To play a werewolf, Joe Manganiello needed to be more than just your average Joe Six Pack.
“You get cast as a shifter on ‘True Blood,’ and you know that nudity is on its way,” he says. “Aside from not wanting to embarrass my family, I wanted the character to be ripped. I didn’t want an extra ounce of fat on me. I wanted to be the animal.”
Enter trainer Ron Mathews, a 16-year veteran of the business, who, among other Hollywood heavyweights, helped Hugh Jackman get in tip-top wolf shape for “X-Men.”
Mathews started Manganiello on a very strict diet of only 2,500 calories a day, featuring, quite appropriately, copious amounts of meat: “That definitely helped get me into character,” Manganiello jokes.
The exercise itself was composed of twice-a-day workouts, six days a week, taking Manganiello down from 240 pounds and 18 percent body fat, to 230 pounds and 8 percent body fat, with most of the build up in his chest and abs.
“I put him on a really crazy workout program,” says Mathews. “To have your body fat that low is almost impossible to maintain and isn’t necessarily healthy.”
In fact, Mathews advises such a rigorous workout only for those seeking a specific goal, with at least three months of dedication to get there.
Those willing to take a big, meaty bite of pain, here’s the drill:
ARMS
“Every time he did a functional cable curl, we’d change the direction that the arms were coming together, so it was stimulating slightly different fibers every time. We were always trying to work the ends of the muscles so you can see the separation and the definition instead of just working the belly of the muscle, which makes you look bigger and bulky in size.”
SHOULDERS
“We did a lot of drop sets where he would start heavy and I’d keep lowering the weight until he couldn’t lift even the lightest of weights anymore.”
CHEST
“The way you have to lift for this is literally almost no rest. We’d do a set of chest, then go right into a set of biceps, and then go back into a set of chest, so your chest is resting while your biceps are working and vice versa. But your heart rate isn’t resting at all. So after about 20 minutes, it feels like you’re doing sprints. It’s hands-on-your-knees, sweat-dripping-off-your-nose, can’t-catch-your-breath crazy.”
ABDOMINALS
“He had very little definition in his obliques and lower abdominals to begin with, so I had him do a lot of twisting motions and a lot hanging leg raises, where you hold on to a pull up bar and take your feet to touch your hands.”