If you’re looking for a celebrity’s body to emulate as a guy, then you could do a lot worse than choosing Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman is not only built and highly muscular, but he is also particularly ripped and shredded – especially so in the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. For this film he built himself a feral and muscular physique to play the titular superhero, and ended up developing a body that most bodybuilders would be happy with while still walking that fine line and staying attractive to women (just ask one). So it’s no surprise that ‘Hugh Jackman workout’ is such a popular search term on Google.
So if that’s what you’re looking for, how precisely can you go about getting into the same kind of shape as James ‘Logan’ Howlett (if you know your comic books), and how likely are you to be able to accomplish the feat?
How Hugh Did It
Understandably there are many who want to know the secret of Jackman’s torso, and so he has been the subject of various interviews. To this end it’s possible for us to learn a lot about the Hugh Jackman workout from the man himself.
The key to achieving this body then was apparently for the actor to get into the mind of the lead character. That means ferocious, full of rage and without fear or reservation. In other words the exact kind of mental hardiness that you need to be able to be able to keep going to the gym and punishing yourself. You have to see pain not as an obstacle or as a wall, but as a sign that you’re doing things right. To achieve this kind of mental state Jackman reports taking freezing cold showers during which he would roar in pain while fighting the urge to get out. Incidentally cold showers also have a range of positive effects on the body – helping to burn fat (your body burns energy to increase core temperature), to train your immune system, and to improve circulation and skin.
The Hugh Jackman Workout
Then of course there was the workout itself (you can’t get great abs just by taking showers unfortunately). This of course consisted of weight training mixed with CV to build up the muscle and to strip away excess fat to bring out definition respectively.
The precise workout would look something like this:
Day 1:
- 20 external shoulder rotations
- 12 cable side raises
- 12 dumbbell chest press on stability ball
- 25 pushups
- 12 lat pull down
- 12 barbell curl
- 12 military press
Day 2:
CV
Day 3:
- 12 balance board lunge
- 30 split leg box jump
- 12 squats
- 20 jack knife
- 20 stability ball crunch
Day 4:
CV
Day 5:
- 50 crunches on stability ball
- 1 minute sprint 80% intensity
- 30 inch worms
- 30 walking lunges
- 100 pushups
- 50 lat pull downs
- 20 stairs
Presumably there’d have been three sets of each of these exercises. The idea behind the workout was to ‘shock’ the body into action. This meant first of all making each of those exercises as intense as possible. In other words then you shouldn’t just do the workout as though going through the motions but rather keep the pauses between exercises to an absolute minimum, while at the same time ensuring that you make the weights heavy enough that you are really struggling and forcing your way through the final sets. That’s actually the secret to getting any body guys want – to stop making excuses and just to make it really hurt. You can do this workout but there’s no need to do the precise workout Hugh Jackman did to get a similar body. Instead just follow three simple tips: workout until it hurts, eat lots of protein and don’t make excuses.
Loved this article. I have been looking for ways to get jacked like Hugh Jackman. I wish there was a Hugh Jackman workout video out there somewhere. Thanks and keep posting!