STRONGER THINGS
Meet the man who buffs up Hollywood’s hardest bodies — including ‘Stranger Things’ star David Harbour
FANS of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” might notice that David Harbour, who plays the show’s husky — and hunky! — hero, Chief of Police Jim Hopper, appears a little more chiseled in the show’s new season, out Friday. That’s because Harbour, 42, has been working hard in the gym with celebrity trainer Don Saladino. “He’s someone who’s obviously very artistic, but I saw him turn into just a monster, pushing weight and pulling weight,” the trainer, 40, tells The Post.
Saladino — who works with dozens of Alist celebrities including Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Reynolds and Victoria’s Secret models such as Erin Heatherton — has trained Harbour for three years. He was also tasked with bulking Harbour up for his role as the demonic hero Hellboy for the forthcoming comic-book flick of the same name.
“People call me the superhero trainer,” says the ripped Saladino at the cafe in his Soho gym, Drive.
Saladino, who lives on Long Island with his wife and two kids, first earned that reputation when he trained Hugh Jackman to get in shape to play Wolverine in the “X-Men” series. Later, he prepped Johansson for her role as the vixen Black Widow in “The Avengers” and the Captain America movies. Most recently, he helped Reynoldsy attain a trim and cut physiqueique for the sequel to “Deadpool.” Byy his own estimate, he’s probably trained 50-plus A-listers, many for the kinds of physically demandingg roles that de-de pend on audiences believing those characters can fend off evil with their bare hands.
But with Harbour, he had to sculpt a different kind of hero.
On “Stranger Things,” Harbour plays a perpetually hung over local sheriff with a beer gut who at the end of the first season rescued young protagonist Will Byers from the creepy alternate dimension known as the Upside Down. Far from your stereotypical hottie hero, a gruffly handsome Harbour nevertheless emerges a champion in the small town of Hawkins.
During “Stranger Things,” Saladino trained Harbour with strengthening and resiliency exercises, just to keep him healthy for the show’s rigorous film schedule and the occasional brawl scene. They worked together three to four days a week whenever he was in town, and increased to five to six days a week in the nine weeks before “Hellboy” (after “Stranger Things” had wrapped).
Workouts begin with a warm-up of “bear crawls,” which have Harbour scrabbling along the gym’s AstroTurf floor on all fours to sculpt the shoulders and work the obliques. Then he does a series of targeted strength-training moves, including the “sled push,” in which he uses his whole body to push a rolling weighted sled, which is one of Harbour’s favorites.
Typically a session like this with Saladino would set you back up to $1,000 an hour. But he recentlyy joined the workout app Fitner, which, for $10 a month, allows users to ask him their specifics fitness questions and watch instinstructional videos of his celebrity workouts — including Harbour’s.
YouYou mmight miss out on the gymgym-floor banter, though. Between sets, the two would shoot the breeze about old movies from the ’80s, such as “The Cannonball Run.”
“Dave never complained about anything,” Saladino says. “I think he just loved how strong he was getting.” In fact, Harbour has increased the amount of weight he can kettlebell deadlift from 104 pounds to 375 pounds.
And Saladino says that he doesn’t want Harbour to deprive himself of foods he loves, such as burgers and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
“I want to bring love handles and eating sandwiches back,” the actor joked to Women’s Health earlier this month.
Still, Saladino encourages Harbour to eat organic foods that are prepared in healthy ways, such as vegetables cooked in coconut oil, or grass-fed organic beef.
But Saladino’s secret weapon for Harbour’s transformation — which he says nearly all his clients (even models!) do pretty much every session — is what he calls a “suitcase carry.”
Clients grip a heavy kettlebell in each hand and work through a variety of movements, such as lunges, or even simply walk back and forth holding the weights. It doesn’t sound like much, but the exercise tackles nearly every muscle group in the body, from the glutes to the biceps, according to Saladino. It has the added benefit of improving grip strength, which protects the elbows and the shoulders, he says.
“It has a cardiovascular component, and when you’re carrying weights you’re burning fat,” he says. “It’s one of the most effective and most underused exercises.”
Feel free to bid those burpees good-bye!