Weights, parkour, and…skateboarding? Plus, he did his own stunts and really got beat up for
those big fight scenes. Andrew Garfield got ripped for Spider-Man. Here's how.
For Andrew Garfield, getting his body into perfect Spider-Man shape meant spending hours in the gym
lifting weights and training. The excessive exercise was just a sacrifice Garfield was
willing to make in order to play one of his dream roles. When asked in an interview to
give advice to a kid who might want the perfect Spider-Man body, Garfield responded frankly:
"Dude, I can't preach about going to the gym
because whenever I'm not playing Spider-Man, I'm not in the gym."
Garfield admitted that he does enjoy being active,
but he's far from a gym rat. His advice to the would-be superhero was to identify
whatever way your body wants to move and to lean into that activity, saying:
"If line dancing is your thing, just go do line dancing. [...] We need to
move. Our body wants to move. [...] But lifting weights is not for me."
Garfield's trainer from "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" — Armando
Alarcon — disagrees with the actor on that point. He told Coach Mag,
"Andrew will say he is not ... a 'weights guy,' but
his physicality and his ability say otherwise."
After seeing "The Amazing Spider-Man" films, we have to agree with that take.
Without a deep love for pumping iron in the gym,
Andrew Garfield found himself relying on some childhood skills and passions as he
began training to become the wall-crawling web slinger. Garfield told RTÉ Kids that he
used to be a gymnast. That history gave him some familiarity with Spider-Man's movement
and flexibility and meant that he wasn't going into his superhero training entirely cold.
Garfield was also able to lend some more specific abilities from his past to "The
Amazing Spider-Man" franchise. He also revealed that he used to be a skateboarder. Of course,
when it comes to the big stunts that are seen in the films, Garfield had the assistance of
wires and the occasional stunt double, but when Peter is flexing his skater boy skills
in the first movie, that's all Garfield. He was able to infuse the character with
his own personality and hobbies in a way that created a unique and unforgettable Peter Parker.
When it came time to create a new universe for "The Amazing Spider-Man," the filmmakers
also wanted to take an approach to the action that was different from what had come before.
Stunt coordinator Andy Armstrong agreed to join the project on the condition that he
be allowed to use practical effects instead of CGI whenever he possibly could, saying:
"Not to knock the earlier movies, but they feel dated now purely because CGI has come a long way.
This new film became a very good opportunity to show what we can do with real-life stunts."
Luckily for everyone involved in "The Amazing Spider-Man," Andrew Garfield
was more than ready to take on as many stunts as possible, saying in an interview:
"I do about 70% of it, and then 30% of it is done by these two incredible stuntmen."
The result of all that dedication is web-swinging like fans had never seen
before. When Spider-Man flies above cars in New York City, that's really happening,
and more often than not, that's really Garfield behind the mask.
"Hey watch out, I'm swinging here, I'm swinging here."
Because Andrew Garfield was committed to doing his own stunts and truly embodying Spider-Man,
he had to do much more than just get into shape to prepare for the role.
Behind-the-scenes footage shows some of the off-the-wall training Garfield went through.
He practiced all of the climbing and jumps that Spider-Man does on a daily basis while
saving the citizens of New York. He also had to familiarize himself with walking
and crawling along strands of webbing just like the friendly neighborhood hero.
In one of the most iconic moments in the first "Amazing Spider-Man" film,
Peter links up strands of webbing to pick up on vibrations in New York's sewers. Part of why it
feels so believable is because Garfield really is crawling along those strands.
Despite how natural Garfield makes it look, he let his spider-like
abilities go when the cameras finally stopped rolling. He told Total Film:
"When you realize you can manipulate your body, it's empowering, but it's just so much work."
During production, he constantly tried to think about his environment in terms of
Spider-Man's abilities, but after everything wrapped, he says he "tried to let it go."
How much training really went into Andrew Garfield's first outing as Spider-Man?
Garfield told Total Film,
"Seven hours a day, for four months. But two hours was body work and the next three
or four hours was all the other stuff like the harness stuff, gymnastics, parkour training,
wire work and all that, but it was like summer camp, it was like circus school. Just pure fun."
For someone who doesn't consider themselves a fan of going to the gym, that's an extreme amount
of physical training. Of course, it probably helped that it wasn't all just lifting weights.
His trainers also had him on a special diet while training for the first film. Garfield explained:
"[It was] a lot of bland food and existential
dilemmas… with weights in my hands. It was a very confusing time in my life."
Garfield threw himself into the challenge of it all,
and his dedication not only paid off in the film but also impressed
his trainers over and over again. Andy Armstrong told The New York Daily News:
"Andrew was fabulous. He was at our training facility every day learning the stunts,
beating himself up, and doing everything that he could."
Having the body of a superhero and the know-how to pull off epic stunts just wasn't enough for
the level of realism that Andrew Garfield — and everyone else working on "The Amazing
Spider-Man" — wanted to bring into the project. He needed to be a master at moving his body.
According to New York Daily News, Garfield took parkour classes to learn how to properly
move around the cityscape of New York, and he took yoga classes to learn how to truly
control his body's motion the way someone with heightened senses might be able to.
In addition to the classes, Garfield's trainers put mirrors around the training facility and
taped pictures of iconic Spider-Man poses to them so the actor could practice them
and memorize how they felt on his body. Stunt coordinator Andy Armstrong explained:
"You have a big obligation to the fans to do your best and
create something that's close to what they've seen in the comic book world."
"The Amazing Spider-Man" franchise had its ups and downs, but there's no denying that Garfield
nailed Spider-Man's physicality from beginning to end and truly brought the comic book to life.
In "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," Peter isn't just a high school graduate but also a more
experienced hero. This meant Andrew Garfield's training routine needed to change to take those
extra years of swinging from buildings and defending the city into account.
Garfield's trainer, Armando Alarcon, said in an interview with Coach Mag:
"In the first film, we didn't use a lot of weights, but in this film,
we did. The split was 50-50 with bodyweight exercises."
Training for "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" began in November 2012, three months before filming
started, and continued throughout the entire production. Alarcon said that he and Garfield
would train for an hour or two a day, even on top of 12 to 16 hours of filming each day.
The only time they didn't train was, quote, "if he just physically couldn't." With a schedule full of
battles against Electro and Rhino, who could blame Garfield for needing a break every now and again?
"That's the question. That's the question."
As anyone who regularly works out knows, diet can be just as important as exercise when it
comes to building muscle. Andrew Garfield is naturally thin and has a metabolism that
burns through calories almost as quickly as he consumes them, so his trainers had a
real challenge on their hands when it came to his diet. Speaking to Coach Mag, Armando Alarcon said,
"The only way we could continue to build muscle was to give him 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day."
When filming wrapped on the first "Amazing Spider-Man" film,
Garfield told Total Film that he rushed to his favorite restaurant in Los Angeles for a tres
leches cake, which he called "the most beautiful cake you've ever witnessed."
Even with his body in superhero shape, Andrew Garfield still had to go the extra mile to
prepare for Spider-Man's fight scenes. "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" has some epic battles
between Spidey and his villains, and they leave the wall-crawler more beaten down than anything
he'd dealt with in the past. Getting Garfield into the proper headspace for someone who'd
just been smacked around by Electro's energy blasts was the responsibility of his trainer
Armando Alarcon. Alarcon told Coach Mag about his plan for the pre-fight workouts:
"I wanted to ravage his body so hard that he understood what it felt like."
The goal was to wear Garfield down "mentally and physically" so he could properly get into
the headspace of a Spider-Man at the end of his rope. Battling with Electro pushes
Spider-Man to the very edge of his abilities, and Alarcon's workouts — which involved "just
lifting and constantly moving" — pushed Garfield to the edge of his.
From the stunts to the superhero body to the true exhaustion of battle, Garfield's
commitment to bringing Spider-Man to life never wavered, and the film was made better for it.
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