New year, new body. Now’s the time, gentlemen, to get in the best shape of your life. Start the year as you mean to go on and follow the lead of some of the most ripped men in the word:
Getting in shape for his rendition of Thor in Thor: The Dark World and The Avengers movies, was always going to be hard. The classic comic strip shows Thor as weighing around 230kg which is obviously pretty unachievable for the average man. Instead, Hemsworth focussed on building his body up slowly but surely, hitting the gym with former Navy SEAL Duffy Gaver, who applied an old-school bodybuilding approach. For this, he focused on high-weight, low-rep moves that would help him build up to maximum size. He also mixed in total-body circuits in order to help shift fat but maintain muscle.
When we asked Gandy how he stayed in shape, this is what he disclosed: “When I haven’t got a shoot coming up, it’s more 3 or 4 days a week in the gym [rather than everyday]. Circuits and supersets, that’s what works at the end of the day. A lot of people sit there on the weights, slowly, slowly. I like incorporating the two so you are pretty much doing 3 exercises back-to-back – more if you can. The 3 should work a range of muscle groups – I do 10, 10, 10 [repetitions], wait for 45 seconds, then 10, 10, 10. You’ll know about it the next day, but then you get used to it eventually, so you have to go back and do something different. Your body and especially your muscles are very, very clever and they adapt to something. You start doing it and they’re like, ‘oh we’ve done this’, so you have to shock them – doing sets of 50 with a lighter weight to change it up, or dropping the reps but increasing the weight a little bit. Just something a bit different.”
If you’re looking to stay lean and agile rather than bulk up massively, you’ll want to follow how Tatum got in shape for his role in Magic Mike. For this, his trainer set him up on a H.I.I.T training programme where he was given three exercises to perform each session and had to complete as many rounds as he could within 20 minutes. High intensity training burns serious calories because of the rate of the heartbeat. He worked three days on and one day off, with each workout lasting only 30 seconds, and changed up his sessions every single workout.
This summer will see the release of the hotly-anticipated adaptation of Baywatch which will see Efron’s body in all its glory. Getting in the best shape of his life for this film was obviously going to be tough: his training constantly evolved and focussed on a three-day split: leg day, back and bicep day, shoulders, chest and arms day. The idea to superset, meaning that two exercises were done back-to-back with no rest in the middle, so you’re getting your cardio in at the same time. Not only will this approach pump you up – and quickly – but it will also get drive the muscles for faster, stronger growth.
Joe Manganiello – Height, Weight, Age
Joe Manganiello uses a mixture of cardio and individual weight training to get – and stay – in shape. Starting everyday with 45 minutes of cardio every single morning before then going on to superset, focussing on different areas of the body on different days – so leg day, chest day, arms day etc. Choosing a fastest workout (on an empty stomach), particularly when you’ve included cardio, means that you’re going to continue burning calories throughout the day. Because he chose later on in life to get into shape, he also has had to severely restrict his calorie intake by focussing on a mixture of protein and vegetables, and avoiding as many carbs as possible.
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