Do you ever watch a movie and think ‘I wonder what kind of workout they do to get those bodies.’ It seems actors have an uncanny ability to shape themselves as though they were made of rubber. One movie they are fat, the next they are ripped. How do they do it?

The movie 300 is a great example of a group of actors, all with chiseled bodies. In order to train for the movie many of them, including Gerard Butler who plays King Leonidas, went to see self-made exercise guru Mark Twight, who was commissioned to develop the ‘300 workout.’ The instructions Twight received from director Zack Snyder were quite simple. Snyder told Twight that he wanted “the Spartans to appear as though they had been fighting together since they were children.” And that was all.

When the actors showed up to his gym they were all at different levels of fitness. Some had been training hard already, and some hadn’t. There were even a few who were 40 pounds overweight when they arrived! Twight had only eight weeks to get them all in fighting condition, so he set to work his regimen and suffered no complaints. He believes hard work equals results.

The regimen was broad. He had them doing everything from hard circuit training on rowing machines to lifting heavy loads. He even had them blindfolded during some of the exercises in an attempt to improve balance.

Indeed the 300 workout Twight put the actors through was tough. He had them working hard for up to two hours a day, five days a week, and then he was giving them just enough food to recover from the workout. If you’ve seen the movie, or even just the trailer, you know that he was successful.

Naturally as a person with a life, a job, friends, obligations and so on, you aren’t going to have the time to spend two hours per day working hard like that. Nor are you going to have Twight standing behind you giving you pointers and instruction.

Knowing this Twight has developed an abbreviated workout that closely resembles the one the 300 actors went through. It can be done at any gym and will afford great results.

The ‘300 Workout’

-         25 pull-ups

-         50 deadlifts at 135 pounds

-         50 push-ups

-         50 box jumps with a 24-inch box

-         50 “floor wipers” (a core and shoulder exercise at 135 pounds)

-         50 “clean and press” at 36-pounds

-         25 more pull-ups

If you count it, that’s 300 reps. The idea is to do all of the exercises continuously. Get through that and you should be on your way to a Spartan body.