How a Celebrity Trainer Gets Actors in Shape for Movies | Vanity Fair

I'm Jason Walsh I'm a trainer in Los Angeles and I get actors ready for movies most of the time it's gonna be something where a studio comes to me and asked me about prepping someone for a role what we do is we literally have to sit down and figure out what the characteristics are of that role the variables involved meaning like are they going to be in the desert are they going to be carrying heavy weight you know an exoskeleton how physical is the role but a lot of it has to do with you know the background are they a novice if they ever train like this before leave it or not what we're doing is really helping these guys with character building I want to enforce that character I want them to feel super free of any type of psychological like hindrances I've take a lot of pride in making these guys super strong move well fit resilient confident and do it safely these guys get injured production shuts down millions of dollars out the door training for a military role Bradley Cooper came to me through John Krasinski and he got this big role for American sniper and for Bradley it's all in he wants to become that character Chris Kyle 225 pounds military guy highly respected and decorated Bradley Cooper 185 pounds wet novice never trained like this before not like this not the kind of weight training that we were gonna have to do I'm gonna be honest with you this was the one that I was most worried about in my career because I didn't know if we could achieve what he wanted to achieve we had almost 12 weeks total I think it was the first eight weeks that we were doing two-a-days I mean we had a lot I thought maybe 2025 pounds was doable in that timeframe that we had 40 pounds heavier is a big deal we had to get him moving we had to get the weights going I decided that this was the move the trap bar deadlift that we were going to pretty much make the foundation of everything there's two variables here that I can play with and that is the range of motion and the weight we started safe and we started a high position we started light as I see him progress and get better we can take those down so we got Bradley really strong and as we progressed he became more mobile he'd actually from the ground and the confidence in everything that came with that I mean literally it was amazing to watch the transformation we actually ended up towards the end of it lifting a little over 425 pounds you cannot fake the way 400 pounds feels when he lifts it off the ground so in the movie that's real he ended up doing I think it was four days of two days he would come in in the morning 6:00 a.m. we would train for an hour hour and a half he would go home and recover he would come back we'd do a lot of the volume training and the afternoons and then he would do a half-day on Wednesday and that was his week he didn't need to get ripped he needed to get big and that's a big difference I knew that there's no way in hell that that guy was gonna eat as many calories as he needed to put that kind of mass on so we had to drink the calorie so I just progressed it week by week to try to increase a little bit at a time 500 calories or so I knew that we have been doing a really good job once we hit the 200 mark from the 180 mark everything started rolling his body just couldn't get enough of it he was recovering he was doing everything he needed to do and it wasn't until the day before shooting that we got him on the scale and it literally read 225 and I couldn't even believe it when you think John Krasinski you think the office and he came in with his big smile on his face and was telling me about the possibility of this movie 13 hours and he was going to play a Navy SEAL way outside of his comedic roles that he's been doing you wouldn't know it if you just looked at him but he is extremely strong the first four weeks we did all strength training it was two a days four days a week half day on Wednesday let's do it let's get the bench press going he's like no you're gonna drag that sled from there to there and I was like how hard is that I'm having a heart attack we had the luxury of working with John for quite a while before we started shooting 13 hours so I was very confident in John's ability to move so all we had to do was turn the dial up for him every day we would end up doing some sort of squatting variation we do front squat to press great complex exercise and we would also have him start doing just overhead press still engaging the whole body while doing the pressing so it's even more taxing on the body love the dumbbell bench press I just like the fact that the each arm is working independently of one another and John crushed it man he was doing over 100 pound dumbbells not to mention that we ended up doing a lot of conditioning as well that was gonna help with that the fat burning effect a lot of high intensity training pushing the sled back and forth picking weights up slamming it down jumping running pushing all of that with little to no rest it definitely comes across on-screen when they put this kind of work in so I was training Emily Blunt for a while with John those two in the gym at the same time is absolutely hilarious they're the most comedic people I've ever seen nothing really gets done in the gym so we had to separate them because we had a lot of work to do Emily came in she got her first action role edge of tomorrow was fantastic she had to wear an exoskeleton and this thing weighed about 70 pounds and day in day out shooting with 70 pounds on your back that's a new one for me this was what keeps my job pretty interesting too because never even thought that someone would be doing something like this we ended up doing a lot of conditioning out on a track and using weight vests to kind of mimic that feeling of having that exterior skeleton been teaching her how to move with that weight on her back we progressed just like anything else you're not gonna go and get put 50 pounds of weight vest on someone so we would start with a 10 pound weight vest one week we'd end up doing a 20 pound a 30 pound a 40-pound eventually a 50 pound weight vest I just wanted her to get an idea of what that was gonna feel like and how hindering it is because a 70 pound exoskeleton with day after day after day of moving could throw something out of whack I don't know if you remember in the film when an incredible scene where she's doing like the the full-on push up it was kind of an epic scene and I've actually had a lot of clients come to me saying I want to look like Emily Blunt brie Larson for Captain Marvel she came to me because of Emily Blunt in the way that she looked and performed in that film yes what do you want training to become a superhero brie Larson Captain Marvel she came in she had the best mentality she was ready to go anything we wanted to do she was ready for it we had the proper amount of 12 weeks which I absolutely love I knew we're gonna knock it out of the park with her to keep things interesting and fun you kind of want to set goals you want to set milestones for these guys and because we got a week after week after week of training so what we try to do is set these short-term long-term goals they're realistic and sometimes unrealistic but it's still nice to have them so we would start with pull-ups the unassisted pull-up is the big goal for a lot of our women in these action roles and because it really just tells us where she's at with her upper-body strength you're told women aren't supposed to have a lot of upper-body strength that's they get really really really strong pound for pound for BRE I think we ended up doing 10 pull-ups straight eight chain push-ups with 50 pounds of chains on her back hip thrusting well over 300 semi pounds I mean this is stuff that most women would think is absolute insanity think about it if you're not able to do a pull-up and then a few weeks later I'm proving you and you're doing pull-ups think about what that's doing to you psychologically mentally I mean it's just a reinforcement of who you are and what you're able to do people don't believe something and then all of a sudden they're able to do these things it just goes to show that that kind of hard work and dedication is really gonna pay off you get rid of those variables that could be holding you back and you're really able to focus on your acting that's a yes or no question yes training for an athletic role Alison Brie Wow where to start with her she's one of the absolute best humans I know it doesn't matter if it's 6 a.m. she comes in the highest energy of anybody I've ever met in my life and it's infectious and everybody in the gym feeds off of it I was training Alison for I don't know maybe even a couple years when she came to me telling me she's gonna be a wrestler here we go again with a brand new variable never training anybody like this before because we had such a nice cushion of time with her we didn't really have to go into like a to day type setup we just trained her five days a week Alison Brie is one of the strongest girls that I know pound for pound the girl is able to crank out 14 pull-ups she's dead lifting over 200 pounds she's pushing sleds with 300 400 pounds on it sled training is an absolute staple and all the training that we do especially for the females it's a single leg exercise work strength conditioning everything we can load it unload it pull it push it there's so many variations to it the core is firing from each step right and it's this body coordination and it's fantastic it was one of our staples for her strength training one of the biggest compliments I can get is after the shoot the client comes back and was injury free for me that's the most important thing the aesthetic thing is fantastic and I get but we want to keep these guys healthy if you pay attention to glow Allyson is really doing all her stunts and knock on wood two seasons in hasn't had any injuries but this Cold War training for a dance role Emma Stone la-la-land Emma came in and she had some issues with her neck and her back and shoulders and things like that those things have to be addressed you don't work around them and hope that they go away you really go in and try to attack any and all issues that could be holding her back and for her the training was a little less dramatic or invasive a lot of stuff we did was really focusing in and around the hips and the stability and the strength around the hips because of the dancing elements most the stuff she was doing was on one leg [Music] we did a lot of strength training a lot of mobility drills balance stuff a lot of crawling for core and coordination and things like that we didn't have as much time we had about six weeks before shooting it's a hard balance because you don't want to Train her too much because she's got all the dance training and choreography and all that kind of stuff that's going on on the outside so what I did is I just actually ended up training her less days giving her more recovery I think we were doing about four to five days for the first couple weeks and then we just kind of tapered all the way through through the through the end until she started shooting [Music] we focused a lot on the posterior chain a lot of pulling motions things to get the muscles firing and protecting and stabilizing the spine we were able to clean up most of the issues with her neck and back if you can eliminate pain from someone that's been living with pain and they believe that that pain is just part of life I mean it's one of the highlights of what I get to do is if I can help eliminate those types of pains [Music]

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 5,575,819

Rating: 4.9345417 out of 5

Keywords: trainer, celebrity trainer, trainers, how actors get in shape, actors get in shape, get in shape for movies, how actors get in shape for action movies, action movie workouts, action movie training, brie larson, brie larson captain marvel, la la land dance, training for movies, training for dance movies, how actors learn dances, how actors workout, actor workout, actor workouts, action stars, celebrity trainer secrets, celebrity trainer interview, action role, vanity fair

Id: y5-R-TICKSw

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/gomuck]

All I can think of is that quote from Rob McElhenney (a.k.a Mac from it's always sunny)

"Look, it’s not that hard. All you need to do is lift weights six days a week, stop drinking alcohol, don’t eat anything after 7pm, don’t eat any carbs or sugar at all, in fact just don’t eat anything you like, get the personal trainer from Magic Mike, sleep nine hours a night, run three miles a day, and have a studio pay for the whole thing over a six to seven month span. I don’t know why everyone’s not doing this. It’s a super realistic lifestyle and an appropriate body image to compare oneself to"

[u/Exodus5000]

Bradley Cooper put on 40 lbs in 12 weeks? Jesus fuck, I've been bulking since October and eating a ton of calories, and I've only managed to put on *maybe* 15 lbs during the last 12 weeks.

[u/tarantula13]

I think he forgot to mention the juice.

[u/tolerantlychaotic]

Steroids and HGH?

[u/a_proof_is_a_proof]

Hollywood Growth Hormones

[u/GigaJuice]

The way he matter of factly said he had to separate John and Emily made me laugh. “We had a lot of work to do.” 😂

[u/[deleted]]

Or to put it in fewer words: eat clen, tren hard.

[u/SsurebreC]

• 12 weeks of training
• start small but gradually increase the workout
• heavier gains require more workouts (twice a day, two days in a row, twice a week)
• increase calorie intake for muscle gains but no diets are given
• various specific workouts are listed for each celebrity based on their needs for a particular role

[u/doczoid_md]

I didn't think I'd watch this whole video, but I did. This guy is pretty interesting to listen to, definitely knows his craft.