How to Get a Hollywood Body
The modern day Hollywood action hero has washboard abs with a carved six-pack, a chiseled chest, and a defined inguinal crease. How can you transform your body into action hero form? Click to find out.
Ben Greenfield
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How to Get a Hollywood Body
A recent article in Men’s Journal entitled “Building a Bigger Action Hero” got my attention.
In the article, the author describes how modern day Hollywood action heroes – males, in this case – have evolved over the past decades to get better and better bodies. Specifically, three primary characteristics define most of the modern male action stars: washboard abs with carved six-packs, chiseled chests, and a defined inguinal crease (the “bumps” on either side of the waist going down towards the abs and pelvis).
In this episode, you’re going to learn exactly how to get that same look!
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And ladies, if you have a husband, boyfriend, father, son, nephew, or other man in your life who you think would benefit from this information, be sure to forward it to him.
How to Get a Carved Six-Pack
We’ve all seen footage of some ripped celebrity beginning or ending their day by doing dozens of sit-ups or crunches on their bedroom floor. But as I explained in the article How to Get a Flat Stomach, crunches only work one part of your abs (the rectus abdominis), and don’t even work that part of your abs very efficiently.
See also: 10 Flat Stomach Alternatives to Crunches
The reality is that there is no single special exercise you can do that will tone a specific muscle or body part or make fat there disappear. In the episode How to Tone and Lose Fat in One Body Part, you learned that when your body needs energy, it doesn’t get it from a single specific area of the body. Instead, it takes fat from everywhere and converts that fat into free fatty acids.
So when you’re doing all those crunches, you might use a little bit of fat from your waistline for energy, but you’ll also use fat from your thighs, your calves, your forearms, your chest, and if you’re unfortunate enough to have a fat forehead, maybe from there, too. In fact, your body is so efficient at taking fat evenly from all different regions of your body, the dent you make in your waistline from all those crunches will be pretty small.
Instead, the best way to get a flat, sculpted stomach is to do a workout made up of exercises that target all the different components of your abs – the rectus abdominis, the external and internal obliques, the transversus abdominis, and also the postural muscles of the low back. All of these muscles must be included because from a functional standpoint, the stomach is a crucial connecting point between your upper body (the chest, shoulders, and arms) and your lower body (the butt, hips, and thighs).
So an ideal ab workout should include moves such as bending (hanging leg raises), extending (deadlifts), twisting (cable rotations), planking (front planks), and heavier lifting (barbell squats).
When combined with calorie-burning through consistent physical activity and brief bouts of high intensity cardiovascular exercise this strategy will get you a nice, flat stomach that includes sculpted abs you’re now seeing on guys like Hugh Jackman and Matthew McConaughey.
And if you decide that you still want to include crunches in your routine, at least make sure you try these crunch variations to make your workouts much more demanding.
How to Get a Chiseled Chest
In my episode How to Get Rid of Man Boobs, I explained how to get rid of a droopy chest. Now, here are 3 moves to take your chest to a Daniel Craig-esque Hollywood level:
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Press from all angles. On a weekly basis, do incline, decline, and flat chest pressing so that you attack your chest muscles from all angles. Do exercises like decline push-ups, incline bench presses, and dumbbell chest presses.
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Fly. Flies help develop the inside pec muscles that presses have a hard time getting to. There are many variations you can use, including decline fly, lying fly, seated fly, and standing fly.
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Posture. Slouched shoulders can make the chest look droopy, so also include shoulder posture exercises like push-up rows and pull-ups.
If you’re doing a “chest-only” workout, you only need to do it once per week. If you’re simply working chest exercises into a full-body regimen, you can hit the chest 3 times per week, but allow for about 48 hours of recovery between those workouts.
How to Work the Secret Ab Muscle
And finally, in case you’re curious about how to tone the inguinal canal (aka, the “Treasure Trail”) on either side of your abdominal muscles, then you need to go check out my episode The Hidden Ab Muscle That Will Get You a Six-Pack. Yep –that’s right – if you work that same secret ab muscle with the “focus crunches,” scissor kicks, and modified plank push-ups I tell you about in that episode, then you’ll know everything you need to know to get that ripped Hollywood waistline.
Do you have more questions about how to get a Hollywood body? Leave your thoughts in Comments or over at Facebook.com/GetFitGuy.
Action hero image courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.