Brad Pitt’s all-in workouts are testimony to how much he commits to a role physically, just like other Hollywood shapeshifters like Bale and McConaughey.

If you read enough about Brad Pitt, you’ll realise that he isn’t naturally predisposed toward training and clean eating like some Hollywood action heroes are.

“Sure! I eat healthy and all that, which I’m not too crazy about. It gets tedious sometimes, but I love the payoff at the end; it’s worth it,” Pitt told CBS News.

No, for Brad, training and eating clean are akin to learning lines and hitting marks: something he realises has to be done for a role. But Brad Pitt isn’t a guy who does things by halves. He went from a struggling actor in L.A. doing odd jobs and small-time roles to one of the most influential entertainment figures in the world.

These days, not only is he an accomplished actor, twice nominated for an Academy Award and with a raft of other nominations, but he’s a high-powered producer as well. His production company, Plan B Entertainment, have made some of the most iconic movies of the last decade: Eat Pray Love, the Departed, Moneyball, and 12 Years a Slave and he’s won an academy for 12 years a Slave as a producer. So if Brad had to build a specific look for a role, he’d commit to it wholeheartedly and put aside everything else, even his bad habits, possibly even his family.

Cut for Fight Club

Case in point. In 1999, Brad portrayed Tyler Durden in Fight Club, a film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s brilliant novel of the same name. Brad Pitt’s workout prepared for the part with boxing, taekwondo, and grappling lessons and a now widely circulated body-part workout (below). The iconic counter-culture image of a bloodied, shirtless Brad with a cigarette in his mouth (pic above) made millions of women swoon and helped catapult the abdominal six-pack to the status of the most desired muscle group for men for a decade.

Director David Fincher wanted Brad to have a wiry, lightweight fighter’s upper body, so the workout, as you’ll see, is a classic gym-mirror workout. It will get you that lean, sinewy upper body, but where’s leg day? Follow this workout, and you’ll look great without a shirt and in a pair of jeans. You’ll notice everyone else in the movie wears long pants or jeans, even when fighting. The no-shirt, long-pants ensemble was the Nineties uber-cool look the director wanted, so Brad gave him a lean, mean fighter’s upper body and an enviable six-pack. He didn’t need the legs to look good because the audience would never see them. Notice the complete absence of leg day.

Typical Week

Monday — Chest
Push-ups — 3 sets of 25 reps
Bench press — 25, 15 & 8 reps @ 75, 85, 100 kgs
Nautilus press — 15 reps @ 35, 45, 50 kgs
Incline press — 15 reps @ 30, 40, 60 kgs
Pec deck — 15 reps @ 20, 25, 30 kgs

Tuesday — Back
25 pull-ups — 3 sets to fatigue
Seated rows — 3 sets @ 30, 35, 40 kgs
Lat pull downs — 3 sets @ 60, 70, 80 kgs
T-bar rows — 3 sets @ 30, 35, 45 kgs

Wednesday — Shoulders
Arnold press — 3 sets @ 20 kgs
Laterals — 3 sets @ 15 kgs
Front raises — 3 sets @ 12 kgs

Thursday — Biceps & Triceps
Preacher curls — 3 sets @ 25, 35, 45 kgss
EZ curls cable — 3 sets @ 20, 30, 35 kgs
Hammer curls — 3 sets @ 15, 20, 25 kgs
Pushdowns — 3 sets @ 15, 40, 45 kgs

Friday & Saturday — Cardio
Treadmill — 1 hour and try to maintain 80% MHR

Sunday — Rest

Bulking up for Troy

But fast forward a few years, and Brad’s new character, Achilles, has no option but to show off his pins in the epic sword-and-sandals flick Troy. The dress of the day for any self-respecting Hoplite was armour and a very short skirt-like outfit, which exposed the thighs and calves. At the time of Fight Club, it was reported that Brad was 70kg. At 180cm tall, he was skinny with about 5–6 per cent body fat. The all-conquering Achilles needed to look like a formidable middle-weight warrior, so not only did Brad have some leg work to do, but he’d needed to bulk up his upper body.

Enter the late Gregory Joujon-Roche, a top Hollywood personal trainer and founder of Holistic Fitness in Los Angeles. Gregory Joujon-Roche trained Tobey Maguire for Spider-Man, Leonardo De Caprio for The Departed and Demi Moore for G.I. Jane. Along with his $US5000/week team that included a nutritionist, a masseuse, a martial artist, and a yoga instructor, Joujon-Roche spent three hours a day, six days a week for six months preparing Brad for his role in Troy. To build up size, Joujon-Roche targeted one muscle group per day, allowing for a full recovery and maximising Brad’s muscle growth potential over an extended period of time, similar to any bodybuilder’s periodization schedule. After six months, Brad weighed a respectable 84kg and was still at 6 per cent body fat, so his training had managed to pack on 14 kilograms of pure muscle — and gained considerable girth in his legs. He maintained his training for the six months of filming for continuity’s sake as the film wasn’t filmed chronologically. After the ordeal, he said of the training, “It was the toughest he’d ever done.”

Instead of having a certain number of reps in mind, Hollywood personal trainer Gregory Joujon-Roche would adjust reps and weight until Brad felt like he’d “killed it.”

Typical (Leg) Day

Single-Leg Squats
Lunges with a Kick
Lateral Shuffle Cardio Interval (3, 1-minute bursts)
Duck Squats
Leg Extensions
Mountain Climbers Cardio Interval (2 sets of 15 each leg)
Calf Raises
Hanging Leg Raises
Skater Lunges Cardio Intervals (20–30 jumps each side)

Brad Pitt Abs/Cardio Routine

After 20 minutes, stop and do these three core abs exercises:
Accordion Crunches
Side Bridges
Supermans
2 minutes treadmill @ 85% heart rate (160 BPM)
Repeat Ab Circuit (x4 times total sets)
After 4th set of abs, end with a run on the treadmill for 5 minutes @80% MHR

1–2 hours weightlifting:
1 hour yoga/stretching
1 hour of martial arts

Diet

As the tell-all interview in GQ magazine after his split with Angelina pointed out, Brad has developed some bad dietary habits, most notably alcohol. “I could drink a Russian under the table with his vodka. I was a professional. I was good,” he was quoted as saying.

“I enjoy wine very, very much … I own a winery” (Brad and his now estranged wife paid $US 60 million for the Chateau Miraval winery in the south of France, which is where they were married. It has since been sold) Switching to a clean-eating-no-drinking mode must have been hard for a man who loved wine and reportedly lists his favourite food as pizza. But that’s exactly what he did.

For Fight Club, Troy, Snatch and later for the WWII epic Fury, Brad changed his diet, dropping alcohol and junk food and upping the protein, reducing carbs, eating 7 meals daily, and keeping his calories around 2000. While bulking up, he increased the total calories but kept the Marco ratio the same.

Brad Pitt’s Training Diet

Breakfast: Eggs (six whites, seven yolks) and 75g of oatmeal with raisins. If his schedule was tight, Pitt occasionally replaced the eggs with a protein shake.
Midmorning Snack: Tinned tuna in whole wheat pita breads.
Lunch: Two chicken breasts, 75–100g brown rice or pasta, and green veggies.
Mid-Afternoon Snack [Pre-Workout]: A protein bar or whey protein shake and a banana.
Post Workout: whey protein shake and a banana
Dinner: Grilled fish or chicken, brown rice or pasta, vegetables and salad.
Evening Snack: A casein protein shake or low-fat cottage cheese (slow-release protein).

In the end, Brad Pitt was Focused with a capital F. He did whatever he had to do to get into the role and get the physique he needed. He made sacrifices and turned off bad habits. He put aside what didn’t help him achieve his goals and focused entirely on what must be done.

“I tend to run things into the ground,” he told GQ. “I do it with everything, yeah. I exhaust it, and then I walk away.”

The run-things-into-the-ground approach certainly worked for him with his physicality, and in his career, but may have taken a toll on the rest of his life. As he said: “People on their deathbeds don’t talk about what they obtained or were awarded. They talk about their loved ones or their regrets — that seems to be the menu. I say that as someone who’s let the work take me away.”