Michael B. Jordan gained 24 pounds of pure muscle in under a year. For us normal people,
that can sound like sorcery, but the real magic is the Hollywood health plan he was following.
Take a look at Jordan's Instagram pictures before his training intensified,
and you'll see that the actor has never really been out of shape. Still,
it's a far cry from the shredded frame he's had in more recent movies.
Everything changed with his casting as Adonis Creed. Playing the son of "Rocky" opponent
Apollo Creed required him to look the part of a boxer in peak condition. Even though Jordan
describes himself as a competitive athlete, there's a different level of fitness required
for a boxer. According to trainer Corey Calliet, it was hard-going at first, saying,
"When we first started, he could barely bench 20 pounds,
his legs were flailing everywhere ... he had nothing. He used to hate all this."
He might have hated the training, but he can't hate the results,
since he put on 24 pounds of muscle in just a year.
There's no easy shortcut for putting on so much muscle in such a short time,
but a Hollywood trainer makes it a little more manageable. Enter Calliet, a former boxer
whose experience was instrumental in crafting Adonis Creed's physique. According to Jordan,
Calliet was the first trainer that he clicked with after a series of false starts with others.
Calliet stayed with Jordan when he got into a different type of fitness
for his role as Erik Killmonger for the original "Black Panther."
Calliet played both sides of the movie's conflict though. He also worked to get
Angela Bassett in fighting shape. Bassett played Ramonda, the matriarch of Wakanda.
According to Calliet, whether he's training someone in their twenties like Jordan or in
their fifties like Bassett, the technique is the same. Focusing on high-intensity
interval training is the best way to burn fat and highlight certain muscle groups.
To properly portray a boxer, Jordan had to train like a boxer. That meant 45-60
minutes of cardio daily, along with tons of ab workouts. As for building muscle,
Calliet had Jordan focus on supersets — exercises where lifting or curling dumbbells are mixed with
push-ups or another workout. In addition, Calliet pushed Jordan with circuit training,
building his endurance with quick rounds of different cardio exercises.
"Yeah, that's cool, but you know, maybe you could just give me some drills."
"Drills?"
"Yeah, you know, things I could do on my own."
If that all seems exhausting, we haven't even gotten to the main event:
a full three hours of boxing training following every workout day. In talking about the workout,
Calliet had this to say in an interview for "Men's Journal":
"I wanted to make him look even more ripped than Apollo, and I think we did that."
According to Jordan, his lifestyle changed completely once he began to
see results from working out for roles. About the change, he said,
"When things start getting a little easier, when you start lifting weight you never lifted before…
Then it's, 'This is all right.' So I learned to love it when I started seeing results."
Being in fighting shape from "Creed" helped Jordan transition to the training for "Black
Panther," where he used a new technique called "Muscle Training." The technique
adapted Jordan's workouts to match what the character would do to stay in shape,
which helped alleviate the dreaded workout plateau.
The first "Creed" established that Adonis was fighting in the Light Heavyweight division,
which in boxing has an upper limit of 175 pounds. For the 2018 sequel "Creed II," however,
Jordan had to bulk up in order to fight Viktor Drago, the fearsome son of Ivan Drago, played
by Florian Munteanu. For context, Ivan killed Adonis' father in the ring three decades earlier.
The film gives Jordan an unconventional training regimen. After losing to Drago in their first
bout, Adonis rebuilds himself out in the desert alongside Rocky and his trainer. In real life,
however, Jordan and Calliet did things a bit more by the book.
For the 2021 Amazon film "Without Remorse," based on the Tom Clancy novel, Jordan had to
develop a more holistic workout plan that even involved tactical training. The actor was cast
as John Kelly, an elite Navy SEAL whose wife and family are murdered in a home invasion.
As with "Black Panther," military training was essential to the character;
Jordan can't just look good, he has to be able to move and fight with efficiency.
His training regimen included a 12-week course in weapons training, similar to what real-life
soldiers would receive. Calliet was also concerned with some aspects of Jordan's physique that don't
get as much attention when he's in the ring — namely, his legs and cardio. The
two employed a CrossFit-style program utilizing high-intensity interval training, in addition
to the ten hours a day Jordan would spend in front of the camera and in weapons training.
Playing larger-than-life characters can be a double-edged sword. Once
you've hit those heights, it's hard to come back to earth. After five
years straight of playing nothing but comic book characters, champion boxers,
and elite soldiers, it was jarring to see him play a mere mortal once again.
In 2019, Jordan starred in the death row drama "Just Mercy." The film cast him as
celebrated civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson,
working to free an innocent man awaiting execution in 1980s Alabama.
"If we can look at ourselves closely, we can change this world for the better."
Jordan has a lean figure in his portrayal of young Stevenson,
dressed in sharp suits that are perhaps a little too fitted and not boxy enough
to really be from the late '80s. One person less than thrilled at Jordan's toned-down silhouette,
however, was the real-life Stevenson. He joked in 2020 when told Jordan,
"'The one area where we don't have to be authentic is that you don't have to
lose that 'Black Panther,' 'Creed' body when you play me. You can keep that.'"
"Creed III" arrived in theaters nearly five years after "Creed II," with its star in a
new phase of his life and now with new challenges to face as well. For Adonis,
the challenge comes in the form of a ghost from the past. Specifically,
he has to fight a childhood friend who spent decades in prison and now wants
a shot at the title from the now-retired champ. For Jordan, the film marks his directorial debut,
taking the reins from previous franchise leaders Ryan Coogler and Steven Caple, Jr.
Behind the scenes, the film proved to be a new challenge for Calliet as well. He had to plan
a workout regimen that could be done while still allowing Jordan to fulfill his duties as not just
the film's star, but also its director. Training began four months out from the start of filming,
with Calliet putting his star through the regimen up to three hours a day, six days a week.
After filming began, however, workouts became less regular due to the demands of Jordan's
schedule. He and Calliet would do half-hour bursts of strength training, calisthenics,
or the same kind of high-intensity interval training they had developed for previous films.
Calliet told Insider that his goal for "Creed III" was to get Jordan into the best shape he
had ever been for the series. For Jordan, there were other concerns beyond just getting swole.
The body of Adonis tells a story in the "Creed" films, just as Stallone transforms
from an unremarkable heavyweight in "Rocky" to a superhumanly-toned warrior in "Rocky IV". At
this point, Adonis is comfortably retired, living off the fat of his accomplishments in
the ring and a new generation of fighters he is promoting. In fact, Jordan went so
far as to describe his physique in a 2023 GQ interview as similar to a typical dad's body.
While those who rock the dad bod in real life might scoff at the movie star using their phrase,
his statement provides a good insight into how Jordan views Adonis at this point in
the franchise. It may also be telling about how he views himself compared to his co-star
Jonathon Majors, who also trained with Calliet. Adonis, like Rocky before him,
always has to be the underdog going into each film's climactic bout. Sometimes,
a dad bod is the perfect obstacle to have to overcome.
Much of the coverage around Jordan's transformation over the years has focused
on his workouts and the way different roles require a different focus. An important part
of his fitness plan that is often overlooked was his diet. For Jordan and Calliet on "Creed
III," the focus was on lean proteins and whole foods like rice and vegetables,
with fruit and protein shakes as a snack. While a diet of turkey and rice might seem extreme,
Calliet is also a firm believer in cheat meals, which would actually help fill out his muscles.
In their joint interview with GQ, Majors emphasized how important a steady diet
is to maintaining such impossible physiques, claiming to eat about
4,000 calories a day when preparing for the role. He also emphasized an even more
overlooked aspect of fitness: A healthy sleep schedule. About sleep, he said,
"Sleep hygiene is, like, everything. You've [Jordan] got great skin, man,
and if you don't sleep your skin won't be like that. Your muscles won't grow like that."
There is something about playing a boxer on screen that seems to convince an actor
they could do it in real life. Maybe it's the months of training required
to look the part of a boxer that makes them want to take the leap from fiction to fact.
While Jordan has never said he could be a real fighter,
or even that he wants to, one of his compatriots has done it for him:
Former cruiserweight Tony Bellew, who played opponent "Pretty" Ricky Conlan.
Bellew, who famously floored Jordan by accident while filming the climax of the first movie,
was impressed with the actor's athletic prowess and work ethic. In a March 2023
interview with Virgin Radio, he claimed Jordan could be a real thing, saying,
"He would eat a couple of these YouTubers, no problem."