THE FORCE IS STRONG
Actors in ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ got fit for the film with a rigorous regimen that included futuristic ice-cold recovery gear
IT wasn’t just the Force that helped the cast of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” get through those grueling lightsaber fight scenes.
Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Mark Hamill and Oscar Isaac had a not-so-secret power to help them train harder and longer without injury: a compression sleeve that surrounds weary muscles with icecold temperatures.
The $300-and-up sleeves, made for medical use only, are used by professional athletes around the country, and can be rented with a prescription. The sleeves provide both compression and icing — two of the basic functions of recovery, known by the acronym RICE: rest, ice, compression and elevation.
“Normally, we could train [actors] two times a week, but with this recovery technique, we can work with them five times a week, sometimes more,” says Christopher Vincent of Los Angeles-based sports-medicine company Altus Health, which he runs with his brother, Paul. Their team worked on the past three “Star Wars” movies (and the upcoming “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” out in May), and they’ve trained actors in major action movies, including “Blade Runner 2049.” Among their credits are helping Carrie Fisher drop 35 pounds for 2015’s “The Force Awakens,” and guiding Harrison Ford through an ankle injury with on-set rehab therapy.
There are several brands of compression sleeves on the market these days. The ones the “Star Wars” cast uses are from Game Ready, the choice of such powerhouses as Serena Williams and Lady Gaga, as well as members of the Knicks, Mets, Rangers and Giants.
The sleeves can fit over several parts of the body, from the ankles to the arms, and can be plugged in or run on an attached battery pack. Although many machines have a warming function, it’s commonly used with a combination of pressure and cold. The
coldness, which circulates 38-degree water through an ice reservoir for 20 to 40 minutes, has been found to reduce pain and swelling.
“It’s not always pleasant to put cold things on your body, so it took a little coaxing for people to use [it],” Vincent says.
The compression part of the sleeves, which feels similar to getting your blood pressure read, helps flush post-workout blood to flow away from muscles, reducing inflammation and aches.
When the tight cold sleeve is removed, healthy, re-oxygenated blood flows back to the muscles. Although this process normally happens on its own, the sleeve speeds recovery time — something vital, Vincent says, when you’re training for the physically demanding roles in “Star Wars.”
Before any of the actors could wield those lightsabers, they needed to strengthen their core muscles, Vincent says. That meant actors Ridley, Driver and Hamill were doing a lot of plank-based exercises, along with old-fashioned pullups and pushups to strengthen their arms and shoulders, in addition to martial arts training.
Teams from Altus Health joined the cast and crew on sets in London and Ireland, often with basic equipment such as resistance bands, medicine balls and free weights. Vincent says diet also played a major role in the cast’s ripped physiques.
“We’d feed them more in line [with] a marathon runner, which is [a] higher-fat and -protein and lower-carbohydrate diet,” he says. “Their diet was very high in vegetables and probiotics like kombucha — the gut really affects your recovery, your acuteness of the brain, your immune system.”
Between training sessions, and sometimes even between takes, therapists would use the sleeves to make sure the demanding stunts wouldn’t result in overuse injuries. This made it possible to continue the 100 or so days of filming without any holdups from injuries.
“If one actor is down, it can mess up the whole shooting schedule and cost the production company millions for not being able to shoot that scene,” Vincent says. “We wanted to prepare their fitness and strength so that they could do that activity for 12 hours a day, five days in a row.”
The practice used on the “Star Wars” cast of icing sore or injured muscles has been around for ages, says Dr. Joshua Dines, an orthopedic surgeon at Manhattan’s Hospital for Special Surgery. The only real difference, he says, is that technology has streamlined the process.
Dines says he uses the compression system with his patients, including players for the Mets and Rangers. The sleeves help athletes feel better and return to play more quickly, he says, and are useful in helping those who have had surgery find relief without relying too much on pain medication.
Although he says there’s no evidence yet that icing injuries helps performance, Dines cites a 2012 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that supports the benefits of compression on recovery.
“If it makes the athletes feel better, to get them back on the field in a safe way, then it’s a benefit,” Dines says, adding that actors such as those in “Star Wars” “are like pro athletes when they’re shooting films like that.”