THE CAPTAIN AMERICA WORKOUT
E V E R Y
T E A M
N E E D S
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C A P T A I N
“YOU SAID THE CHEST WAX WOULDN’T HURT…”
THE CAPTAIN AMERICA WORKOUT Want a body that’ll look good in skintight Lycra? Then Chris Evans’ personal trainer is the man you need to listen to ou might have spotted a few brave men in the gym sporting superhero T-shirts. To pull this off, you either have to be so out of shape as to make it ironic, or genuinely look as if you’re about to take out a supervillain. The second option comes with better abs, so we spoke to international fitness expert Simon Waterson – the man responsible for Chris Evans’ physique in The Avengers – for his top tips.
WORDS: DANIELLE RICHARDSON
PHOTOGRAPHS: DISNEY, KOBAL
Y
through your own natural range of movement. There’ll be strength, cardiovascular, functional, mobility – a squat-thrust, for example, with a press-up, jumping on to a pully bar to pull a weight down. “I tailor it to prioritise different muscle groups on different days,” he adds. “So, use every element to train the back in that sequence, with 1-5 exercises, and stagger it like ‘1, 1-2, 1-2-3’. Slowly build it up.”
HAVE A VISUAL STRUCTURE
“Every athlete needs a finish point. Humans just need to know ‘when will this end’,” explains Waterson. “I have a whiteboard for my workouts, so [clients] can see exactly what they’re doing, when to apply more intensity, and know that they’ll be able to make it to the end.” Such visualisation is useful for both individual workouts and over a longer period of time to reach an end goal. “Actors will have
KEEP IT VARIED
Not only do repetitive workouts get boring, they’ll also lead you to plateau. Instead, mix it up. “I try to use as much variation and bodyweight as possible, so I don’t do anything that’s considered to be ‘isolated’,” says Waterson. “I use a lot of exercises that make you go
an element of periodisation – they will have an event date, and I do all the periodisation back from there. You can see on a week-to-week basis until you get to that event where they need to be, what they need to be doing.”
WORK OUT TO YOUR MOOD
Those days when your head just really isn’t in the right place? There’s a way around it. “I apply my workouts in ‘real time’,” explains Waterson. “If [a client] says ‘I’m not feeling well’ or ‘My nutrition’s been terrible’, instead of a structured set workout you can take an exercise out or change it. That way you’re still getting a complete workout, just for how that person’s feeling on that day. Do that every week. If you’re not feeling great, it can be very hard to get to the end of a set workout, which does no good for helping to achieve your goals.”
PERFORMANCE, NOT AESTHETIC
While you might like to imagine
HE REGRETTED FIXING THE GUTTERING ON SUCH A BLUSTERY DAY
“IF YOU TRAIN, EAT AND SLEEP LIKE AN ATHLETE, THEN THAT SHOULD AFFECT HOW YOU LOOK”
yourself with rippling biceps, they shouldn’t be your main aim. “Training people in movies is all about aesthetics – but that’s a by-product of performance,” says Waterson. “So, if you’re an athlete, and you’re training like an athlete, eating and sleeping like an athlete, then that should affect the way you look. I don’t look at someone and go, ‘We’re going to change the way you look.’ Go for performance first, and aesthetic comes naturally. It’s great to have an image, or someone you’d like to look like, but you’re not born with their genetics. Aspire to performance rather than aesthetic.”
USE REST DAYS WISELY
They’re not an excuse to watch Netflix for eight hours, sorry. “When I do the whole actor-to-athlete thing I’d suggest two rest days a week,” says Waterson, “and they’re active rest days. So they would walk, or go to a physio or for a swim – so when you say it’s a rest day, it is, but you have to have content in that rest day to be able to be back on form for the next workout day.” The Skullcandy Sport Performance range and the wireless XTfree are designed to meet the demands of high-intensity training; skullcandy.co.uk
W W W . S H O R T L I S T . C O M
5 1
T E A M
N E E D S
A
C A P T A I N
“YOU SAID THE CHEST WAX WOULDN’T HURT…”
THE CAPTAIN AMERICA WORKOUT Want a body that’ll look good in skintight Lycra? Then Chris Evans’ personal trainer is the man you need to listen to ou might have spotted a few brave men in the gym sporting superhero T-shirts. To pull this off, you either have to be so out of shape as to make it ironic, or genuinely look as if you’re about to take out a supervillain. The second option comes with better abs, so we spoke to international fitness expert Simon Waterson – the man responsible for Chris Evans’ physique in The Avengers – for his top tips.
WORDS: DANIELLE RICHARDSON
PHOTOGRAPHS: DISNEY, KOBAL
Y
through your own natural range of movement. There’ll be strength, cardiovascular, functional, mobility – a squat-thrust, for example, with a press-up, jumping on to a pully bar to pull a weight down. “I tailor it to prioritise different muscle groups on different days,” he adds. “So, use every element to train the back in that sequence, with 1-5 exercises, and stagger it like ‘1, 1-2, 1-2-3’. Slowly build it up.”
HAVE A VISUAL STRUCTURE
“Every athlete needs a finish point. Humans just need to know ‘when will this end’,” explains Waterson. “I have a whiteboard for my workouts, so [clients] can see exactly what they’re doing, when to apply more intensity, and know that they’ll be able to make it to the end.” Such visualisation is useful for both individual workouts and over a longer period of time to reach an end goal. “Actors will have
KEEP IT VARIED
Not only do repetitive workouts get boring, they’ll also lead you to plateau. Instead, mix it up. “I try to use as much variation and bodyweight as possible, so I don’t do anything that’s considered to be ‘isolated’,” says Waterson. “I use a lot of exercises that make you go
an element of periodisation – they will have an event date, and I do all the periodisation back from there. You can see on a week-to-week basis until you get to that event where they need to be, what they need to be doing.”
WORK OUT TO YOUR MOOD
Those days when your head just really isn’t in the right place? There’s a way around it. “I apply my workouts in ‘real time’,” explains Waterson. “If [a client] says ‘I’m not feeling well’ or ‘My nutrition’s been terrible’, instead of a structured set workout you can take an exercise out or change it. That way you’re still getting a complete workout, just for how that person’s feeling on that day. Do that every week. If you’re not feeling great, it can be very hard to get to the end of a set workout, which does no good for helping to achieve your goals.”
PERFORMANCE, NOT AESTHETIC
While you might like to imagine
HE REGRETTED FIXING THE GUTTERING ON SUCH A BLUSTERY DAY
“IF YOU TRAIN, EAT AND SLEEP LIKE AN ATHLETE, THEN THAT SHOULD AFFECT HOW YOU LOOK”
yourself with rippling biceps, they shouldn’t be your main aim. “Training people in movies is all about aesthetics – but that’s a by-product of performance,” says Waterson. “So, if you’re an athlete, and you’re training like an athlete, eating and sleeping like an athlete, then that should affect the way you look. I don’t look at someone and go, ‘We’re going to change the way you look.’ Go for performance first, and aesthetic comes naturally. It’s great to have an image, or someone you’d like to look like, but you’re not born with their genetics. Aspire to performance rather than aesthetic.”
USE REST DAYS WISELY
They’re not an excuse to watch Netflix for eight hours, sorry. “When I do the whole actor-to-athlete thing I’d suggest two rest days a week,” says Waterson, “and they’re active rest days. So they would walk, or go to a physio or for a swim – so when you say it’s a rest day, it is, but you have to have content in that rest day to be able to be back on form for the next workout day.” The Skullcandy Sport Performance range and the wireless XTfree are designed to meet the demands of high-intensity training; skullcandy.co.uk
W W W . S H O R T L I S T . C O M
5 1
