From Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw to Amazon’s Road House remake, the Jake Gyllenhaal diet and workout plan has proven itself time and time again. In fact, at this stage, it’s pretty much the formula to become a shredded onscreen presence.
Now granted: not everyone is fortunate enough to have a gig where they essentially work out for a living (read: millions of bucks per project). So temper those expectations. But who’s to say the right combination of nutrition and exercise won’t get you closer to resembling a Hollywood star?
And despite how impressive he may have appeared as Elwood Dalton — cutting down from 205 pounds to 184 pounds of lean muscle (5% body fat) — as the man’s own trainer explained, Mr Gyllenhaal‘s physique didn’t consistently resemble that of an active UFC middleweight title contender… even though the character itself was well beyond his canonical prime.
“The way he looked throughout the movie, there [are] peaks, right? People don’t see the valleys,” said Jason Walsh.
“They don’t see the time in between the peaks, it just looks like one continuous thing. It doesn’t work like that.”
The other caveat worth noting is what an immense undertaking this was. Hollywood studio resources aside, if you want to look like Jake Gyllenhaal in Road House, you’re going to have to earn it.
Walsh added: “You can have a great trainer, a great program, great team — none of this matters if you don’t have the right person to do it all. Jake did the work. He earned it.”
Here’s the Jake Gyllenhaal diet and workout plan used for Road House.
According to Men’s Health, Jake Gyllenhaal’s fitness program for Road House was split into several progressive phases, starting with a “baseline phase” to establish his conditioning, followed by a “hypertrophy phase” to build muscle, before they moved on to a sport-specific phase to “reinforce the movement patterns he would need to perform on camera.”
After that, it was simply a matter of maintaining said muscle for the entirety of the production, which concluded at UFC 285: Jon Jones vs Ciryl Gane, wherein the thespian of Donnie Darko and Brokeback Mountain fame “fought” retired welterweight turned stuntman Jay Hieron inside the Octagon for the movie’s flashback scenes.
This was in contrast to his gruelling Southpaw workout which, in addition to entailing at least 2,000 sit-ups a day, was designed to help him pack on 13 kilos of muscle to make him a believable light heavyweight boxing champion a la Billy “The Great” Hope (we’ve also included this regimen at the bottom for those of you who are curious).
The main pillars of the Jake Gyllenhaal workout were as follows:
Mobility Drills
Walsh used tools like mobility sticks to increase Gyllenhaal’s range of motion to get him ready to train.
Proteus Motion Machine
The high-tech Proteus Motion machine is the next tool Walsh used for Gyllenhaal’s routines. This allowed them to warm up the actor’s joints and establish the proper movement patterns he’d be putting into practice on-set.
Isometrics
Walsh had Gyllenhaal do moves like isometric inverted row holds to “increase strength and stamina at different joint angles.” You can try the row hold Gyllenhaal performs in the video for three sets of 30 seconds on/30 seconds off.
Heavy Sled Work
Walsh used the sled to keep Gyllenhaal moving with a heavy stimulus, challenging the actor to push and pull the load.
Safety Bar Squat
Walsh says that he always keeps a heavyweight movement as part of the routine — here, it’s a squat. “We want to keep the muscle coordination at a high,” he says.
Forearm Drills
Walsh says that grip can be a “limiting factor” in the gym — in other words, your grip might fail on a heavy lift before your other muscles do. To prevent this issue, the trainer programmed grip drills throughout the regimen.
Offset Loaded Bag Drills
Walsh had Gyllenhaal work with offset loads, which helped to prep the actor for the MMA-specific movements he would be mimicking on-screen.
Floor Press
Walsh kept the routine fresh by peppering in different variations of classic strength movements, like the floor press in place of the standard bench press. “It’s important to keep the stimuli broad with variations of reps, sets, loads, and different tempos,” he says.
Chain Pushup
Like the floor press, the chain pushup offered another variation that Walsh could use to switch up Gyllenhaal’s chest training.
Suspension Trainer Push-Pull
“Cross-lateral loading is very important to all sports, but especially to MMA fight training,” Walsh says. This move, which uses a TRX band row and dumbbell press, is one of his favourite variations.
Push-Pull Rips
This exercise helps to “keep things in balance,” according to Walsh. The movement mimics the punching Gyllenhaal performed on-set.
Climber Sprints
Walsh closed out workouts with conditioning in the form of VersaClimber sprints. The low-impact, full-body machine ramps up the heart rate quickly.
MMA Training
All of the above would obviously be supplemented by rudimentary boxing, kickboxing/Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and wrestling training — all cardio-intensive affairs — to not only make the Road House choreography and stunts seem believable to the average punter, but also prevent potential injury.
“We’re fighting on the floor, we’re fighting around tables. We’re fighting around glass, even if it’s breakaway glass. I put my hand on the bar, fucking straight glass,” Jake Gyllenhaal recounted on the Armchair Expert With Dax podcast.
“I was teaching professional fighters, who could really kick my ass, how to kick my ass, so that people really buy it. Their ability to judge distance is unlike anyone else. To be working with someone who can do that, there’s a safety to that too.”
With enough consistency, you’ll look like you could face an unhinged villain like the roided-out Knox (portrayed by an equally roided-out Conor McGregor). At the very least, you’ll make a serviceable stand-in for the iconic Patrick Swayze role.
