Emma Stone hit the gym hard to do justice to King
It took more than Hollywood magic to turn Emma Stone, the svelte actress from La La Land, into Billie Jean King in her new movie Battle of the Sexes.
For starters, the physical transformation required three months, 15 pounds and a meal and fitness plan.
Trainer Jason Walsh, founder of climbing gym Rise Nation, who got Stone in shape for La La Land, knew the actress would need to up her calorie intake and strength training regimen to embody the powerful tennis legend.
Here’s what Stone went through to reshape her body:
SHE WASN’T AFRAID OF PACKING ON POUNDS.
Stone is “very petite and has a dancer’s body,” but she was willing to bulk up to look more like King. “She took it seriously,” Walsh says. “She wanted to do the story justice.”
Gaining a dozen-plus pounds of muscle made Stone look more like a tennis pro, and also feel more like her character. “We wanted to give Emma the psycho- logical backing ” to be able to compete in professional tennis matches, Walsh says. “She needed to be resilient and to have the psyche of being really strong.”
SHE DRANK TWO HIGH-CAL PROTEIN SHAKES A DAY.
“It wasn’t like we were taking someone off the Taco Bell diet,” Walsh says of his clean-eating client, “but we added shakes into her diet.” The shakes had “hundreds of calories” each, he says, and usually contained a handful of spinach, a supplement known as ashwagandha and a “good tasting ” protein powder. Fortunately, since Stone was working out so much (twice a day), she was hungry enough to down the beverages.
SHE LIFTED AN IMPRESSIVE AMOUNT OF WEIGHT.
Some of Walsh’s daily go-to strength training exercises for Stone? Pushing and pulling sleds twice her size, heavy farmer’s walks (aka walking while holding dumbbells) and up to 300-pound hip thrusts. At one point, Stone was deadlifting 185 pounds and doing push-ups with 50 pounds of chains on her back.
“I was pretty proud,” Walsh says.
THEN SHE BACKED OFF.
While Stone was gaining weight, she stayed away from fat-burning cardio. But once she achieved the right look for the film, “we started adding conditioning aspects,” Walsh says.
She’s two years beyond her most intensive Battle of the Sexes training, but Walsh encourages the actress, and anyone else, to mix activities like yoga and hiking with strength training.
Yes, for women. And, yes, that means lifting weights.
“I train ( GLOW star) Alison Brie and (future Captain Marvel) Brie Larson, and all of these girls are strong as hell and not big,” he says. In fact, after incorporating weight-lifting into their routine, “They fit into their clothes better (and) are three, four, five times stronger than before.”
Want to see the results of Stone’s hard work? Battle of the Sexes expands nationwide Friday.