- Hey guys. My name's Jason Walsh.
I'm a trainer here in Los Angeles.
I trained Brie Larson for Captain Marvel.
(dramatic music)
Brie came to me, and the good news was was
we had nine months.
So when we started, I really wanted
to break things down into the fundamentals.
We wanted to get that foundational strength
and movements established, and that's
really the nuts and bolts of it.
Her character is very, very physical,
so we need her to be super resilient,
super strong, so that she can recover
from this and not risk shutting down production.
And I knew in the movie, by talking
to the stunt coordinator, what was
really going to be presented to her.
So I wanted to give her all of the tools possible
to get through this thing, and really nail it,
and feel confident, and give her
that psychological advantage.
The model that I'm gonna give you guys,
progressive overload technique, is,
it's just a good fundamental workout
and a great template to use.
Guys can use this.
I use this.
I know guys in the NFL that use this stuff.
I use it before the workout and after.
Before, because I can get adjustments
down my spine, and then afterwards, it's more for recovery.
Next step, we're gonna do the world's greatest stretch.
This is great for the hips, mobility.
It gets the upper back, hamstrings.
Devin's gonna step out and he's gonna drop
that inside elbow down, which is
really gonna get inside of that hip.
And then what I want him to do is go
back and get the hamstring.
So reach back there.
Hit a little hamstring.
And then go back in.
Drop the elbow.
And we're gonna take that arm and
we're gonna rotate out and get that upper torso.
For the next section in the activation,
the muscles that are supporting the spine,
especially for squatting, or hip hinge,
or any of these kinda things, I wanna make sure
that they're turned on before we actually start moving.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a Sorinex band,
and then you're gonna lean back into it a little bit here.
And he's gonna pull those elbows from a high position,
down towards the pockets, down and back.
Hold if for a two-count.
Good stretch, nice and easy.
Get those scapulas moving, but everything
around that spine is getting fired up right here.
So one of the biggest movers is
obviously the gluts, or the butt.
Almost every single workout, I do hip thrusts.
And go ahead and push against the bench.
Keep the chin tucked.
Hold it for a two-count, and then
we're gonna drop down under control.
Keep it down, nice and easy.
We're gonna usually do about two rounds of activation.
We don't wanna waste a lot of energy doing the activation.
We just wanna turn those muscles on,
get 'em ready for the big compound movements.
So we've got the synovial joint.
We got the gluts firing for the hips.
Ys, Ts, and Ws, it's used a lot
for rehabilitation, prehabilitation.
We're gonna use it here to activate some
of those stabilizer muscles around the shoulder.
For the Ys, we're gonna keep our thumbs up.
We're gonna make a Y with the arms here.
So not right in front of the body,
or by the ears, but just at an angle right here,
and he's just gonna lift from the ground.
Hold it, and then nice and slow.
And now we're gonna move out and do our Ts.
So what all he's gonna do is keep his arms out
and keep the elbows locked, and lift here, at the backside.
Just different angles.
That's all we're going for.
And then into the Ws, and what I want
you to do is I wanna pull the elbows back here.
And so we can really get into the mid-back.
Come down with the elbows.
Drop here.
Come back up.
Devin's a big guy, and if he's sweating
from two-pound weights, trust me,
these are gonna be plenty for you guys.
And then the last one, at the top
of the W, we're just gonna do an overhead press.
So come here.
Press out. Try to keep the arms up.
A lot of people drop.
That's probably too much weight.
Drop the weights.
Go back up here.
Pull the elbows all the way back,
through that full range of motion, and then punch 'em out.
One more activation exercise here, and this is full-body.
What we're trying to do is prime the nervous system,
get the body flowing.
So Devin's got a 12-pound Dynamax ball.
Triple extension.
Hips back.
All the way to the top.
Slam.
Love it.
So here we are. We're at the primary section of the workout.
This is the meat and potatoes.
This is what it's all about.
This is the body working, recruiting every single muscle,
multi-joints.
This is where you get the most out of your workout.
I really like this exercise.
The landmine is so multifaceted.
So many things you can do with it.
So what I wanna do is go ahead
and show you some progressions on this landmine.
We're gonna put 25 pounds on the bar,
which is nice and easy, but go ahead and find your movement.
Figure out how this is supposed to feel and look
before you start moving into some heavier weights.
Go ahead and lift this up, Devin.
Breathe out.
Squeeze. Push the hips all the way through.
Squeeze the gluts together.
The hips go back.
Push it way back.
Take a deep breath in.
Stand back up.
One, two, three, touch, and back up.
And again, all of the work is being done
by the hips right here.
Let's move on to the secondary stuff.
This is everything else.
We're gonna do a unilateral or a single-leg exercise
for every single workout.
I deem 'em that important.
Position that bar right in front of the inside leg here.
You're gonna bend down.
Grab the end of the bar.
That's gonna keep it from twisting inside your hand here.
And what Devin's gonna do is he's gonna get tension
in the body by making a fist right here
and getting that arm out.
This exercise is really good.
Instead of it being two legs, we're taking one leg away,
which is giving us that stimulus
of that anti-rotation, which is a great core exercise.
The next one for our secondary
exercise is a horizontal push.
To get the upper body stronger,
I actually like to work on the e-centric motion first.
So what I want you to do is lower
yourself down, under control, nice and easy.
Position the hands about five degrees out.
This is perfect elbow position.
If you need to, you can step through.
Step through.
Push yourself back up.
Start from the top.
Work on these nice and slow.
This is gonna help get you strong enough.
So the next progression we worked
on with Brie to get her to a point
where she could actually do pushups are isometrics
down on the floor.
So we went from the bench.
Now we're down on the floor.
What I'm gonna have you do is
actually just lower yourself down.
Same elbow position.
Spread your hands.
Bring the elbows back.
Take your chest about two to three inches
off the ground, and then drop.
Start back over.
And do the same thing.
Just for (beeps) and giggles, I'm gonna show
you guys what we did with Brie.
She got to a point where she was doing the pushups.
She can crank out 25 pushups, no problem,
so we started progressing her with a little
more of a dynamic pushup, draping some chains over her hips.
I think these chains about about 20 pounds a piece,
25 pounds a piece.
I put it over the hips because that's the weak point.
I wanna keep that core engaged as much as I possibly can.
(chains jangling)
Lighter.
Up to heavy.
Nice and slow.
I'm gonna go ahead and show you guys a finisher
that we did with Brie quite a bit.
It's fantastic for a little metabolic work,
also a lot of volume on the shoulders here,
and it is a complex movement.
The upright row we're gonna do,
we're gonna do a snatch, push-press,
into a bent-over row, back into a snatch.
We're gonna move these as quickly as we can.
See, he's using the hips to help out here.
It's still a full-body movement.
He's gonna do six of each.
Use the hips, snatch, throw.
Brie got to a point where we were using
about 25-pound weights.
These can be brutal at the end of a workout.
Hips back.
Push-press.
Again.
Flat back, hips back.
And the last one, the finish, back into the snatch.
Six times. Move 'em fast.
Use the hips help.
Here we go.
Speed it up.
Four.
And good.
So an essential element for Brie was
her upper body strength.
So what we're gonna do for
our last secondary vertical pull exercise,
we're gonna do a progression on pull-ups here.
And just similar to the pushup,
we're gonna work on some isometrics here,
which I think are fantastic.
You can get those joint angles really, really strong.
So the first position, all the way to the top.
Here, and I want you to pull your knees up,
and you do not cross your feet.
Pull your knees up to this position.
Again, it's a 10-second hold.
We'll work up to 30 seconds on these.
Drop.
The second position is the 90 degrees.
Now, this is the toughest one.
This is the one we wanna really focus in on.
Go ahead and jump to the top.
Pull the knees up.
Get in that position.
Now lower yourself down into a 90-degree angle, right there.
Again, 10 seconds at that 90-degree angle.
Drop.
And then the last position is
just below that 90-degree angle.
So jump to the top.
Pull the knees up.
Now lower yourself down.
Keep going right there.
Just below 90.
Those are three positions that we're gonna use,
10 seconds on each, then work
your way up to 30 seconds on each.
And then the last thing we're gonna do is
we're gonna link all those together.
Go ahead and jump to the top, Dev.
Right there. You're gonna go 10 seconds at the top.
Drop down into your 90-degree.
10 seconds.
Just below.
10 seconds.
Drop to the bottom.
The next progression we're gonna move is
we're gonna do an assisted pull
so we can get that full range of motion here.
So what I'm gonna have him do is,
you're gonna jump and pull the knees,
and then work on that e-centric all the way down.
There, nice and easy.
Control it all the way through that full range of motion.
Start over.
Do it again.
Jump, pull, start at the top.
Nice, controlled, big stretch
all the way through that range of motion.
The next part, we're gonna jump and just do the pulls.
So here, jump, pull, all the way down.
Keep the arms up, push.
Up.
Knees up. Keep the knees up.
Keep the knees up.
All the way down.
Now you're working that full range of motion.
Now that's the progression for the pull-up.
Now we're ready to put it all together.
So we've done the isometrics.
We done the assisted.
Now we're gonna go ahead and just keep the knees up,
and do a drop, right into a full chin.
Push yourself to the top.
Keep the knees up.
Keep the core engaged.
Pull yourself back up.
Nice and easy.
Brie worked out five days a week
with me pretty much the whole nine months.
She worked her ass off to get into shape for this movie,
and I'm really, really proud of her.
She got, pound for pound, as strong as
any guy that I know, and that's saying something.
That's really fantastic.