Chris Hemsworth is admired for a lot of things, one being his physique. Somehow, he managed to look muscular playing Thor (and soon, Hulk Hogan) without looking like a a gym rat on juice. How does the Chris Hemsworth workout build a Thor-like body? It’s not as complicated as you might think.
Chris Hemsworth made headlines again, this time around thanks to an Instagram post that was liked almost 4.5 million times by now and showcases just how jacked he’s got for his upcoming Netflix movie where we’ll portray the young Hulk Hogan. The ‘Chris Hemsworth workout’ plan seem to deliver great results every time he needs to bulk up for a role.
Naturally, people flocked the internet to find out how he got so thicc (with two ‘cc’) again, after almost starving himself to death in 2015 to play the role of Owen Chase in the move In the Heart of the Sea. Chris is tall (6″3′, roughly 1.9m) so he needed to work extra hard pack on muscle initially, but for any subsequent ‘bulking up’ sessions, he had the benefit of regaining muscle mass, which is admittedly not as hard as building muscle from scratch. That said, it is not a piece of cake either way.
It is hard not to draw comparison between Chris Hemsworth’s and Henry Cavill’s physique. Both actors are tall and although Chris tend to be leaner on screen, both of them can put on serious amount of muscle mass in a short period of time, probably thanks to their intense workout regime and strict diet plan. Read more about the Henry Cavill workout and diet here.
The Chris Hemsworth workout plan requires access to at least some of the best home gym equipment or a gym which is not always available to all. If you only have access to limited amount of weights at home, we recommend having a look at the Mike Tyson bodyweight workout: it is brutal but it delivers the results. You will need to work out a lot, though, whereas Chris worked out an hour tops a day, according to his PT Luke Zocchi of Centr fame.
Talking about Centr: in our Centr review, we noted that although using the app won’t transform your body overnight, it “addresses a very important part of the health journey successfully: the lack of motivation and structure. By giving you workout suggestions and meal options every day, Centr takes off the weight from your shoulders of having to put your own plan together.”
• Sign up for Centr today and save 73% on the yearly plan thanks to this Cyber Week offer
It is worth mentioning that the Centr app features the same ‘team of experts’ who gets Chris in shape for his role so you can rest assured they know what they are talking about. Of course, you won’t get their undivided attention like Chris but the workout and diet plans in the app seem comprehensive enough.
Chris Hemsworth diet
According to Man of Many, the Chris Hemsworth diet consisted of lot of healthy carbs, such as quinoa, brown rice and sweet potatoes, ample amount of protein, like egg whites, chicken and protein shakes, as well as some lipids which can be found in fatty fish and nuts. Recently, Chris went full-vegan and bulked up on a vegan diet for his later roles as Thor.
Understandably, not only Chris ate all of the above but he had loads of them. In this respect, his plan is similar to that of Henry Cavill’s: tons of food, lot of protein and health carbs. While Henry was having steaks and eggs for breakfast for months, Chris opted in for having three chicken breast, 100 grams brown rice, broccoli, kidney beans and a glass of fat-free milk for lunch. That’s around 900 kcal and a whopping 100 grams of carb and protein for one meal.
As always, bulking up is not about having fancy food and industrial amounts of mass gainer for each meal. Consistency and resilience is way more important, both in diet and and the workout. When you ‘cheat’, you’re not cheating on anyone else but your gains. Drinking alcohol often and not getting enough rest can all hinder progress so if you are planning on packing on some muscle, you’d better limit your alcohol consumption.
Chris Hemsworth, just like Henry Cavill, seemingly went way over the recommended ‘two grams of protein per body kilogram per day’ intake. This is not an issue: you can eat protein freely as long as you are not eating only protein. Our bodies haven’t got protein reserves, unlike fat- and carbohydrate-reserves, so eating too much will just empty out of your system if not used.
Chris Hemsworth workout plan
According to Zocchi, Chris’ PT of choice, for the role of Thor, they mainly worked on the upper body/arms to pump those muscles up as much as possible for the role. It’s not like leg day was skipped, but the emphasis was definitely on the arms, upper back and pecs. Plus, to keep a lean physique ready for the role, Chris also did some aerobic exercises.
One final note before we break down the Chris Hemsworth workout: these actors bulk up for the roles but after, they tend to shed the extra pounds. It’s not like Chris Hemsworth walks around between Thor movies bulked up, which in his case was around 215 pounds of bodyweight. Carrying that much muscle can be tiring in itself, not to mention the dietary requirements to maintain those muscles. Between roles, Chris is around 185 pounds, a more manageable weight considering his height.
Each workout consists of two circuits: a bodyweight circuit and one where heavy weights are used to build strength.
Chris Hemsworth bodyweight workout
Chris’ bodyweight circuit consisted of five exercises and provided him with a full body workout. Here are the exercises he did, according to Man of Many:
Pull-ups
3 sets / 15 reps
Now, many of us struggle doing one pull up, let alone three sets of 15. For those, we recommend using the best resistance bands to help build muscle and get used to the exercise. Resistance bands come in many different strength options, ideal for gradual progression.
Gallery: How to burn belly fat and get in shape (T3)
HOW TO BURN BELLY FAR AND GET IN SHAPE
If you’re trying to lose weight fast, it can be easy to get caught up with fad diet or other “quick fixes” that promise a flat stomach in days. Don’t worry about it though, as there are ways to lose weight that are tried and trusted. Not easy and quick weight loss maybe, but doable.
If you’re serious about losing weight, you’ve come to the right place. We won’t promise a six pack in as many hours, but we can guarantee expert advice and key tips for losing weight quickly, but in a healthy and sustainable way. We’ve also got the lowdown on the best exercise for losing weight fast, and all the gear you’ll need to get started.
IS THERE A “BEST” WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT FAST?
The best way for you to lose weight fast will depend on your starting point, your end goal, and your lifestyle. In this article we lay out ten strategies that are applicable to everyone, whether you’re a fitness novice looking to shed several stone, or you simply require motivation to keep going.
Generally speaking the best way to lose weight quickly, and maintain that weight loss, is to follow a steady, manageable plan. Don’t try to take on more than you can reasonably fit into one day, unless you’re willing to make the sacrifice. Most likely sleep or your social life.
The NHS recommends that you aim to lose no more than 2 lbs (1kg) per week; anymore than that and you risk burning out and giving up. With that in mind, here are ten strategies to get you losing weight quickly.
1. ACHIEVE A CONSISTENT CALORIE DEFICIT
The short answer to the question of how to lose weight fast is to achieve a consistent calorie deficit. That is, burn more calories than you consume.
If you eat 2,500 calories a day – the recommended daily amount for a man, although of course this can vary wildly depending on your height, weight and frame – and burn 3,000, you are in a calorie deficit.
If, however, you burn 3,000 but have consumed 3,500, you’re not in a calorie deficit, even though you’ve almost certainly been working out a lot have burned that much energy.
What you need to do is ensure you’re eating the right food and doing the right exercise so that you’re sufficiently full and satisfied even when consuming fewer calories than you burn. Here’s how…
2. DECREASE CALORIE INPUT THROUGH DIET CHANGES
As we alluded to above, a common pitfall that many people experience when trying to lose weight is that as they start exercising more, they feel like they need to eat more to keep their energy levels up and consequently fail to see results. Instead, we recommend adapting your diet to get the most out of your calories.
All foods have different energy densities. Foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains have low energy density, which means you will get fuller faster when eating these than you would high energy density foods.
Nutritionist Jenna Hope explains: “Proteins and healthy fats promote more stable blood glucose levels, keeping you fuller across a time period and less likely to crave sugar or over eat,” and so these are the kinds of foods you should get the majority of your calories from.
Consuming the same amount of calories as you are now (or fewer if possible), but getting more nutritional value from them will help you feel fuller for longer and lose weight more quickly as a result.
3. DON’T CUT OUT ALL OF ANY SINGLE FOOD GROUP
We all know that some foods – and some food groups – are healthier than others, and that we need every type of food in our diet. The problem is that many of us aren’t getting the right balance.
Spoon Guru nutritionist Isabel Butler (MSc, ANutr) recommends that “the best way to reduce weight and maintain the weight loss is by simply eating a balanced and healthy diet, without refusing yourself particular foods… If you do cut out foods, you need to make sure your diet is still balanced and you are getting the nutrients your body needs from other sources.”
For example, unless you’re training to become a weightlifter, there’s nothing wrong with carbs per se, but the biggest food culprit when it comes to hindering weight loss is the simple carbohydrate.
Compared to complex carbs like beans, whole grains and vegetables, which break down and release energy slowly, thereby keeping you full and energised, simple carbs such as sugar and starchy foods which break down into sugars – such as pasta and spuds – give you a shorter boost of energy, then leave you wanting more.
The likelihood is that the more simple carbs you eat, the more you’ll end up eating overall, harming the balance of your calorie deficit.
One easy trick if you’re a carb fan is to swap out white pasta or rice for courgetti, or noodles made from other vegetables like butternut squash. This can make an arrabiata, curry or stir fry much lower in calories. You’ll hardly notice the difference when you’re eating it, but you’ll be fuller for longer despite consuming fewer calories.
4. TRY A FOOD SUBSTITUTE
Sometimes it’s a real struggle to reduce the calories you take in, or even just to track them. If you’re constantly on the move and don’t have the time to count calories, or you have the best intentions and are cooking fresh with ingredients that aren’t all labelled with their nutrition info broken down, then accurately tracking calories can be a nightmare.
To ensure you’re getting a good mix of nutrients, as well as all-important protein, you could try a food substitute such as Huel.
This is not marketed as a dietary aid, but it is highly nutritious, and makes calorie counting a lot easier. A word of caution though: Huel may replace meals from a nutritional standpoint, but slurping a cool, slightly slimy milkshake instead of getting your teeth into a warm, healthy paella isn’t for everyone.
5. TRY INTERMITTENT FASTING
Some people thrive on intermittent fasting, which means significantly cutting calories – or completely fasting – for a portion of the day or week, and then eating normally for the rest.
The most popular form of intermittent fasting is the 5:2 diet, where you eat normally for five days a week but then eating no more than 600 calories two days a week.
There’s also the 16:8 diet, which is a bit different. With this diet you can eat anything for 8 hours a day, but can only drink water during a 16 hour fast. The recommended time to eat is between 10am and 6pm, although this can be flexible depending on what time you’d prefer to start or end eating (as long as you stay within an eight hour window).
The benefits of intermittent fasting is that during the fast period the body will run out of carbohydrates to run on, and so start to take energy from the body’s fat stores, thus starting to burn that belly fat once and for all.
6. DRINK MORE WATER AND LESS ALCOHOL
Drinking more water – especially before a meal – can help us to feel fuller, thereby helping us to stop eating sooner and consume fewer calories than we otherwise would have.
What’s more, few of us consider what we drink when we total up our daily calorie count and so potentially hundreds of extra calories can sneak into our bodies. Replacing fruit juices, fizzy drinks and even tea and coffee with water means we can save up our calorie allowance for the good stuff: the food that fills us up.
Top tip: keep a reusable water bottle with you at all times and restrict what else you drink. This can feel like a hard habit to break at first, but is surprisingly easy to maintain once you have a zero calorie drink to hand 24/7.
Reducing the amount of alcohol we drink also comes with benefits. Most obviously, alcoholic drinks are often very calorific, so drinking less alcohol means consuming fewer calories. Simple.
Secondly, drinking alcohol increases our appetite, so we’re more likely to eat more than usual – and more of the bad stuff – when we’ve been drinking. Cheesy chips, I’m looking at you.
Lastly, we all know how we feel after a night of heavy drinking. Ready for a session and the gym and a day eating fruit, veg and simple carbohydrates? We didn’t think so. Drinking alcohol not only means we take in more calories at the time, but can affect our ability to function well and make healthy choices the next day.
7. INCREASE CALORIE OUTPUT THROUGH EXERCISE
Now we’ve tackled diet and nutrition (calories in), it’s time to look at exercise (calories out).
Even if you’re eating healthily and are reasonably active in your daily life, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to lose weight quickly without additional exercise, whether that’s running, gym, crossfit, team sports, cycling or any of the other myriad activities available.
What’s more, working out will make you look and feel better and in our view, once you start looking and feeling better, it gets a lot easier to find the will power needed to improve your diet.
When it comes to choosing what type of exercise you do, the most important thing is that it’s something you enjoy and will stick to. Don’t force yourself to run if chances are you’ll be walking ten minutes in.
8. FOCUS ON WEIGHT TRAINING IN ADDITION TO CARDIO
There are two main types of exercise: cardio training and weight – or resistance –training.
Both burn calories, the difference is that whilst cardio burns a lot of calories upfront, weight training continues to to burn calories post workout.
This is because weight training builds muscle, and muscle burns more than fat as you carry out day-to-day tasks. In short, the greater your muscle:fat ratio, the more calories you burn even when you are standing still.
Weight training may seem daunting, but you don’t have to join a gym and face up to the squat rack right away. There are so many weight exercises you can do at home with simple bits of equipment from dumbbells to kettlebells, and balls to ropes.
All of this aside, don’t neglect cardio, as cardio workouts are important for fitness and stamina, and will still burn calories.
9. VARY THE INTENSITY OF YOUR WORKOUTS
As well doing both cardio and weight training, if you want to lose weight it’s also important to vary the intensity with which you exercise.
In any given week, and within any given workout, you should exercise both aerobically (a little out of breath but not gasping) and anaerobically (going flat out, like when running for a bus).
Aerobic exercise needs oxygen to give muscles energy and generally requires moderate exertion. Examples include gentler running, cycling and swimming.
It’s a crucial part of losing weight quickly because it uses both sugar and fat as its energy source, but to burn fat you need to do it for long enough that you’ve burned through your sugar stores first.
Anaerobic exercise, on the other hand, primarily uses sugar as its fuel. This doesn’t mean that it’s not good for weight loss, though. Anaerobic exercise helps build muscle, and as we explained above, this will help you burn calories even when you’re resting. Anaerobic exercises are generally high intensity, for example sprinting and weight lifting.
A running watch or fitness tracker will help you to know what intensity exercise you’re doing. As they either have built-in heart-rate trackers or pair with ones you strap to your chest, they can show you how hard you’re working out and let you know when you need to push it harder.
10. TRACK YOUR INPUT VS. OUTPUT (THAT ALL IMPORTANT CALORIE DEFICIT)
It’s important to decide how you want to measure your success and keep track consistently, understanding that you will see daily fluctuations due to things like digestive contents and water retention.
Running watches are the easiest way to track your progress, remain motivated and keep weight off. Depending how fancy you go, you can track pretty much any metric that works for you, certainly way beyond whether you’ve achieved your 10,000 steps. Whether it’s weight, BMI, resting heart rate, calories burned or activity level, the best running watch will track it all.
Many wearables branded as fitness trackers also have a stab at these more advanced metrics nowadays, but we’d always recommend a watch over a band.
Another way to keep track of your progress is the old fashioned method of weighing yourself. The great thing about modern bathroom scales is they don’t just tell you your weight; they also let you know your body fat percentage.
This is a much, much better metric to track than weight alone. If you’re working out while dieting you can easily put on weight, even when running a calorie deficit, just because muscle is heavier than fat.
Now, although the calculations of body fat percentage scales produce are based on sound science, accuracy can vary. The key thing to note is that if the overall trend is going down, you’re doing well.
We can’t stress enough the importance of giving your body time to lose weight. You can lose weight faster by using the right gear and having the right knowledge and attitude, but you’ll likely need to redefine what ‘fast’ means to you.
12/12 SLIDES
Sit ups
3 sets / 20 reps
Interestingly, Chris’ workout includes sit ups, an abs exercise that has fallen out of grace in recent times. Nevertheless, when done right, sit ups can activate the main part of your abs and don’t even have to damage your back/spine either.
Push ups
3 sets /15 reps
We ❤️ push ups here at T3. Push ups are amazing exercises that train the pecs and the triceps, but also the core and the shoulders. Probably the best bodyweight exercise you can do for arm/pecs gains with no equipment.
Box jump
3 sets / 10 reps
Luke Zocchi likes his plyo moves and this is a great example of that. Box jumps work the quads and hamstrings beautifully, although you might curse quite a lot when doing them.
Bodyweight squat
3 sets / 15 reps
Another basic yet brilliant bodyweight exercise, squats work the quads and the glutes hard. Doing three sets of 15 should be enough to fire up the lower part of your body.
Chris Hemsworth weighted workout
If you want to pack on muscle quickly, you must up the resistance. Adding weights to your training is the perfect way to gain muscles quickly.
Barbell back squat
3 sets /15 reps
Barbell back squats build leg and glute definition quickly. DOMS is pretty much inevitable but the results are worth all the hassle. Make sure you rest the barbell on the traps, not on the neck and that you keep the spine neutral (straight). Go deep.
Bench press
3 sets / 5 reps
The bench press doesn’t need any introduction. Chris’ workout went heavy to build strength: use larger weights for these sets than you would usually do. And get someone to spot you.
Standing military press
3 sets / 8 reps
Standing military press is perfect for building shoulder and triceps muscle. Go slightly heavier than your usual weight and really squeeze the core as you press up. Try not to arch the back too much, keep a neutral spine.
Barbell Deadlift
3 sets / 5 reps
Go heavy on this one too. Deadlifts build overall strength and work almost all muscles in the body. The perfect complimentary exercise for the bench press.
Hammer curl
3 sets / 5 reps
Box off the workout with a few hammer curls. Finishing the workout with the smallest muscle is a good idea, by now, the body is pretty exhausted and only capable of smaller efforts. That said, use heavier weights for this exercise too. Core engaged all the way through.
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