Is Chris Evans body one to aspire towards? ‘The studios had a very specific idea about how they wanted Chris to look (for Captain America: The First Avenger),’ says Evans’s personal trainer Simon Waterson, the man also behind the radical transformations of Daniel Craig as 007 and Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia. ‘My brief was to build Chris a strong, big and lean body that was realistic, functional and in proper proportion. In the movie, his character is physically transformed into the perfect soldier specimen so he had to look the part.’ ‘He also did a lot of bodyweight moves and included some plyometrics to fire up his fast-twitch muscle fibres, such as squat-to-box-jumps,’ says Waterson. ‘The aim was to keep his heart rate high throughout the workouts. I didn’t want to ignore this aspect of fitness because once filming started Chris was effectively going to have to work out on camera during the action scenes while wearing a 6kg costume as well as carrying a helmet and shield.’ Adding serious muscle while cutting fat is one thing, but doing so while managing not to injure a Hollywood leading man put additional pressure on Waterson to deliver the ideal leading-man physique. ‘Chris had done some weight training before, but as with a lot of guys it had been focused on the vanity muscles of the chest, arms and abs,’ says Waterson. ‘These guys are always amazed when I point out that they have muscles on the backs of their bodies too. But Chris was great to train. He understood the importance of a balanced physique. I had to work him hard but at a sensible pace – I couldn’t afford to have him sidelined for four weeks with an injury.’ The transformation didn’t come easy – Evans especially hated leg training. ‘But then who loves training legs?’ says Waterson. ‘Because if you are doing it properly it is the most painful session there is. Legs never hurt just for a day afterwards – it always lasts into the week. But your legs and glutes are the biggest and strongest muscles in your body so you must train them hard to get bigger and leaner everywhere else. So many men ignore legs because they want big arms, but pushing your lower body to the limit will transform your upper body faster than anything else thanks to a big growth-hormone response.’ ‘The biggest challenge for Chris was eating enough to put on muscle but avoid storing any excess energy as fat,’ says Waterson. ‘We relied on low-carb protein shakes in between meals and snacks such as fruit and nuts. I also had him take branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) throughout the day to reduce muscle tissue breakdown and encourage growth. The aim each day was about 2g protein per kg of bodyweight.’
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 17:19:51 +0000
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