THE FIT BROTHERS
Love/Hate actor Aaron Heffernan has a very ‘personal’ trainer in his older brother Simon, who gives LINEOUT the low down on what went into making his kid brother look so good!
Love/Hate actor Aaron Heffernan and his brother Simon reveal their gym routines
WHAT do you do when your little brother is no longer your “little” brother?
Over the past 12 months, not only has my kid brother Aaron grown into the clothes he once stole from my wardrobe, he's grown out of them, too.
Don't get me wrong, as his coach I'm super proud and you couldn't ask for a more dedicated and hard working client. But as his older brother, I feel like I need to pull the finger out and take my own training and nutrition up a gear so I can reclaim the title of the “Big Brother”.
Despite my best efforts, so far I have been unable to match his rate of growth. I put this down to the simple fact that I simply cannot consume as much food as he does. Seriously, the man is a machine!
Only last week I witnessed Aaron annihilate a colossal amount of Spaghetti Bolognese (450g of spaghetti and a kilo of grass fed minced beef ). Then, he went home and made himself two venison steaks and a vegetable stir fry a couple of hours later!
Diet played a massive part in the development of Aaron's physique. He's an admirer of Tom Hardy (the actor in Inception and The Dark Knight) and wanted to replicate his physique to a certain degree but also have a definite physique of his own. To do this we added more and more calories to his daily diet over time until he was averaging about 4000kcals/day.
At the height of the summer he was eating every four to five hours with each meal being high nutrient-dense foods. We cut his gluten and dairy intake right down to zero and outside of this he could eat anything as long as it was from a whole food source, meaning once the food hadn't been refined, broken down or altered in any way it was good to go. Simply put, if it didn't swim, grow, walk or fly he couldn't eat it. Now, that's what he was supposed to do, the reality however was a little different but for the most part he stuck to the plan.
Training, however, was different; Aaron trained with laser beam like intensity and
Aaron's an admirer of the actor Tom Hardy and wanted to replicate his physique to a certain degree but also have a definite physique of his own. To do this we added more and more calories to his daily diet over time until he was averaging about 4000kcals/day
discipline. In fact, I had to tell him to stop training on more than one occasion and take a break as he was simply trying to do too much and his body wasn't getting adequate time to heal.
For the majority of the year we both followed the same training programs at the same times. This meant that we trained together consistently for the best part of this year and over that time we have certainly grown closer as brothers. Typically, we would do one or two workouts, focusing purely on strength training, and three to four that focused solely on muscular hypertrophy (growth) and development.
We also did some cardio work but never together as we both enjoy cardio outdoors. Aaron would get up at 6am a couple of times a week, head down to the rowing club and spend a few hours on the water whilst I did mine on my bike travelling mainly to and from work.