thing that is cool about this also is that you can find pretty much every workout (and usually their diet too) for every actor for every role.

One of the first and most popular movie workouts is Brad Pitts from Fight Club. Here is a detailed diet and workout plan. If you read into it, you realize the commitment that he had to make, especially from a diet perspective, to get down 5-6% body fat.

Some other recent and popular movie workouts include: Tom Hardy in Warrior; Chris Helmsworth in Thor; Chris Evans in Captain America; etc. There are literally thousands of these things online. Remember Ryan Reynolds in Amityville Horror? No? Well he was ripped, too and you can follow his workout if you want as well. There is so much interest in these workouts that Google completes the search when you start typing the actors' names with "workout."

For the most part these things are just interesting to read but one thing I do like to use them for is to get ideas when I don't really no what to do or am looking for something different to do. So this week I started with the "workout" for one of the biggest fitness-inspired movies ever: 300.

I put workout in quotes because the actual workout is more of a fitness test, something they worked up to instead of doing it daily. It is called the 300 workout because of the name of the movie (obviously) and because there are 300 total reps and you do it as fast as you can.

Here is the workout:

Pullups - 25 reps

Barbell Deadlift with 135 lbs. - 50 reps

Pushups - 50 reps

24-inch Box Jumps - 50 reps

Floor Wipers - 50 reps

Single-Arm Clean-and-Press with 36 lbs Kettlebell - 50 reps

Pullups - 25 reps

I had to modify it some. First, because I don't have all of the equipment to do some of the exercises. And second, because this thing is impossible for almost anyone to do. I tried for the 3rd time this week today to do my modified workout and did respectable but still not really close. Here is a link to a very descriptive page that has original, intermediate, and beginner versions of the workout; all are good. It also has pictures and a video description of the workout.

So today I got in something that was a mix of all 3:

• 15 pullups
• 2x20 lb. deadlift 50 times
• 50 pushups
• 50 body-weight squat jumps
• Floor wipers with 2x20 lb. dumbbells 30 times
• Single-arm Clean-and-Press with 20 lb. kettlebell 50 times
• 10 pullups

I'm not sure how long it took me but during certain points, I definitely felt like I was going to throw up. This is something that is a new challenge and I look forward to making progress on it.