The Henry Cavill Superman workout program
Gym Jones is keeping the exact workout Henry Cavill followed an
understandable secret. Mark Twight believes in a personalized approach –
a program with periodization modulating volume and intensity over the
course of multi-month training cycles. We know it would not be your
typical 4×10 gym-rat workout. A Crossfit-type workout gets closer, with
it’s “constantly varied, high intensity, functional movement,” but it
would need to geared towards greater mass gain.
To approximate Henry Cavill’s Superman workout, we suggest the following programs:
Option 1: A Crossfit football program
Crossfit football is a modified Crossfit program geared to great
strength and mass. It combines high intensity movements with a
comprehensive strength and speed program.
A typical Crossfit Football workout week looks like this:
Monday:
Lift 10,000 lbs as fast as possible using only one rep of the following:
- 1 Squat
- 1 Press
- 1 Deadlift
* You can use any weight on the lifts and it can be done in
any amount of rounds. You can only do one rep at a time and must cycle
through all three lifts to complete one round.
* The goal is to lift 10,000 lbs as fast as possible.
Tuesday: Sprints
Complete:
- 8 x 50 yard
- Rest 60 seconds
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: As many rounds as possible in 10 minutes:
- 7 DB Bent Over Rows
- 7 DB Power Cleans
- 7 DB Push Presses
* Use 50lb dumbells
Friday: Complete 5 rounds
You have 60 seconds to complete the following…
- 20 KB Swings – 2 pood
- Sprint 60 yards
* Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
Saturday: As many rounds as possible in 9 minutes of:
- 3 Back Squats 225 lbs
- 6 Pull Ups
- 9 Push Ups
Sunday: Rest
Monday: Complete 2 rounds:
- 1 minute – Max Rep 50 lbs DB Push Press
- Rest 1 minute
- 1 minute – Max Rep 50 lbs Weighted Pull Ups
- Rest 1 minute
- 1 minute – Row for Calories
- Rest 1 minute
- 1 minute – Max Rep Burpees
* Rest 1 minute between rounds.
This is just an example week, every week will bring additional
challenges and workouts. Running a high-intensity program like this with
a clean mass-gain nutrition regiment (below) should give you Super
results
Option 2: The Juggernaut Method
The Juggernaut Method was created by Chad Wesley Smith, owner and
head Performance Coach at Juggernaut Training Systems in Laguna Hills,
CA. It is a peroidized program divided into 4 waves (reps of 10’s, 8’s,
5’s and 3’s). Each wave is subdivided into three phases:
accumulation,
intensification,
realization. Each workout also has a few crossfit-type athletic routines thrown in – box jumps, sprints and tire flips.
Since the program is geared for strength and mass, it’s designed
around four big lifts: Bench Press, Squat, Military Press and Deadlift.
An example day with the Juggernaught method could look like this:
Monday
Bench (300 max)
Warm-up complex (jump rope, arm swings, foam roller)
- 180 lbs x 3
- 200 x 3
- 210 x 8, 8, As many as possible
Assistant work:
- DB rows 5×10
- Dips 3×15
- Box Jumps
This is just one day of a phase and should only be used as an example
– in this case this workout would be after several weeks of
accumulation.
The peroidization and big lifts in the Juggernaut Method get us
closer to the Man of Steel workout. Throw in some extra skill and
performance work like box jumps and bear crawls and you have something
that should pack on pounds of supermass if you watch your nutrition.
Tailpipe
One thing Mark Twight has talked about is something he throws in at
the end of a workout–the tailpipe. This is a tag-team workout designed
to work to exhaustion and teach correct breathing technique. Ideally you
should have a partner, but if not, you can time your rows and hold the
kettlebells for as long as the 250m takes you.
Tailpipe (at the end of the workout)
- Row 250m
- Hold two 24kg kettlebells in the ‘rack’ position while focusing on breathing
- Rest 45 seconds. Swap places with your partner, then repeat until you’ve done three rows and three racks.
Why tailpipe? “When you’re done,” Twight explained, “it feels like you’ve been sucking on the tailpipe of a car.”
The Superman diet
Henry Cavill, the new Man of Steel, admitted to having a diet plan
that made him have a daily intake of at least five thousand calories. He
consumed several protein-rich meal replacement drinks per day to make up his calories. This included a post workout shake that could contain coconut milk, peanut butter, maltodextrin and whey protein.
“Mark Twight, the chap from Gym Jones, has been putting me through
the ringer big time. Two hours a day on a mix of calories depending on
what sort of work we’re doing. We started off at about 3,000 a day plus
shake.”
“That’s about 3,500. But, two hours of work and then we moved up to
4,000 and then up to 5,000 calories. Now, we’ve dropped down to about
3,500 while we’re doing an hour’s training every morning because if I
keep that high calorie intake I’m going to start putting on fat weight,
but if I drop too low I’m going to start losing all the new muscle I’ve
gained. But, an example of the sort of workouts we’ve been doing
recently?
A caloric cycle for mass should focus on clean, high quality protein
and good fat. Avoid simple sugars and junk eating like fast food to make
up calories. A sample program could run like this:
Weeks 1-2: 3,500 calories including 1-2 MRP shakes per day
Weeks 3-6: 3,500 calories including 1-2 MRP shakes per day
Weeks 7-8: 4,000 calories including 1-2 MRP shakes per day
Weeks 9-10: 5,000 calories including 2-3 MRP shakes per day
Weeks 11-12: 3,500 calories including 1-2 MRP shakes per day
Sample 3,500 calorie Man of Steel diet:
Meal One
5 egg whites
2 eggs
½ cup oats
1 apple
multi-vitamin/fish oil |
Meal Two
1 cup brown rice
1 chicken breast
1 cup broccoli |
Meal Three
6 oz tuna
2 slices wheat bread
banana
PWO shake (probably just water/whey)
and maybe a pear for carbs here
|
Meal Four (chicken wrap)
1 large 10″ flour tortilla
1 6-oz. chicken breast
½ cup lettuce (chopped)
½ tomato (diced) |
Meal Five (shake + potato)
8 oz milk
1 cup oats
1 scoop whey
2 tbsp pb
sweet potato |
Meal Six
1 cup cottage cheese
small yogurt mixed with CC for flavor
almonds |
Sample 5,000 calorie Man of Steel diet:
Meal One
56 grams Protein powder
3 cups Milk (low fat)
2 cups Cereal, cold
2 cups Blueberries
6 tbsp Almonds, slivered |
Meal Two
1/2 cup Cottage cheese (light / low fat)
56 grams Protein powder
2 cups Grapes
3 tbsp Barley
1 1/5 oz Sunflower seeds
|
Meal Three
4 1/2 oz Chicken breast
4 oz Cheese (low or non fat)
4 cups Vegetable soup
4 Crackers
3 whole Pita
12 Peanuts |
Meal Four
49 grams Protein powder
1 1/2 cups Yogurt (plain and low fat)
1 1/2 tbsp Barley
3 tbsp Almonds, slivered
1 tsp Olive, Flax, Hemp or Salmon Oils
2 Tangerines |
Meal Five
11 oz Beef (lean cuts)
4 cups Cauliflower
2 cups Rice
6 tbsp Almonds
1 1/3 cups Fruit juice |
Meal Six
11 oz Turkey (breast, skinless)
2 cups Chickpeas
1 cup Mushrooms
1/4 cup Onions
1 head Lettuce
3 cups Cherry tomatoes
6 tbsp Almonds |
That’s alot of eating. “I’m on 5000 calories a day… You’ve got to eat
protein first, then a little bit of carbs… you’ve gotta keep your
hunger levels going,” Henry Cavill says, “I’m training two and a half
hours a day, pushing my body beyond its normal limits, putting on a lot
of muscle mass and just making myself look like Superman.”