hi I'm Jason Walsh I'm a trainer here in
Los Angeles California and I work with
models actors musicians and pro athletes
so when a client or a studio approaches
me about a character that we're going to
be developing what we need to do is sit
down and talk about not only the goal
but what it's going to take to get to
that goal what are the variables
involved there's a lot of things that
take into account so the stress is one
side of it the exercise but there's a
lot of other stressors that are involved
as well environmental there's day-to-day
life things like that so that's the
stress side of the coin but we also have
the recovery side of the coin which I'd
like to talk about today really it's
about stress and recovery and that's how
we get to the goal what I like to focus
on is nutrition hydration sleep mental
health soft tissue and of course
supplements your next workout it's
really only as good as your last
recovery training for an action role
Matt Damon
Louise iam the challenge was is that
they gave me a storyboard book with the
way they want Matt Damon to look for
this futuristic role but I got Matt
Damon from the informant which was a
Matt Damon with a high body fat percent
which was for his role at the time so
that the challenge was there the good
news was is that the studio gave me
enough time we had approximately four
months before Elysium started shooting
in Vancouver what we did was he
established in the first month was
trying to get rid of the issues at hand
he's been injured and had been living
with shoulder injury back pain the
months after that we started working on
his strength before we went into a lot
more of the conditioning side of things
one of the things that we had to take
into consideration when the variables
from Matt Damon Elysium was that he was
eventually he became a cyborg and had to
wear an exoskeleton so we needed to get
him to a point where he was very
comfortable moving with that exoskeleton
so that nothing bad happened we spent
you know an hour and a half in the
morning doing our strength training in
the afternoon we'd come back and we'd do
a lot of our conditioning whether that's
going for a run or sprints or swim or
grouse grind which is this hellish
mountain and Bank
as we got closer and closer to the
filming we really started stepping it up
and the conditioning room fine-tuning
has died we took a lot of carbohydrates
away we increase the protein we got his
body fat down and really everything
started coming together so when a client
comes in depending on the role what
we're going to do is manipulate calories
and macro and micronutrients also known
as the proteins carbohydrates and fats
those are really the ratios that we that
we really play around with for this we
can increase a caloric intake to
increase size or create an environment
where that person can grow or we can
deplete some of those calories and get
them to start losing body fat let's say
we're trying to lose fat we pull back a
lot of the carbohydrates until we get
the body fat to a certain point when the
body becomes highly efficient the
metabolism really Rises we can then
introduce carbohydrates back and play
with that variable so that it becomes
fuel because of a super efficient it
uses the carbohydrates as fuel so when
it's in a matter of months we took Matt
Damon who was pretty much broken he had
back issues he had shoulder issues had
high body fat percent and we were able
to transition him into somebody that was
lean who was 10% body fat who had no
pain clean Bills of movements strength
resiliency and we were able to carry
that through the candelabra into the
martian into Jason Bourne which was like
MMA fighter skp Jennifer Aniston for we
are the Millers
this is my first time that I got to
train somebody for an exotic dancer
which was a lot of fun especially
because it's jan hanussen we wanted to
again establish that foundation there
was some things missing she had a little
bit of a knee issue that we'd like to
address but then also being a dancer we
you know want to make sure that the
mobility is there to make the moves and
they're needed for the for the role the
hip thrust is one of those essential
exercises that we like to do and I did
with Jennifer Aniston because of the
issue that she had with her knee for
Jenn's workouts we wanted to implement
unilateral exercises one of the best
ones that we have is the single leg hip
thrust the reason why we're doing that
is so we can establish hip strength and
keep stability in that hip so that it
keeps a lot of that play out of the knee
since she was pretty much in shape for
this the refinement was is that we just
added in a couple more days so she ended
up coming in five days a week two months
prior to shooting we only needed an hour
hour and a half we did a lot of soft
tissue work with her what I'm talking
about soft tissue I'm talking about the
different layers of the muscle and the
connective tissue to the joints people
think that they have to wear you know a
tendon embrace or something like that
and it's usually just a soft tissue
issue I use blunt objects like a foam
roller like on a daily use to hit most
of the major muscles the big muscles or
sometimes I'll use a faragon which is a
little more detailed to get into those
trigger points I'm finding that the
aches and pains and the issues that
we're finding comes down to soft tissue
a lot of the training came down to
because of the knee injury that she had
had that we cleaned up but we wanted to
reinforce those movement patterns as we
put her on the climber the Versa climber
for a lot of the condition because
there's zero impact it's reinforcing
movement patterns Jen's a great client
she knows what she's doing she knows
about the diet and the nutrition the
recovery side of things so I kind of
just left that into her hands I feel
like you know less information the
better response I'm usually gonna get
from the client
firefighter role miles teller and only
the brave
for all in the brave we had about three
months so we had plenty of time to get
him in shape for this and the variables
that were involved is obviously the
extreme conditions because they did they
did film this in the heat a fire in the
forest but also he needed to be as
resilient as possible so we wanted to
build muscle one of his favorite
exercises was the deadlift we used a
trap bar deadlift and I think we got
over 400 pounds it is absolutely one of
the best bang for your buck exercises as
it utilizes everything in the body
that's going to give him the
testosterone benefit that we needed we
amped up the days about four days a week
didn't want to over strain him over
stress him and we just needed him strong
and resilient so adding the next four
days all we needed to do what we wanted
to do is is really build muscle which
meant that we wanted to go ahead and
supplement a little bit more than we
would just during normal training I use
and highly advocate protein
supplementation protein is essentially
the building blocks of muscle we want to
recover we want to put muscle on protein
is essential the next variable is
hydration without proper hydration the
body doesn't work right if you don't
have the hydration you're not going to
get the results a lot of times it's
actually very hard for the brain to
differentiate between hunger and thirst
a lot of times you're just dehydrated
when you're fatigued
drink some water chloë grace moretz
shadow in the clouds fighter pilot I
recently started training Chloe she's a
young lady that that had trained before
she did kick-ass where she actually did
get injured she really messed her knee
up and kick-ass doing some of the stunt
work so when Chloe came in we were able
to really kind of establish that
foundational strength and clean up the
knee which was great because then she
got the green light for this movie about
three months prior which is exactly the
amount of time that I like to to prep
people for movies we also have somebody
that is in fashion
and doesn't want to bulk up I had the
typical kind of story from her was I
want to get stronger but I don't want to
bulk up strength training doesn't
necessarily equate to muscle size all
right that's bodybuilding and that's a
way of manipulating strength training
for that kind of aesthetic look strength
training the stuff that we're doing with
them is a I've got to go through and
I've got to fix a lot of the issues with
her and you know be really tried to you
know prove to her that the stuff that
we're doing is going to help her and I
did that by clean up her knee issue she
doesn't have any issue anymore
she was also never able to do a pull-up
or a push-up we would do everything from
you know reinforcing her deadlift her
squat pattern we did heavy sled work
lots of pull-up she's she's into the
pull-up thing well this is a multi joint
exercise you can see the elbow to the
shoulders but also the core stability
but keeping the knees up here she's
firing just about every muscle on the
body so when Chloe came to me she
couldn't even do a single pull-up by the
end of it she was doing about eight to
ten pull-ups really we just did one hour
a day five days a week I don't think we
needed to do five days a week she just
loved the training so much that she
wanted to do five days a week is one of
those times when I didn't even have to
request she just wanted or demanded it
she's like I'm getting stronger I'm
doing pull-ups I'm doing push-ups I'm
pushing the heavy sled I'm doing
deadlifts things that I've never done
before my knee doesn't hurt I feel great
and I'm getting smaller and it was
amazing to watch this girl just kind of
just like her brain as well I think
Chloe is very excited to try the stunt
work I know that there was a scene where
she was falling out of the cockpit and
she actually had to pull herself back
into this cockpit that's flying through
the air and I can hear everybody in the
background and just complete awe that
this you know young woman was able to
fully pull herself back into a cockpit I
was pretty exciting Jimmy Chen free solo
Mountaineer director photographer
Jimmy Chen is one of my best friends and
he pretty much exemplifies what extreme
sports is about extreme conditions
extreme types of movements what I'm
going to do is try to show and prove to
him
there are elements within his body that
can come out of whack because of the
types of sports just like you would do
with a professional athlete you know you
you want to find and eliminate any of
those potential issues that could become
bigger problems especially when he's on
the side of a mountain so my approach
with Jimmy is really trying to keep his
body as much in balance as possible he
lets me kind of have half of the workout
where I get to do that refinement and
pick on his weaknesses and then the rest
of it is how much can I kick his ass and
the conditioning aspect this is one of
those cases where you don't have
somebody that's coming in you know two
three days a week I mean Jimmy's gym is
the outdoors we're talking about a guy
that'll go out and he'll run 30 miles in
the high altitude
usually what I'm trying to do is I put
some different types of stress on his
body than he's used to you know usually
that incorporates some sort of weight
again he wants extreme he wants
conditioning he wants strength this is
the machine that's gonna give us
everything we want right here anything I
can do to kind of torture him he wants
it he asked for it so I get to have a
lot of fun with that one of the key
elements for someone that's on the go in
extreme conditions all the time is
recovery sleep is the next element that
I want to talk about and I know we're
talking about recovery so it kind of
goes hand-in-hand the better sleep we
can get more high quality sleep we can
get the more results you're gonna get in
the gym the next time I want to talk
about is mental health and I think that
this is one of the most overlooked and
undervalued subjects that should be
addressed you train the body you should
also train them line science has really
proven that you know working out
increases the fuel good hormones right
which is going to affect mental state
and vice versa so if your mental state
is even better you're going to come in
you're gonna have a better workout
you're going to increase those
endorphins it's really a win-win
situation