It’s no secret that actors and actresses will go through insane body transformations in order to look right for a role. We’ve seen this done by actors like Chris Pratt, who got SHREDDED preparing for his role of Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy, as well as Chris Hemsworth, who has started to look like the God of Thunder whether he is on screen or not. But when remembering these intense transformations, it is impossible not to mention Jake Gyllenhaal’s knock-out role in “Southpaw”.
Gyllenhaal has been known to submerge himself deeply into every role he takes, saying “When I set my mind to something I just won’t stop until I do it.” And “Southpaw” was not his first breathtaking body transformation either. In fact, just the year before Gyllenhaal’s boxing hit, he starred as a strange, nearly malnourished, ambulance chaser in the film “Nightcrawler”.
The star dropped nearly 30 pounds in order to look the part, trying to do it in the healthiest way possible, telling BBC “It affects your body, but I try to be as safe as I can.” His diet played the biggest influence in shaping his dangerously slender form, which mainly consisted of kale and tiny servings of meat and crackers.
After this journey came Gyllenhaal’s newest task: becoming a real boxer. “I didn’t know how to box when I started. I had five months to learn,” he said in an interview discussing his intense training, “I decided to train twice a day so it would give me an advantage, and it would seem like 10 months of training.” These two-a-days were no cakewalk either, starting with an 8-mile run before getting into the ring for the “real” workout.
“I did timed rounds of exercises, gradually increasing time as I improved… I started with jumping rope to increase my coordination, quickness, endurance, agility, and footwork speed. I then shadow boxed to warm up and get my rotations loose. I’d follow that up with 6 rounds of the heavy bag, 3-4 rounds of speedball, and 4-6 rounds of pads. Together, they helped improve my strength endurance, power, coordination, technique, and footwork. All rounds ran anywhere between 2-5 minutes depending on the day and what we were training. It was incredibly gruelling, but a lot of fun because we were constantly mixing things up.”
-Gyllenhaal on Bodybuilding.com
Aside from his boxing workouts, the Academy Award Nominee stays active outside of the ring as well. He maintained a steady combination of bodyweight lifts and weight-based lifts, working in “a lot of dips, pulls-ups, walking lunges, shrugs, deadlifts, crunches and squats,” as well as doing shoulder and bench press to ” add a bit of muscle mass.”
Spending six hours a day working out obviously helped Gyllenhaal get into fighting form, yet still he claims, “My look really came from my diet.” With an intense diet of at least six meals a day, eating every few hours, this should not come as a surprise. At this point you should realize, results come from what you put into your body, and Gyllenhaal proved that fact after revealing his diet:
“My diet would consist of lots of eggs, chicken, fish, bananas, apples, almonds, cacao beans, raisins, goji berries, rye bread, pasta, couscous and potatoes, and lots of steamed vegetables and salad: avocado, tomatoes, broccoli, and other dark-green leaves. Nothing was fried, and everything was as natural as possible.”
The movie star’s transformation is nothing short of jaw-dropping. To go from 30 pounds underweight to fight ready, adding about 15 pounds of muscle in just 5 months, is impressive to say the least, but not all of us have six hours a day that we can set aside to get in the gym. However, starting a routine of getting in the gym every day is the first step towards reaching your goal. Establish that habit, eat right, and stay committed.
Watch this video to see just how Jake Gyllenhaal did it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=103&v=uIZ6SDCuYkY