Want to get ripped like Jake Gyllenhaal? Check out his workout routine he used for the movie ‘Southpaw’.
Jake Gyllenhaal transformed his body for the movie ‘Southpaw’ and it paid off. Gyllenhaal was able to showcase his abs, boxing skills and his acting abilities.
But, how was Jake Gyllenhaal able to change from the anorexic journliast in ‘Nightcrawler’ to a ripped boxer? In an interview with the New Yorker, Jake Gyllenhaal revealed his workout routine for ‘Southpaw’.
As Gyllenhaal walked across the gym, a sweaty bantamweight called out, “I saw the trailer. You looked so cut!” The actor, whose regimen included a hundred pullups and a thousand situps per day, thanked him. After a moment, he confided, “A boxer walks into a ring, he looks fit—then they fight. There’s a whole language here that I was trying to learn and respect. Because I had very large doubts about whether I could pull off the behavior.”
Jake Gyllenhaal also revealed everything he learned about the sport of boxing.
He explained, “The first thing I learned was how to drag the back foot.” He skipped through a series of chain-gang lurches. “Never pull the back foot off the ground, or you’ll get tagged. Then ‘shelling up,’ defending like Floyd Mayweather.” He turned half-sideways, hunched his left shoulder and tucked his elbow to protect his chin and ribs, and peeked around his own ramparts. “And slipping the ropes: tedious, tedious footwork, turning side to side so your back remains against a rope running across the ring—totally not instinctual. I hated it.”
Gyllenhaal also pointed out how the movie “Rocky” over dramatized boxing by making it look fake.
Sitting on a medicine ball, he acknowledged the appeal of redemption through savage self-discipline. However, he noted, “In ‘Rocky,’ which I loved for the characters, you had the problem of it being all three-punch combinations thrown from the floor and the actors overreacting to the blows. In a real fight, you rarely register that a boxer has been hit until he falls down.” He stood and put his nose against a heavy bag. “Terry had me get real close, and he taught me it only takes five pounds of pressure to bang someone’s brain into his skull and knock him out. I came in thinking boxing is about aggression and strength, and I learned it’s about grace and movement and accuracy.
‘Southpaw’ was directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Kurt Sutter. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, and Rachel McAdams. ‘Southpaw’ was a minor hit in the box office but, with a $25 million dollar budget, the film made over $50 million allowing for studios to double their investment.
Jake Gyllenhaal will star in the upcoming drama ‘Demolition’ and ‘Everest,’ a movie about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.
