“He’s a bit lardy, isn’t he?” Jason Statham says in his gritty British voice, chuckling.
He’s referring to the man in two pictures he’s holding, a pair of classic “before” shots, one from the front, one from the back. Indeed, the man in the photos has some extra dough, and not the green kind. There’s muscle there for sure, but no definition at all.
Jason Statham isn’t ripping on just anyone: He’s the guy in the photos. (For more ways to get fit like Jason Statham, try The Anarchy Workout—one guy lost 18 pounds of fat in 6 weeks.)
Jason Statham’s weight gain came the same way it does for most of us: a few too many beers and a couple of extra servings, compounded over time. Work out hard and you’ll crave calories as fuel at the same time you loathe the millstone they can form around your middle.
“I never gave a f--k about a calorie,” Statham says. “An apple? It’s good for me. I’d have five. Bananas? Eat the bunch.”
STATHAM’S FOOD PHILOSOPHY
“You need to keep lean muscle mass. So I eat as much good food as I can, nuts, fish, beans, chicken. I’d say ninety-five percent of my food is good. And then I have a little bit of a blowout. Chocolate. Occasionally. But for the rest of it, just reprogram yourself. See, once you start depriving yourself, it becomes a nuisance.
But if you go, ‘I’m not going to eat that because I’m gonna lose a bit of excess body fat that’s depressing me more than the fact that I’m not allowed to eat that!’, it’s just reprogramming your head. It’s sh*t-fried food. You’re not giving anything up. You’re quitting something that’s disastrous.”
STATHAM’S DAY OF EATING
“The way to get lean quick is to cut out all the sugars and heavy starch in the afternoon. If you eat carbs, you have to eat them in the daytime so you have an opportunity to burn them off. So forget all carbs after your lunchtime meal.”
Breakfast
“I normally eat fresh fruits and oats. The location kind of demands what you eat for breakfast. If you’re somewhere cold and wintry, fresh fruit’s not that appealing. But if you’re out here in California, strawberries and fresh pineapple is definitely on my menu. In England, I’ll have granola or porridge. I do eat eggs they’ll be poached. I’m not an egg white fanatic. It’s just too bland.”
Lunch
Broaden your horizons. “I’m certainly no vegan, but there’s this little place down on Sunset that I’ll go to, the California Vegan, and they do a really good steamed vegetable and brown rice. You put that in your body and you feel good. Or try a nice miso soup. There’s nothing better than that stuff.”
Dinner
“For the evening meal, you have to eat high protein—fish, chicken, lean beef —a vegetable, or salad. Make 7 o’clock the latest you eat.”
Between Meals
Eat small, high-protein snacks like nuts or peanut butter. “Drink a minimum—a minimum—of three liters of water a day. Just keep drinking water.”
STATHAM’S FITNESS PHILOSOPHY
“I can’t say, yeah, I run 3 times a week, lift weights twice, and go swimming once just to change it up. That doesn’t apply. My workout is constantly changing. Which for me is the best thing in the world, because variety is what keeps me interested. And I think your body responds better to shocking muscles that don’t get used. When you do the same routine, you don’t build up any sense of reflex.
You can’t acquire a new skill by doing the same old sh*t. I like to do stuff that will improve my martial arts or boxing, something that will give me a skill. If you can throw a punch like this, bang! Or like this, bang! You can develop what Bruce Lee had, that very explosive power. I’m always trying to develop explosive power, core strength, coordination, and reflexes.”
STATHAM’S BOXING WORKOUT
Five-Minute General Warm-Up
“Use an elliptical machine or something that warms up the whole body.”
Five-Minute Sports-Specific Warm-Up
“Shadow box for the back and the shoulders. If I’m going to concentrate on kicks, I’ll warm up the legs with lunges and some quad, groin, and hamstring stretching.”
Boxing
“Do five 3-minute rounds on the pads [the catcher-mitt type pads that you punch, and the bigger kicking pads]. Then go on the heavy bag for three 3-minute rounds. Then three rounds on the speed bag. Switch it up with different things in the gym that will help your boxing technique.”
Warmdown and Stretch to Finish
STATHAM’S IRON-FREE TOTAL-BODY WORKOUT
Five-Minute General Warm-Up
Circuits
“What I’m trying to do is increase my fast twitch muscle fibers. Any little exercise you’ve seen someone do in a gym, you can put five or ten of those in a routine and do a circuit. But it’s all explosive. If you’re going to do a pushup, go slow down and bang, push up.”
Choose 5 exercises from the following. Do 10 reps of each.
- Exploding push-ups (down slow, push up hard)
- Squat thrusts
- Burpees (squat thrusts where you jump up instead of stand)
- Sit-ups or crunches
- Step-ups
- Tuck jumps (jump and tuck your legs)
- Squat jumps (jump from a squatting position)
- Star jumps (jump up, spread arms and legs, return to starting position)
- Pull-ups (as many as you can)
STATHAM’S GUIDE TO BETTER FLEXIBILITY
First, Commit
“Stretching sucks! It’s a f***er! There’s no visual improvement. If you do an hour of stretching a day for six months, you’re still going to look the same! But the benefits are huge. One, it keeps you from getting injured. It gives you that real ease of balance, that ability to put your shoulders and feet where they need to be. It’s essential.”
Find a Partner
“To achieve great goals in flexibility, you need a partner. They’ll make you do it. They’ll hold you down when you want to come up. No shortcuts.”
Ten-Minute Hard Warm-Up
Elliptical machine, jumping rope. “If you’re trying to achieve greater flexibility, you have to do a really good warm-up.”
Relax Through the Pain
“Have someone push you. Take a deep breath, go a little bit, hold it, exhale, a deep breath, go a little bit further. You’ve gotta fucking keep going like that, relax through it, ignore the pain. Then get someone to put on a little more pressure, relax into it. That way, you’re gonna open up pretty quickly.”
AND, STATHAM SAYS, TRY THESE . . .
“The benefits are amazing. You get strong from the inside out. It looks like a load of shit, but don’t knock it ‘til you try it. That’s the old cliché, but it’s so fucking true. You can’t have weak core strength. You’ll never be good at anything.”
Wushu
A Chinese martial art focusing on weapons, speed, and flexibility. “For the last Transporter movie, I had to learn to wield a long pole. So I spent weeks down at a Wushu school. That’s a completely different kind of workout. You’re trying to stretch your body and find new positions. You think you’re fit until you do something your body’s not used to doing. That’s when you get surprised.”
Training with a Partner
“It’s a huge benefit because no one wants to let the other man down. You egg each other on. It becomes competitive, which I’ve always gotten a big kick out of. The ego gets the better of us. You want to do one more than the other guy. You can always make an excuse to not turn up at the gym, but if your friend’s gonna be there, you don’t want to let him down.”
