MILITARY TRAINING

To better understand the difficulties faced by the military, stars like Bradley Cooper ( American Sniper) and Brad Pitt ( Fury) embrace brutal workouts, physical and mental agility tests, and forgo home comforts.

With just a 12-week timeframe to transform from Hangover dude to Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, Cooper packed on 40lbs of muscle under a rigorous training regime devised by trainer Jason Walsh and Kyle’s real-life friend, Kevin Lacz. He was given nine demanding workouts a week, and fuelled by a diet that required him to pack in a whopping 5,000 calories a day. He couldn’t get all those calories from fourcheese-topped pizzas and pitchers of beer, mind. “Those calories all had to come from very healthy, clean foods and protein-rich drinks,” Walsh says. “Eating that much is miserable so we had to supplement some of the calories.”

Because Kyle was a military man and not a bodybuilder, Cooper’s regime focused on compound movements such as deadlifts, squats and bench presses, with heavy weights to give him size and functional strength. It pushed him way beyond his comfort zone.

“There were days when he came in and he was so beat down,” Walsh recalls. “I’d tell him, ‘Go home, you’re not going to work out today.’ If I had pushed him I probably would have hurt him — and once you have someone who’s injured, you’re done. That’s a lot of stress, a big responsibility to take on something like that with a big client like that. It’s my reputation on the line with a big studio that’s paying me to get this guy in shape.”