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Bronson workout, for lack of a better term


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So after seeing Tom Hardy's transformation for the film Bronson, and looking into his workout, I wanted to see what everyone here thought about Tom Hardy's workout philosophy, or more accurately, the philosophy of his trainer, Pnut. If you're not familiar with the film, here's what Mr. Hardy looked like before and during it:

 

http://www.empireonline.com/images/features/buffed-up-actors/tom-hardy-bronson.jpg

 

His trainer had him doing mostly body weight exercises at different points in the day, maintaining that if you subject your body to constant stress throughout the day that your body is more likely to adapt to the stress and your growth will be more immediate. Hardy was consuming about 6,000 calories per day, working out 4 or 5 times a day, and claims he did not use any drugs to induce muscular growth (something I'm sure will start an argument, but that's what he says nonetheless).

 

He put on about 42 lbs in about five weeks, granted there is a healthy amount of fat there, but plenty of muscle. He stuck with exercises that the real Charlie Bronson did or would be able to do in prison.

 

So! What do ya think?!

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Obvious steroids is obvious, but for a film role that is expected. He did not rely on bodyweight training (as recommended in Bronson's fantastic book) but on heavy gym work, obviously a lot of shrugs (look at those traps!), mixed with a lot of mobility and flexibility work to help with fight scenes etc.

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Attributing a single body part to steroids is retarded. Steroids mostly just allow for much harder training.

 

One reason for this correlation between muscularity and neck shape/size is that certain places of the body have a higher percentage of androgen receptors than others. The neck muscles are one such muscle group with a larger number of receptors. This becomes particularly in cases of androgen supplementation.

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For some reason they are preaching a lot of bodyweight exercise, probably to seem more authentic? The truth is that bulking for film work is pretty standard, lots of shoulder and arm work. There had to be a lot of added neck and forearm work however since Bronson is well known for those features. Tom Hardy did NOT do 2500 pushups a day for this, that would be stupid.

 

Yeah, Robbie has got this one.

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BUT WHY WOULD THEY LIE TO ME???

 

Haha, yeah you guys make a good point. I don't have time to do it that way anyway, it's just a different outlook so I was wondering what others thought. Do you have your routine up somewhere, Tarzan? you look massive! Keep up the good work both of you!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just completed Solitary Fitness, The real Charles Bronson's bodyweight routine, and to sum it up, it taught me how to isolate body parts better, and conditioned me to doing 110 pushups, 100 situps, 100 star jumps, 100 body weight squats, 60 step ups, 60 burpees, and 60 squat thrusts in an hour. According to his book, now I am supposed to do these 7 moves in sets of 10 until I can complete all 700 in an hour. Then I am supposed to do them faster, and add reps until I'm blasting away tons of reps.

 

However, at 6'0, 230 pounds, with small hands and wrists, being a barber, and playing drums in two bands, and kickboxing for 2 hours once a week, my left wrist got strained and I will have to pick up this advanced version of Solitary Fitness at another time.

 

I read Bronson's biography, and in it he explains that he prefers to work out in a gym, but does all of these bodyweight moves when he isn't given permission, so over his life, half the time he's doing weights and machines, and half the time bodyweight moves. His book is specifically designed, first and foremost, for other inmates stuck in Solitary, and everyone else after that.

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  • 1 month later...

He used steroids. Not hard to believe. But them hiding the fact doesn't help the perception of gear in any sense. You could see pics of the production pictures for batman as well. His back was huge, and covered in acne.

 

Eat Big, Lift big, Gear = Huge gains...

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Hit Richards, Hershal Walker and "Hanibal for King" are all great examples that you CAN build considerable BodyBuilding muscle using only Calisthenics. I myself have not touched a weight in almost 7 months now. Prior to that I alternated one week on weights, one week on calisthenics, so I disagree entirely that body weight workouts aren't effective (google those guys I mentioned). I may not be the biggest vegan on the forum, but I've seen some great gains.

 

As for Tom Hardy, nobody would say you couldn't get that physique without the use of steriods, he's just not 'that' big. But the thing is the amount of time he did it in. But if I had to lose weight for some reason over the next few months and get down to a small size I might do something like a juice fast. And then if I needed to get big again really quickly over the next four months I might go up to 10,000 calories a day and yea, I would probably put on 30-40 ibs in the four months, but it wouldn't be all muscle. But looking at Tom, that's not all muscle gain from one photo to the next either. He also looks swollen and like he's retaining some water in the after photo which would be expected. That's one way he might have done it, I don't know and really don't care. He might have used steroids, but just a 40 ib weight gain in four months doesn't mean that's what he did or didn't do. There are too many other factors to just write it off as steroids.

Two weeks ago I had a 10 ib weight gain just because I started pounding rice (w/soy sauce) every night. When I got back to my normal diet my weight went back down in a couple days.

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